Volume 59, Issue 2 -

Vorspann „Das Amt und die Vergangenheit“ – ein Buch schlägt hohe Wellen. Kann man im Auswärtigen Amt des NS-Staats eine homogene „verbrecherische Organisation“ sehen? Waren die Diplomaten wirklich Hauptakteure der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltpolitik, besonders des Holocaust? Über diese Fragen wurde bisher aufgeregt und polemisch gestritten. Es ist an der Zeit, die Ergebnisse der Historikerkommission einer eingehenden wissenschaftlichen Prüfung zu unterziehen. Johannes Hürter, Historiker am Institut für Zeitgeschichte, der mit einer kritischen Studie über Hitlers Heerführer hervorgetreten ist, versucht die Debatte auf eine sachliche Ebene zu bringen und weitere Diskussionen anzustoßen. Abstract The Commission of Historians Dealing with the German Foreign Office´s Nazi Past has caused quite a stir with the book Das Amt und die Vergangenheit [The Foreign Office and the Past]. The substantive gain is however limited, for there has long been agreement among researchers that the Foreign Office was not alien to the Nazi system of government, instead contributing to the implementation of a racist policy of violence just like other state institutions. The supposed spectacular dimension of the book stems from the fact that it oversimplifies and exaggerates the role of the Foreign Service during the Nazi dictatorship, especially with regard to the persecution and extermination of the European Jews. The reduction in complexity mostly concerns three areas: 1. The diplomatic elite is described as an overwhelmingly homogeneous block of perpetrators without taking its transformation processes and inner differentiations into account (especially those after 1938). 2. The Foreign Office is ascribed with a major, sometimes even leading role in the Holocaust without consideration for the complex interrelationships and processes of the Final Solution as well as the responsibility of the main perpetrators. 3. Nazi persecution policy and the share of the Foreign Office in it is mostly limited to the Holocaust, while other mass crimes are neglected and actual foreign policy and its negative consequences remain excluded. On the whole the blanket and generalising interpretations of the commission report represent a clear setback for the efforts of research to accomplish a differentiated view of the National Socialist dictatorship and policy of violence. The fact that such simplifying accounts of Nazi history are so successful should not only worry researchers of contemporary history.

Vorspann Der Juliputsch von 1934 ist ein zentrales Ereignis der österreichischen und auch der deutschen Geschichte. Entsprechend gut ist es dokumentiert und erforscht. Eine der wichtigsten Fragen ist aber bis heute ungeklärt: Wie kam es überhaupt zu diesem frühen Versuch einer nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung in Österreich? Und welche Rolle hat Hitler bei alldem gespielt? Mittlerweile sind so viele Quellen bekannt und auch systematisch ediert, dass hier erstmals überzeugend nachgewiesen werden kann, dass Hitler von Anfang an alle Fäden in der Hand hielt und dass auch in diesem Fall mitnichten von einem „schwachen Diktator“ die Rede sein kann. Abstract The coup attempt of the Austrian National Socialists on 25 July 1934 has so far mostly received attention in Austrian contemporary historiography, but not so much in German and international research. One of the main reasons is that the role of Hitler could not be clarified. The respective passages in the Goebbels diaries (published in 2005) together with reassessed previously known sources now allow for a new perspective on the background of the July Putsch. It is now apparent that it is highly likely that Hitler gave the order personally. He decided to strike at the Dollfuß regime at the same time that he decided to strike at the supreme SA leadership. On the domestic front Hitler wanted to open the path to taking over the office of Reich President after Hindenburg´s foreseeable demise by using the Röhm Putsch; on the foreign policy front he hoped to disarm the Austrian Question by way of a Nazi seizure of power, thus immediately drawing Italy to his side and avoiding the acute danger of France´s encirclement offensive.

Vorspann Die „Achse“ erschöpfte sich nicht im Polittourismus der Staats- und Parteiführungen. Sie war ein hybrides Großexperiment der Völkerverständigung über Expansion und Krieg und erfasste schließlich alle Ebenen von Staat und Gesellschaft in Italien und im Deutschen Reich. Die Kooperation der Polizei war besonders eng – und folgenreich für Regimegegner und rassisch Verfolgte. Der Italienexperte Patrick Bernhard analysiert diese Transfer- und Radikalisierungsprozesse auf der Basis neuer Quellen und knüpft weitreichende Thesen an seine Befunde: Die Geschichte des Dritten Reiches müsse stärker kontextualisiert und mit der Geschichte des Faschismus verzahnt werden, weil sich nur so der historische Ort des NS-Regimes in der Krisen- und Kriegsgeschichte der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts exakt bestimmen lasse. Abstract Repression and policing were among the main fields of Axis cooperation between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Based on the police treaty of 1936, this collaboration not only encompassed a large-scale exchange of information on political and racial adversaries and their persecution even far beyond the national confines of the two dictatorships. It also led to learning and radicalisation processes on both sides of the Alps in terms of political violence, militarization, and controlling the imperial spaces the two dictatorships conquered in Europe and Africa. This holds true especially for the German SA, the SS, and the Fascist militia, whose respective developments were in many ways intertwined with one another. Such convergences between both dictatorships demonstrate that the Nazi regime was not as independent, different or even unique as historiography has claimed so far. Rather in future the history of the Third Reich has to be seen and analysed to a far greater extent in terms of Italian Fascism. Only in this way will its true significance for the European history in the first half of the 20th century be properly established.

Vorspann Die SS bezeichnete sich selbst als „Elitetruppe“ des „Führers“ und als „verschworene Gemeinschaft“ ideologiefester Nationalsozialisten. Aber stimmten Anspruch und Realität tatsächlich überein? Gelang es Himmler wirklich, eine Auslese zu treffen und die gut 200.000 Freiwilligen aus allen Schichten auf seine „rassische“ Linie zu bringen? Bastian Hein vom Institut für Zeitgeschichte geht diesen Fragen nach und zeigt, wie deutsche Männer zu Mitgliedern des „Schwarzen Ordens“ wurden – und wie dieser Initiationsprozess mit dem „verbrecherischen“ Charakter der Schutzstaffel zusammenhängt. Abstract The Nazi Party´s Schutzstaffel called itself the elite forces of the Führer and considered themselves a sworn community of the most fanatic National Socialists. But it was also a mass organization to which more than 200.000 volunteers from all classes of German society belonged even prior to the Second World War. More than 90 percent of them were members of the so-called General SS, which in contrast to the SS security service (SD), the concentration camp guards and the combat units of the Waffen-SS has attracted only little scholarly attention. How did its elite pretensions and its social heterogeneity coexist? Bastian Hein offers a detailed description of the Black Corps′ application, selection and introduction process. He investigates to what extent the SS leadership was successful in enforcing its own racist criteria during this process and analyses the connection between these complex entry procedures and the fact that, in many of the Nazi′s mass crimes, Hitler′s willing executioners came from the ranks of the SS.

Vorspann Alle wussten es – das Politbüro ebenso wie die Planungschefs, die Staatssicherheit und der mächtige Generalsekretär Erich Honecker: Die DDR hing schon in den siebziger Jahren am westlichen Tropf und fand keinen Ausweg aus der Schuldenfalle. Vorschläge, etwas daran zu ändern, gab es genug, wie Andreas Malycha vom Institut für Zeitgeschichte zeigen kann. Sie scheiterten aber am Veto von Honecker, der nicht bereit war, sein kostspieliges politisches Credo, die Einheit von Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik, aufzugeben. War Honecker blind geworden oder wusste er genau, dass es eine sparsame Alternative nicht mehr gab? Abstract The document provides testimony of a central conflict within the SED politburo during the 1970s. During a conversation between the chief planner of the GDR, Gerhard Schürer, and a Stasi officer in April 1978 the key problems of the economy of the GDR are discussed openly. So far such an internal perspective of the inner controversies regarding the macroeconomic and socio-political conditions of the GDR has only rarely been possible. The repercussions of the economic policy changes of the VIII. party conference become apparent - as well as the discussions which subsequently arose in the politburo and among leading economic experts. Schürer was one of the politburo members advocating a revocation or correction of the expansive social policies and a curbing of the private consumption of the population in favour of productive investments. Despite the observable limits of economic performance and the deficiencies of the command economy, Honecker in contrast clung to his strategy of stabilising the rule of the SED by a social policy not really founded in economic realities. Obviously Schürer spoke with a leading Stasi officer in order to induce Honecker to undertake a change of course in economic policy through the Minister for State Security, Erich Mielke.