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Articles on Nazi Germany

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National Socialist troops marching in Berlin to celebrate Adolf Hitler taking over power. Hitler’s accession to chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, gave the Nazi party its “in” to eventually consolidate absolute control over the country in the months soon after, setting it on the path to the Second World War. (AP Photo)

What can we learn from the history of pre-war Germany to the atmosphere today in the U.S.?

Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was aided by courts and lawyers in pre-war Germany. A similar situation exists today in the United States.
The Boerneplatz synagogue in flames on Nov. 10, 1938, during the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ in Frankfurt, Germany. History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Kristallnacht, 85 years ago, marks the point Hitler moved from an emotional antisemitism to a systematic antisemitism of laws and government violence

The violence of the 1938 pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany known as Kristallnacht was a turning point in Hitler’s ‘Final Solution.’
Thousands of people attend a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in New York in May 1934, with counterprotestors outside. Anthony Potter Collection/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Nazi Germany had admirers among American religious leaders – and white supremacy fueled their support

Two social scientists analyzed periodicals from US religious leaders in 1935 to determine what factors influenced groups’ sympathy, ambivalence or outrage about Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Lizi Rosenfeld, a Jewish woman, sits on a park bench bearing a sign that reads, ‘Only for Aryans,’ in August 1938 in Vienna. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum /Provenance: Leo Spitzer

How individual, ordinary Jews fought Nazi persecution − a new view of history

Finding the stories of individual Jews who fought the Nazis publicly and at great peril helped a scholar see history differently: that Jews were not passive. Instead, they actively fought the Nazis.
Five handicapped Jewish prisoners, photographed for propaganda purposes, who arrived in Buchenwald after Kristallnacht. Holocaust Memorial Museum/Photograph #13132

Disabled people were Holocaust victims, too: they were excluded from German society and murdered by Nazi programs

In 2023, International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks 90 years since the Nazis assumed power. Disabled people were the first Holocaust victims; Nazi programs discriminated against and murdered them.
The bulletproof glass booth in which Adolf Eichmann (pictured) testified during his trial in Jerusalem. Richard Drew/AP

The book that changed me: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and the problem of terrifying moral complacency

As a child of Hungarian Jews, reading Eichmann in Jerusalem was a revelation to Peter Christoff. Yet might the ‘Eichmann problem’ of criminal disregard apply, today to those exploiting fossil fuels?
During the Russian occupation of Luhansk Oblast, 15 kids were allegedly taken from this rehabilitation center and moved to Russia. Wojciech Grzedzinski/The Washington Post via Getty Images

4 plays that dramatize the kidnapping of children during wars

These wartime abductions aren’t specific to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Throughout history, they’ve inflicted trauma on society’s most vulnerable – making them a rich subject matter for the stage.
A woman holds a sign denouncing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, with syringes in the shape of a swastika, during a 2021 rally at the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort. Jon Cherry/Getty Images

Holocaust comparisons are frequent in US politics – and reflect a shallow understanding of the actual genocide and the US response

Many Americans know a simple version of Holocaust history, in which their country played the savior. The reality isn’t so comfortable, a historian writes.
Smoke rises on April 15, 2022, above 400 new graves in the town of Severodonetsk, Ukraine. Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Russia is being made a pariah state – just like it and the Soviet Union were for most of the last 105 years

The West’s new approach to Russia – bar it from international organizations, restrict international trade, prevent further military moves – looks just like how it treated Russia in the 20th century.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his speech during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Russia, on May 9, 2021, marking the 76th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

How Russia’s fixation on the Second World War helps explain its Ukraine invasion

Russia’s take on the Second World War is not merely for nationalist consumption. The actions of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany appear to be a blueprint for the Russian attack on Ukraine.

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