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University of California Press

The Third Reich Sourcebook

by Anson Rabinbach (Author), Sander L. Gilman (Author), Lilian M. Friedberg (Translator)
Hardcover Paperback eBook
Price: $85.00 / £71.00
Publication Date: Jul 2013
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 956
ISBN: 9780520955141
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Chapter 1

The Munich Years and the Legacy of the War

No event is more crucial to understanding the emergence of Nazism than Germany's surrender to the Allies at 11 o'clock on 11 November 1918. Until the very end of World War I, wartime propaganda portrayed the undefeated Imperial German Army as invincible, giving no hint of the coming disaster on the Western Front. The anti-Hitler journalist Sebastian Haffner recalled that when he was eleven years old and saw the newspaper headline "Armistice Signed," his "entire inner world ... collapsed." Adolf Hitler, recuperating from partial blindness in a military hospital in Pasewalk, also recalled the trauma of defeat, later describing in Mein Kampf the moment when an elderly pastor told the stunned patients that the royal House of Hohenzollern had fallen, the Kaiser had gone into exile, and the German Empire had become a republic. For Hitler, as for many of his generation, his personal suffering vanished, as he wrote in Mein Kampf, "in comparison with the tragedy of the fatherland." During the 1930s, much of the literature produced in National Socialist Germany mythologized the experience at the front and lauded war veterans. For example, Heinrich Lersch's war poems presented a redemptive vision of death and destruction, and Otto Gmelin portrayed a simple but war-wise German in his saga Prohn Fights for His People (1938). Though the account in Mein Kampf, composed during Hitler's brief fourteen-month imprisonment in the Landsberg Fortress for an abortive coup in Munich on 9 November 1923, may be questioned, Hitler claimed that on the day of Germany's humiliation-9 November-he had vowed "to go into politics."

When Hitler joined the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party, DAP) in Munich in September 1919, he was still by his own description a "nameless" political neophyte. His pan-German sympathies did not begin to emerge until the summer of 1919 after he received political training as a military informer in an anti-Bolshevik instruction course, courtesy of the Reichswehr (Armed Services). In his first written statement on the "Jewish Question," a letter dated 16 September 1919, written at the behest of Captain Karl Mayr, head of the Army Intelligence and Propaganda Unit, to a soldier, Adolf Gemlich, Hitler proposed a "rational" rather than "emotional" anti-Semitism in order to be all the more effective "in the irrevocable removal of the Jews."

Hitler was greatly influenced by the economic theorist Gottfried Feder (1883-1941), whom he had heard speak and whose Manifesto for Breaking the Bondage of Interest had just appeared. Feder was a central figure in the DAP, which had been organized in 1919 and was one of many political groups that emerged on the fringes of Munich's turbulent political scene. The DAP's founding statement, published on 5 January 1919, addressed its appeal to the working class, promoted antipathy to the "socialization" of the German economy put forward by the parties of the Left, called for wage stabilization and profit sharing, and passionately demanded government by Germans rather than by "foreigners and Jews." From its inception, the DAP embraced an ideological cluster of antiliberalism, pan-Germanic nationalism, antimodernism, racial anti-Semitism, and a mystical ideal of Germanic or Nordic spirituality derived from a variety of pre-1914 "völkisch" sources. It blamed Germany's defeat on the "November criminals"-Marxists and Jews-whom it held responsible for any and all of Germany's misfortunes. The fourth point of the party's twenty-five-point program, adopted on 24 February 1920, explicitly excluded Jews from citizenship, defining citizens as "members of the nation" who are "of German blood." Along with Feder, who focused largely on economic issues like Germany's debt and the need to nationalize the credit system, the main ideologues of the DAP were the poet Dietrich Eckart (1868-1923), who saw all life as a world-historical battle between the worldly Jew and the spiritual non-Jew, and Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946, executed at Nuremberg), whose writings were marked by biological and racial anti-Semitism and a radical hatred of Bolshevism.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they rewrote their early history to put Hitler at center stage from the beginning, publishing a highly fictionalized account of the founding of the DAP and of Hitler's 1924 trial in a collector's album illustrated with stick-on photographs that was offered with cigarette purchases. Though the official version of how Hitler joined the movement was fanciful, the miniscule size of the party at its inception, his discovery of his ability to mesmerize audiences, and the resulting mushrooming of membership were not exaggerated. After seizing control of the party in July 1921, Hitler revamped it, calling it the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party, usually referred to in English as the Nazi Party and in German abbreviated as NSDAP); designing its red, white, and black swastika flag; creating the uniformed paramilitary Sturm Abteilung (Storm Troopers, SA); starting a daily newspaper (Völkischer Beobachter); staging countless mass meetings featuring speakers trained to create political fireworks; and adopting new propaganda techniques, some of which are described in Hans Hinkel's One of a Hundred Thousand (1933). One of the greatest successes of the Nazi Party in the 1920s was in recruiting young activists and mobilizing the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth, HJ) and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls, BDM), which by 1930 had twenty-five thousand members under eighteen. Hans Johst's (1890-1978) play Schlageter, based on the life of a young Nazi martyr executed by the French in 1923, depicts party members as dynamic and idealistic, the mirror opposite of the cynical and exhausted older generation. Also typical of propaganda in the earlier years were the books by Wilfred Bade. Combining his writer's activity with his role as press chief (Reichsamtsleiter der Reichspressestelle) of the Nazi Party, Bade was an able popularizer of the history of the party and an advocate of its technological triumphs, especially the putative expansion of mass automobile ownership.

In the late 1920s, under the leadership of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party focused on winning the battle for the traditionally Social Democratic stronghold of Berlin by staging barroom brawls, disrupting meetings, and provoking street battles with Socialist and Communist opponents. Midlevel party organizers such as Fritz Oertner exhorted speakers to be drilled in effective anti-Marxist rhetoric. Though the party was already a formidable presence, not until its breakthrough in the elections of 14 September 1930, described here by Herman Führbach, did it become a force in German politics and a threat to the Weimar Republic.

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About the Book

No documentation of National Socialism can be undertaken without the explicit recognition that the “German Renaissance” promised by the Nazis culminated in unprecedented horror—World War II and the genocide of European Jewry. With The Third Reich Sourcebook, editors Anson Rabinbach and Sander L. Gilman present a comprehensive collection of newly translated documents drawn from wide-ranging primary sources, documenting both the official and unofficial cultures of National Socialist Germany from its inception to its defeat and collapse in 1945. Framed with introductions and annotations by the editors, the documents presented here include official government and party pronouncements, texts produced within Nazi structures, such as the official Jewish Cultural League, as well as documents detailing the impact of the horrors of National Socialism on those who fell prey to the regime, especially Jews and the handicapped. With thirty chapters on ideology, politics, law, society, cultural policy, the fine arts, high and popular culture, science and medicine, sexuality, education, and other topics, The Third Reich Sourcebook is the ultimate collection of primary sources on Nazi Germany.

About the Author

Anson Rabinbach is professor of history at Princeton University, founder and co-editor of New German Critique, and author of several books, including In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals Between Apocalypse and Enlightenment.

Sander L. Gilman is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as a professor of psychiatry at Emory University, and is the author or editor of over eighty books, including Obesity: The Biography and Wagner and Cinema (co-edited with Jeongwon Joe).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Part One. The Beginnings of National Socialism
1. The Munich Years and the Legacy of the War

1. Guidelines of the German Workers’ Party (1919)
2. Adolf Hitler, Letter to Adolf Gemlich (1919)
3. Wilfred Bade, The Founding of the Party in 1920 (1933)
4. Dietrich Eckart, Jewishness in and around Us (1919)
5. The Program of the German Workers’ Party: The Twenty-Five Points (1920)
6. Gottfried Feder, Manifesto for Breaking the Bondage of Interest (1919)
7. Otto Gmelin, Prohn Fights for His People (1933)
8. Heinrich Lersch, The German Soldier; In the Military Hospital (1939)
9. Hanns Johst, Schlageter (1933)
10. Hans Hinkel, One of a Hundred Thousand (1937)
11. Wilfred Bade, The Hitler Trial (1933)
12. Wilfred Bade, The SA Conquers Berlin (1933)
13. Fritz Oerter, Our Speakers in the Anti-Marxist Struggle: The Balance of an Election Year (1932)
14. Hermann Führbach, How I Became a National Socialist (1934)

2. Nazism in Power: 1933

15. Walter Frank, On the History of National Socialism (1939)
16. Oswald Spengler, The White World Revolution (1933)
17. Hermann Goering, Radio Address: 30 January 1933
18. Joseph Goebbels, Day of Potsdam: 22 March 1933 (1933)
19. Erich Ebermayer, My Day of Potsdam: Diary Entry (1933)
20. Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of Volk and State (1933)
21. Anonymous, The Reichstag Fire: Declaration of Martial Law? (1933)
22. Otto Wels, Speech against the Passage of the Enabling Act (1933)
23. Law to Remedy the State of Emergency of Volk and Reich (1933)
24. Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Service (1933)
25. Adolf Hitler, Speech to Commemorate National Labor Day (1933)
26. Das Schwarze Korps, Second-Class Comrades? (1936)
27. Carl Schmitt, State, Movement, Volk: The Tripartite Division of Political Unity (1933)
28. Ernst Forsthoff, The Total State (1933)
29. Alfred Rosenberg, The Total State? (1934)
30. Carl Schmitt, The Führer Protects the Law: On Adolf Hitler’s Reichstag Address of 13 July 1934 (1934)
31. Hans Frank, On the Position of the Judge before National Socialist Law and in the National Socialist State (1936)

3. The Political Religion: Führer Cult, Ceremonies, and Symbol

32. Albert Reich, Adolf Hitler’s Homeland (1933)
33. Baldur von Schirach, Hitler as No One Knows Him (1933)
34. Rudolf Hess, The Oath to Adolf Hitler (1934)
35. Baldur von Schirach, To the Führer; Hitler (1935)
36. David Lloyd George, I Talked to Hitler (1936)
37. Anonymous, This Is a National Poison? What the Ban on Führer Kitsch Is Supposed to Protect Us From (1933)
38. Anonymous, City and Countryside Shine in Celebratory Splendor (1939)
39. Engelbert Huber, The Swastika (1933)
40. Franz Alfred Six, The Propaganda of the Street and the Masses (1936)
41. Franz Alfred Six, The Power of the Spoken Word (1936)
42. Erwin Schockel, Good and Bad Posters (1939)
43. Das Schwarze Korps, With German Protestant Catholic Greetings (1935)
44. Wilfred Bade, The Party Rally Day of Victory: The Victory of Faith (1933)
45. Willy Liebel, Five Years: Nuremberg, City of Party Rallies (1938)
46. Victor Klemperer, Listening to Goering’s Speech
at the 1938 Nuremberg Rally (1938)
47. Law Concerning Holidays (1934)
48. Hannes Kremer, New Meanings for “Inherited” Customs? (1937)
49. Frank Leberecht, Call to the Fire (1934)
50. Central Cultural Office, Reich Propaganda Leadership, Honoring Fallen Heroes: NSDAP Veterans’ Memorial Day Celebrations (1939)

Part Two. The National Socialist Worldview
4. Between Myth and Doctrine

51. Adolf Hitler,The Aryan (1925)
52. Adolf Hitler, Speech at the NSDAP Congress on Culture (1933)
53. Ernst Krieck, The Racial-Völkisch-Political Conception of History (1934)
54. Alfred Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century: On the Third Edition (1930)
55. Joseph Goebbels, Communism with the Mask Off (1935)
56. Carl Schmitt, National Socialist Legal Thought (1934)
57. Hans F.{ths}K. Günther, A Modest Racial Study of the German People (1929)
58. Susanna Pertz, The Word Nordic (1939)
59. Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Nordic Beauty: Portraits of Perfection in Life and in Art (1937)
60. Wolf Willrich, The German Face (1935)
61. Otto Höfler, Secret Cultic Societies of the Germanic Peoples (1934)
62. Harald Spehr, Were the Germans “Ecstatics”?: A Comment on Otto Höfler’s Secret Cultic Societies of the Germanic Peoples (1936)
63. Eberhard Freidank, Nordic Ecstasy (1933)
64. Alfred Bäumler, Hellas and Germania (1943)

5. Racial Science

65. Ludolf Haase, We Need a Reich Office of Racial Affairs (1933)
66. Walter Gross, National Socialist Racial Policy: A Speech to German Women (1934)
67. Paul Brohmer, Biological Studies and Völkisch Education (1933)
68. Günther Hecht, Biology and National Socialism (1937/1938)
69. Johann Fahlbusch, Colored Blood in the Rhineland (1935)
70. Reichsführer SS Central Office for Racial Policy, Racial Policy (1942)

6. Germany’s Colonial Mission

71. Karl Haushofer, National Socialist Thought in the World (1933)
72. Hans Simmer, German Territory and German Volk (1934)
73. Hans Grimm, My Father, My Colonies (1934)
74. Ernst Gerhard Jacob, Colonial Policy as Cultural Mission (1938)
75. Ernst Janisch, The Biological-Historical Background of German Living Space (1943)

Part Three. Antisemitism: The Core Doctrine
7. Jews: The Visible Enemy

76. Adolf Hitler, Aryan and Jew (1925)
77. Engelbert Huber, The Anti-Semitism of the NSDAP (1933)
78. E.{ths}H. Schulz and R. Frercks, Why the Aryan Law? A Contribution to the Jewish Question (1934)
79. Reinhard Heydrich, The Visible Enemy: The Jews (1935)
80. Alfred Rosenberg, Bolshevism: The Work of an Alien Race (1935)
81. Martin Buber, An Open Letter to Gerhard Kittel (1933)
82. Gerhard Kittel, Response to Martin Buber (1934)

8. Eliminating the Jews: From the Nuremberg Laws to Kristallnacht

83. Reich Citizenship Law (1935)
84. Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor (1935)
85. Wilhelm Stuckart and Hans Globke, Civil Rights and the Natural Inequality of Man (1936)
86. Carl Schmitt, German Jurisprudence and the Struggle against the Jewish Spirit (1936)
87. Hertwig Hartner-Hnizdo, Accident of History or Destiny of the Race? (1939)
88. Johann von Leers, The Criminality of Jewry (1940)
89. Das Schwarze Korps, Concentration Camps and Their Inmates (1936)
90. Peter-Heinz Seraphim, Jewry in the Eastern European Space (1938)
91. Karl Friedrich Euler, The Yiddish Language as Expression of the Jewish Mind (1942)
92. Second Decree Concerning Implementation of the Law on Changes to Family Names and First Names (1938)
93. Fritz Arlt, The Final Struggle against Jewry: A Historical Reflection on Jewish Enmity (1938)
94. Reinhard Heydrich, Instructions for Kristallnacht (1938)
95. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Actions Against the Jews on 9, 10, and 11 November 1938 (1938)
96. Betty Scholem, Report on Kristallnacht (1939)
97. Sopade, Reactions of the Populace to Reichskristallnacht (1938)
98. Das Schwarze Korps, What Now, Jews? (1938)

Part Four. Nationalizing German Youth
9. Educating the Race: Children and Adolescents

99. Unknown Child, Adolf Hitler Is Our Führer!
100. Anonymous, Conference Minutes: Horst Wessel School in Kassel (1933–45)
101. Paul Garz and Otto Hartmann, German Grammar: Active/Passive Voice (1937)
102. Paul Habermann, Arthur Laudien, and Rudolf Tobler, Heritage and Mission: A German Primer for Young Readers (1941)
103. Baldur von Schirach, To the Flag (1942)
104. Dietrich Klagges, German History for Schools (1942)
105. Gerhard Kölling and Eugen Löffler, Math Lessons (1942)
106. Otto Steche, Erich Stengel, and Maxim Wagner, School Subject: Biology (1942)
107. Law Concerning the Hitler Youth (1936)
108. Sopade, Reports on German Youth (1938)
109. Song of the Hitler Youth: Devotion to the Fatherland (1939)
110. Baldur von Schirach, The National Socialist Youth Movement (1933)
111. Reimund Schnabel, Leadership Training Program of the Hitler Youth (1938)
112. Anonymous, A Hitler Youth Scout Is Loyal and True! (1941)
113. Oberbannführer Stephan, The League of German Girls Organization in the Hitler Youth (1935)
114. Erna Bohlman, The Position of the Ancient Germanic Woman (1934)
115. Günter Kaufmann, Faith and Beauty (1938)
116. Collecting Women’s Hair: Reich Directive 36/K (1940)
117. Jutta Rüdiger, The “Eastern Deployment” of the BDM (1942)
118. Gisela Miller-Kipp, Wartime Fashion Show (1942)

10. Science, History, and Philosophy Revised

119. Ernst Krieck, Renewal of the German University (1933)
120. Arthur Göpfert, Eugen Fischer, Martin Heidegger, and Wilhelm Pinder, Vow of Allegiance of the Professors of German Universities and Institutions of Higher Learning to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State (1933)
121. Karl Alexander von Müller, The State of the University (1938)
122. E. Günther Gründel, The Intellectuals and National Socialism (1934)
123. L. Glaser, Jews in Physics: Jewish Physics (1939)
124. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Citing Jewish Authors in Dissertations (1940)
125. Christoph Steding, Disease unto Death? Disease unto Life? (1938)
126. Johannes Haller, The Epochs of German History (1936)
127. Karl Alexander von Müller, The Influence of the Peasantry in the National Community of the Volk (1938)
128. Theodor Schieder, East Prussia in the History of the Reich (1938)
129. Kleo Pleyer, Volk in the Field (1943)
130. Ernst Krieck, The German of the German Language Society (1934)
131. Ernst Krieck, Philosophy (1939)
132. Arnold Gehlen, The State and Philosophy (1935)
133. Gerhard Fricke, The German of the Enlightenment (1935)
134. Alfred Bäumler, Nietzsche and National Socialism (1943)
135. Wolfgang Schultz, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
and the Historical Zarathustra (1935)
136. Heinrich Härtle, Nietzsche and National Socialism (1938)

Part Five. The Racial Community
11. Women and “the Woman Question”

137. Paula Siber, The National Socialist Solution to the Woman Question (1933)
138. Carola Struve, Woman’s Freedom and Freedom of the Volk on Foundations of Camaraderie (1933)
139. Adolf Hitler, Speech to the Meeting of the National Socialist Women’s Organization (1934)
140. Hanns Johst, Mother (1934)
141. Emil Strauß, The Mother (1934)
142. Joseph Goebbels, German Women (1933)
143. Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, To Swedes and Germans (1937)
144. Das Schwarze Korps, Fashion: A Matter for Our Women! (1939)
145. Office of Women’s Affairs of the German Labor Front, Working Women and Leisure Time
146. Gertrud Altmann-Sädke, The Maternal Instinct Must Be Reinforced (1941)
147. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Women’s Reactions to Goebbels’s “Total War” Speech (1943)

12. Marriage and the Family

148. Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German Volk (1935)
149. Otto Steche, Guide to Racial Science and Eugenics, Fostering Congenitally Sound Progeny, and Family Science for the Intermediate Level (1937)
150. Anonymous, Selection and Breeding (1942)
151. Otto Steche, Erich Stengel, and Maxim Wagner, Womb Wars (1942)
13. Eliminating “Superfluous Life”: “Asocials,” Criminals, the Handicapped, and the Mentally Ill
152. Law for the Protection against Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (1933)
153. Kurt Daluege, The National Socialist Fight against Criminality (1936)
154. Reinhard Heydrich, The Enemy in Disguise (1935)
155. Kölnische Zeitung, “Socially Fit–Asocial–Antisocial” (1937)
156. Ferdinand von Neureiter, Body Type and Crime (1940)
157. Adolf Hitler, Memorandum Authorizing Involuntary Euthanasia (1939)
158. Clemens Graf von Galen, Sermon on Euthanasia (1941)
159. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, On the Public Response to the Film Ich klage an [I Accuse] (1942)
160. Rudolf Frercks, Christianity and Sterilization (1942)

14. Healthy and Unhealthy Sexuality

161. Das Schwarze Korps, Is This “Nudist Culture?” Herr Stapel Is Outraged! (1935)
162. Das Schwarze Korps, Sexual Indecency on Active Duty (1938)
163. Wolfgang Willrich, The Suffocating Nobility (1943)
164. Hugo Hertwig, Race and Love (1941)
165. Der Stürmer, The Abortion Trial: Jewish Doctors as Murderers (1939)
166. A. Aschenbrenner, Incest and Hereditary Health (1940)
167. Anonymous, How Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science Was Demolished and Destroyed (1933)
168. Magnus Hirschfeld, Men’s Leagues: A Psychosexual Analysis of the Röhm Catastrophe (1934)
169. Anonymous, Illusions (1935)
170. 1935 Revision to Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code (1935)
171. Heinrich Himmler, OnHomosexuality and Abortion (1936, 1937)
172. SS-Untersturmführer Professor Eckhardt, Sexually Indecent Abominations against Nature Are Punishable by Death (1935)

15. The German Soul and Psyche

173. Frank Maraun, Christianity and Psychoanalysis (1933)
174. Anonymous, The Role of the Jew in Medicine: The Psychoanalysis of the Jew Sigmund Freud (1933)
175. Kurt Gauger, Political Medicine: Foundations of a German Psychotherapy (1933)
176. Herbert Rudolf, Interview with Prof. Dr. M.{ths}H. Goering: Early Childhood Experiences Determine Development Later in Life (1939)
177. The Case of Edith Jacobsohn: Indictment and Commentaries (1933, 1936)
178. Ernest Jones, Letter to Anna Freud (1935)
179. Dr. Fritz Bleiber, Siegmund [sic] Freud and Psychoanalysis (1939)
180. C.{ths}G. Jung, The State of Psychotherapy Today (1934)
181. Ursula von Kardorff, Suicide and Deportation (1943)
182. Dr. Reitberger, On the Psychology of Suicide (1944)
183. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Kamikaze Panic: The Image of Japan in the German Population (1942)

Part Six. The Churches
16. The National Socialist State and Christianity

184. Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich (1933)
185. Völkischer Beobachter, Comments on the Meaning of the Concordat (1933)
186. Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, What Is the Stance of Christianity to the German Race? (1934)
187. Declaration of the German Christians (1933)
188. Karl Barth, Theological Declaration of Barmen (1934)
189. Statement of the Confessing Church (1934)
190. Julius von Jan, A Sermon on Bußtag (Day of Atonement): “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord!” (1938)
191. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, The Churches’ Attempts to Undermine Anti-Jewish Sentiments in the Populace (1941)
192. Alfred Rosenberg, Theses on the Worldview (1941)
193. Walter Künneth, Jesus: Aryan or Jew? (1936)
194. Walter Grundmann, Jesus of Nazareth and Jewry (1940)
195. Das Schwarze Korps, The German Faith: Where Do We Stand? (1936)
196. Martin Bormann, National Socialism and Christianity are Irreconcilable (1941)
197. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Resistance and Resignation (1945)

Part Seven. National Socialism and the Arts
17. Literature: Official Culture and Its Outcasts

198. German Student Association, Down with the Un-German Spirit! (1933)
199. Anonymous, To the German Student Association: All Anti-Semitic Students Are Assholes! (1933)
200. Association of German Peoples Librarians, General Guidelines for Compiling Blacklists (1933)
201. German Student Association Head Office for Enlightenment and Publicity, To the Individual Student Associations (1933)
202. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, The Public Burning of Outlawed Texts (1933)
203. Oskar Maria Graf, Burn Me! (1933)
204. Joseph Goebbels, The Tasks of the Ministry of Propaganda (1933)
205. Joseph Goebbels, Speech at the Opening of the Reich Chamber of Culture (1933)
206. Law Establishing the Reich Chamber of Culture (1933)
207. Klaus Mann, Open Letter to Gottfried Benn (1933)
208. Gottfried Benn, Answer to the Literary Emigrants (1933)
209. Lion Feuchtwanger, Open Letter to the Current Occupant of My House in Berlin (Mahler Street 8) (1935)
210. Editors’ Law (1933)
211. Ernst Bertram, Against Humanism (1935)
212. Ricarda Huch, Letter to Max von Schillings, President of the Prussian Academy of the Arts (1933)
213. Joseph Nadler, Nation, State, and Literature (1937)
214. Heinz Kindermann, The New Literary Values (1939)
215. Johannes Alt, Foundations and Suppositions of the Scholarly Editing of German-Language Jewish Literature (1937)
216. Thomas Mann, Letter to Eduard Korrodi (1936)
217. Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair (1937)
218. Werner Bergengruen, A Matter of Conscience (1935)
219. Franz Fühmann, Wartime Poems (1942)

18. The Visual Arts: German Art vs. Degenerate Art

220. Otto Andreas Schreiber, The Continuation of Expressionism (1934)
221. Alfred Rosenberg, Revolution in the Visual Arts? (1933)
222. Adolf Hitler, Art and Its Commitment to Truth (1934)
223. Joseph Goebbels, Ban on Art Criticism (1936)
224. Ernst Barlach, Letter to Joseph Goebbels (1936)
225. Adolf Hitler, Speech at the Opening of the Great German Art Exhibition (1937)
226. Adolf Ziegler, Speech at the Opening of the Degenerate Art Exhibition (1937)
227. Reinhard Piper, A Visit to the Degenerate Art Exhibition (1937)
228. Robert Scholz, Vital Questions of Visual Art (1937)
229. Werner Rittich, Contemporary Architecture and Architectural Sculpture (1938)
230. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, The Great German Art Exhibition in Munich, 1940
231. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Masterpieces in German Art in Private Jewish Collections (1940)
232. Robert Scholz, The Mission of the New German Sculpture: On the Arno Breker Exhibit in Paris (1942)
233. Paul Schmitthenner, Tradition and New Design in Architecture (1933)
234. Mies van der Rohe, Conversation with Alfred Rosenberg, April 1933
235. Adolf Hitler, The Reich Chancellery (1939)
236. Hans Kiener, Germanic Tectonics (1937)
237. Fritz Todt, The Meaning of the New Building (1937)
238. Albert Speer, Redesigning the New Capital of the Reich (1939)
239. German Labor Front, Urban Planning: A Political Task (1939)
240. Heinrich Himmler, Order for the Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto (1943)

19. Music: The Wagner Cult vs. Degenerate Music

241. Richard Strauss, Speech at the Opening of the Reich Music Chamber (1933)
242. Richard Strauss, Letter to Adolf Hitler (1935)
243. Fritz Stege, Future Tasks of Musicology (1933)
244. Wilhelm Furtwängler and Joseph Goebbels, The Case of Wilhelm Furtwängler (1933)
245. Siegfried Scheffler, Bayreuth in the Third Reich (1933)
246. Manchester Guardian, The Bayreuth Festival: August 15, 1933—“Featuring” Herr Hitler (1933)
247. Oskar Loerke, Diary Entry (1933)
248. A Protest from Richard Wagner’s City of Munich (1933)
249. Thomas Mann, Response to City of Munich Protest (1933)
250. Herbert Birtner, On the German Interpretation of Beethoven Since Richard Wagner (1937)
251. Curt von Westernhagen, Richard Wagner’s Struggle against Foreign Domination of the Soul (1935)
252. Thomas Mann, Letter to the Editor of Common Sense (1940)
253. Moser’s Dictionary of Music, Atonal (1943)
254. Degenerate Music Exhibition, The Theoreticians of Atonality! (1938)
255. The Hindemith Affair: Exchange between Wilhelm Furtwängler and Joseph Goebbels (1934)
256. Wulf Bley, Is It Jazz or Just Radio Dance Tunes? (1934)
257. Ilse Deyk, Jazz Is Dead: May the Jazz Band Live! (1942)
258. Carl Hannemann, Jazz as a Weapon of Jewry and Americanism (1943)
259. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Jazz Music and Youth (1942)

20. Nazi Cinema: Entertainment and Propaganda

260. Joseph Goebbels, Speech at the Kaiserhof (1933)
261. Reich Cinema Law (1934)
262. Hans Traub, The Cinema as Entertainment Site (1933)
263. Carl Neumann, Curt Belling, and Hans Walther Betz, Portrait of the Unmasked Mr. Kohn (1937)
264. Curt Belling, Preparatory Work of the Party until the Takeover of Power (1936)
265. Curt Belling, The Beginning of National Socialist Film (1936)
266. Fritz Hippler, The Formative Power of Film (1942)
267. Film-Kurier, We Lucky Kids (1936)
268. Film-Kurier, The Latest Greta Garbo Triumph (1935)
269. Film-Kurier, This, Too, Is Worldview! (1937)
270. Ewald von Demandowsky, Film as I See It (1939)
271. Walter Panofsky, What Does the Audience Want to See on the Silver Screen? (1938)
272. Winifred Holmes, Hamburg Cinema: A Typical German Program (1939)
273. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Shirley Temple: Enemy of the Reich (1940)
274. Licht Bild Bühne, Hitler Youth Quex (1933)
275. Film-Kurier, Leni Riefenstahl Spoke (1935)
276. Film-Kurier, Triumph over the Heart—Triumph of the Will (1935)
277. Frank Maraun [Franz Goelz], Olympia (1938)
278. Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, Leni Riefenstahl: Germany’s Number One Filmmaker (1937)
279. Film-Kurier, Jews No Longer Permitted to Attend the Cinema—All Forms of Participation in Representations of German Culture Forbidden! (1938)
280. Der Stürmer, Charlie Chaplin: The Jewish Chimp in America (1940)
281. Anonymous, The Eternal Jew: Film of a 2,-Year Rat Migration (1940)
282. Film-Kurier, Review of The Eternal Jew (1941)
283. Gerhard Starke, Review of Jew Süss (1940)
284. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, The Popularity of Jew Süss (1940)
285. Manfred Georg, Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940)
286. Anonymous, Hollywood Reports: On the Situation of Refugees in Hollywood (1940)

21. Politics and Entertainment: Theater, Radio, and Television

287. Ludwig Moshamer, The Thingstätte and Its Meaning for the Future of German Theater (1935)
288. Richard Euringer, The Passion of Germany 1933: Radio Play in Six Acts (1933)
289. Hermann Wanderscheck, The Transformation of the Theater in the Third Reich (1939)
290. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, On Performances of Works by [George] Bernard Shaw (1941)
291. Joseph Goebbels, Radio as the Eighth Great Power (1933)
292. Franz Hartung, Radio and Politics (1933)
293. Ferdinand Eckhardt, No More Stars! (1933)
294. Lisa Peck, Women and Radio: The Numbers (1934)
295. A. Wulff, 500 Schoolchildren in Berlin Tell about Radio (1934)
296. Heinz Goedecke and Wilhelm Krug, Solders of the German Army, Lend Us Your Ears! (1941)
297. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Armed Forces Radio Request Program Well Received (1940)
298. Heinrich Himmler, Illegal Broadcasts for England: Memo to Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1943)
299. Joseph Goebbels, No Dialect in Radio Broadcasts (1942)
300. Film-Kurier, First Television Broadcast Launched (1935)

22. Jewish Culture under Nazi Persecution: The Jewish Cultural League

301. Kurt Singer, Let’s Get Started! (1933)
302. Kurt Singer, Speech at the Opening of the Cultural Conference of the Reich Organization of Jewish Cultural Leagues in Germany (1936)
303. Hans Hinkel, The Policy of Purging Jews from the Theater (1936)
304. Robert Weltsch, Wear the Yellow Badge with Pride! (1933)
305. C.-V. Zeitung, The Reich Representative Council of German Jews in Germany after the Nuremberg Laws (1935)
306. Kongress-Korrespondenz, Interview with Hans Hinkel: Must the Jews in Germany Starve? (1935)
307. Philo-Lexikon: Handbook of Jewish Knowledge, Encyclopedia Entries: Emigration, Distinctions, Emancipation, Military Service (1937)
308. Culture Department of the Vilna Ghetto Judenrat, Cultural Activities in the Vilna Ghetto (1942)

Part Eight. Work, Industry, Modernity
23. Industry and Labor: The Four-Year-Plan, Beauty of Labor, and Strength through Joy

309. Adolf Hitler, Secret Memorandum on the Four-Year Plan (1936)
310. Karl Arnhold, Senseless Work Is Un-German (1936)
311. Sopade, On Recruiting Workers through Compulsory Membership and Social Bribery (1935)
312. Karl Kretschmer, On the Tasks of the Beauty of Labor Program (1934)
313. Wilhelm Lotz, Reconstruction Work in German Factories (1936)
314. Emil Rudolf Mewes, Thoughts on Architecture in Industrial Construction (1938)
315. Robert Ley, On the Anniversary of the Establishment of Strength through Joy (1934)
316. Horst Dressler-Andress, Travel, Hiking and Holiday Department (1937)
317. Gertrud Meyer, Around Italy: The Great Travel Experience (1939)
318. Sopade, On “Strength through Joy” (1938, 1939)

24. Modernizing Germany: The Autobahn and Americanism

319. Wilfred Bade, The Führer and the Automobile (1938)
320. Gerhard Engel, Adolf Hitler on the Reich Autobahn and the Future of Motorization (1938)
321. Fritz Todt, Nordic Man and Transportation (1937)
322. Friedrich Tamms, The Reich Autobahn as All-Encompassing Architectural Marvel (1937)
323. Anonymous, Five Years of Strength through Joy (1938)
324. Fritz Todt, Foreword to Adolf Hitler’s Roads and Buildings (1939)
325. Eugen Diesel, Is Modern Technology National? (1934)
326. Jakob Korn, The War Experience and Renewal of Science (1940)
327. Hansjürgen Weidlich, Felix versus USA: A German Takes On America (1934)
328. Dr. J.{ths}F.{ths}E. Raschen, Germany—As Seen by Americans (1935)
329. Das Schwarze Korps, Jerry Siegel Attacks!: Superman the Jew (1940)
330. Das Schwarze Korps, The Danger of Americanism (1944)
331. Giselher Wirsing, Unbounded Continent: Roosevelt’s Struggle for World Domination (1942)

Part Nine. Body Culture, Sports, Public Amusements
25. The 1936 Olympics and the World of Sports

332. Max Ostrop, Olympic Games: German Style (1935)
333. Friedrich Mahlo, German Tourism and the Olympic Year (1936)
334. Harry Hirsch, The Playing Fields of Nazi Germany (1934)
335. Committee on Fair Play in Sports, Preserve the Olympic Ideal (1935)
336. Helene Mayer, Letter to Avery Brundage (1935)
337. Völkischer Beobachter, Schmeling’s Knockout Victory over Louis: And the Match Goes to the Opponent (1936)
338. Das Schwarze Korps, Jewish Victor in the German College Championships (1935)
339. Count Wolf Baudissin, Sports in the Army (1937)
340. Johannes Öhquist, Physical Pedagogy (1941)
341. Dr. A. Mallwitz, Sports Hygiene, (1936)
342. Geist und Schönheit, Rejuvenating Life, Enthusiasm for Life, Rejuvenating the Volk (1936)

26. “Amusmang”: Laughter in the Third Reich

343. Das Schwarze Korps, What Will Santa Bring? (1935)
344. American Committee for Anti-Nazi Literature, Humor à la Nazi (1939)
345. American Committee for Anti-Nazi Literature, Drunken Nazi Leader Speaks against Liquor and Tobacco (1939)
346. Das Schwarze Korps, We’re Not So! (1936)
347. Das Schwarze Korps, Fool’s License for Artists (1939)
348. American Committee for Anti-Nazi Literature, Coffee Shortage Announced (1939)
349. Illustrierte Beobachter, Swastika Crossword Puzzle (1934)

Part Ten. War, Conquest, and the Annihilation of the Jews
27. The Holocaust Begins: Violence, Deportation, and Ghettoization, 1939–1942

350. Adolf Hitler, Speech to the Great German Reichstag (1939)
351. Julius Streicher, Bolshevism and Synagogue (1941)
352. Four Decrees Issued in Occupied Poland, 1939–1941
353. Der Stürmer, The Eternal Shame: Black France Enlists Negroes as Cannon Fodder for the Eternal Jew (1940)
354. Alfred Rosenberg, The Jewish Question as World Problem (1941)
355. Victor Klemperer, Reading Rosenberg’s Myth in 1942 (1942)
356. Heinrich Himmler, Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East (1940)
357. Persecution of the Sinti and Roma: Three Decrees (1938, 1939)
358. Johannes Blaskowitz, The Military and the Slaughter of the Jews (1940)
359. Joseph Goebbels, The Jews Are Guilty! (1941)
360. Hermann Goering, Order to Heydrich to Begin Preparations for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (1941)
361. Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, Orders for Conduct in the East: Crushing the Jewish-Bolshevist System (1941)
362. Karl Baumböck, Jews Practice World Politics (1942)

28. The Annihilation of European Jewry, 1942–1945

363. Reinhard Heydrich, Policy and Operations Concerning Jews in the Occupied Territories (1939)
364. Wannsee Protocol (1942)
365. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Battle against the Jews (1942)
366. Reich Leader SS/SS Main Office, The Jew (1943)
367. Hillel Zeitlin and Dr. Israel Milejkowski, Evaluating the Ghetto: Interview in Warsaw, 1941
368. Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow (1940, 1942)
369. Stefan Ernest, Warsaw Ghetto Diary (1942)
370. [Abba Kovner and Others], A Summons to Resistance, Vilna Ghetto (1942)
371. Hans Frank, Diary Entry (1943)
372. Walter Gross, Racial Political Prerequisites for the Solution of the Jewish Problem (1943)
373. Józef Zelkowicz, Diary of the Lódz Ghetto (1942)
374. Dawid Sierakowiak, Notebooks from the Lódz Ghetto (1942)
375. Stanislaw Sznapman, Warsaw Ghetto Diary (1943)
376. Stefania Staszewska, Warsaw Ghetto Diary (1944)
377. General Jürgen Stroop, Report on the Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto (1943)
378. Heinrich Himmler, Speech at Posen (1943)
379. Egon (Gonda) Redlich, Theresienstadt Diary (1944)
380. Oswald Pohl, Expanding Auschwitz (1942)
381. Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, Auschwitz Protocols (1944)
382. Zalmen Gradowski, The Czech Transport: A Chronicle of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando (1944)

29. Total War: The Occupation of Europe to Germany’s Defeat 1940–1945

383. Theodor Schieder, Notes on Settlement and Population Surveys in the Reclaimed Eastern Provinces (1939)
384. Major General Helmuth Stieff, Letter from Poland (1939)
385. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Bilingualism as Means and Expression of German Superiority in the East (1940)
386. Joseph Goebbels, Address to the Leaders of the NSDAP in Vienna (1940)
387. Der Stürmer, Africa in Paris (1940)
388. Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars (1941)
389. Martin Bormann, To Alfred Rosenberg: On the Treatment of Non-German Populations in the Eastern Territories (1942)
390. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Rumors and Murmurings (1942)
391. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, The Image of Russia in the Populace (1942)
392. Hermann Ernst Grobig, Why Racial Hygiene in Wartime? (1944)
393. Joseph Goebbels, Now, People, Rise Up and Let the Storm Winds Blow! (1943)
394. Thomas Mann, Response to Joseph Goebbels (1943)
395. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Reactions to Goebbels’s Speech (1943)
396. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Reactions to the Katyn Forest Massacre (1943)
397. Martin Bormann, Safeguarding the Future of the German People (1944)

Part Eleven. Resistance
30. Communists, Socialists, Youth, and the Conservative Resistance

398. The Brown Book, The Road to Power (1933)
399. Rundschau, The Bloody Thirtieth of June in Germany (1934)
400. Miles [Walter Löwenheim], Socialism’s New Beginning (1934)
401. Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933)
402. Willi Münzenberg, Propaganda as a Weapon (1937)
403. Hans Scholl, Willi Graf, and Christoph Probst, The White Rose: Second Leaflet (1942)
404. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Reports on the Program to Combat Criminal Subversion (1943)
405. Secret Report of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, Reactions to the Weekly Newsreel for 27 February –5 March 1943 (1943)
406. Heinrich Himmler, Top Secret Memorandum on Combating Youth Gangs (1944)
407. Ludwig Beck, Notes on Hitler’s Declaration of War, November 1937 (1939)
408. Ulrich von Hassell, Diary Entry (1941)
409. Helmuth James von Moltke, Principles for the New Order (the Kreisau Circle) (1943)
410. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, (Prepared) Radio Address (1944)

Part 12. Defeat
31. Hitler’s Last Will and Testament

411. Adolf Hitler, Political Testament (1945)

Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

Reviews

"Essential. No library, whether public or academic, should be without this remarkable resource."
— CHOICE
“An absolutely magnificent achievement. After the mountain of books that have been published on Nazism, it can seem implausible that there is still more to learn. This brilliantly conceived collection of primary documents shows that there is indeed more – much more. No prior anthology or analysis does nearly so much to help readers enter the emotional landscape of the Third Reich, so as to understand better the at once savage and subtle ideological work that made the regime so terrifyingly successful.” —Dagmar Herzog, Graduate Center, City University of New York

“The indispensable collection of texts from the Third Reich in this extraordinary volume gives readers first-hand knowledge of the transformation of life in Nazi Germany into a racist state and culture. In this most important single volume for understanding German society under Hitler, Rabinbach and Gilman document the racial hatred and violence that transformed all aspects of life into a Nazi society: law, politics, culture, science, religion, education, sexuality, marriage, childrearing, sports, the arts, concentration camps, that finally led to World War II and the murder of the Jews.”—Professor Susannah Heschel, author of The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany

“No other topic provides a deeper insight into Nazism's mobilizing ambiguity then its attitude towards America as modernity's hothouse. The Reader contains an excellent collection for that query.”—Dan Diner, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem/ The Simon Dubnow Institute, Leipzig University