How did typhus come to be viewed as a "Jewish disease" and what was the connection between the anti-typhus measures during the First World War and the Nazi gas chambers and other genocidal medical practices in the Second World War? This powerful book provides valuable new insight into the history of German medicine in its reaction to the international fight against typhus and the perceived threat of epidemics from the East in the early part of this century. Paul Weindling examines how German bacteriology became increasingly racialized, and how it sought to eradicate the disease by the eradication of the perceived carriers. Delousing became a key feature of Nazi preventive medicine during the Holocaust, and gassing a favored means of eliminating typhus.
While the coerced human experiments are notorious among all the atrocities under National Socialism, they have been marginalised by mainstream historians. This book seeks to remedy the marginalisation, and to place the experiments in the context of the broad history of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Paul Weindling bases this study on the reconstruction of a victim group through individual victims' life histories, and by weaving the victims' experiences collectively together in terms of different groupings, especially gender, ethnicity and religion, age, and nationality. The timing of the experiments, where they occurred, how many victims there were, and who they were, is analysed, as are hitherto under-researched aspects such as Nazi anatomy and executions. The experiments are also linked, more broadly, to major elements in the dynamic and fluid Nazi power structure and the implementation of racial policies. The approach is informed by social history from below, exploring both the rationales and motives of perpetrators, but assessing these critically in the light of victim narratives.
John W. Thompson: Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust is the biography of a doctor whose revulsion at Nazi human experiments prompted him to seek a humane basis for physician-patient relations. As a military-scientific intelligence officer in 1945, Thompson was the first to name "medical war crimes" as a category for prosecution. His investigations laid the groundwork for the Nuremberg medical trials and for the novel idea of "informed consent." Yet, Thompson has remained a little-known figure, despite his many scientific, literary, and religious connections. This book traces Thompson's life from his birth in Mexico, through his studies at Stanford, Edinburgh, and Harvard, and his service in the Canadian Air Force. It reconstructs his therapeutic work with Unesco in Germany and his time as a Civil Rights activist in New York, where he developed his concept of holistic medicine. Thompson was close to authors like Auden and Spender and inspirational religious figures like Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche. He drew on ideas of Freud, Jung, and Buber. The philosophical and religious dimensions of Thompson's response to Holocaust victims' suffering are key to this study, which cites accounts of psychiatrists, students and patients who knew Thompson personally, war crimes prosecution records, and unpublished personal papers. Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust Research Professor at the Centre for Health, Medicine and Society: Past and Present, Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Traces the development of racial hygiene theory and eugenics research in Germany from the end of the 19th century through the Third Reich. Discusses particularly the work of Alfred Ploetz, a leading propagator of racial hygiene, and his anti-Jewish views. It was argued that German medical science had fallen prey to the "Jewish spirit" and was thus in need of reform. Argues that the biological, medical, and anthropological variants of racism were not only concerned with antisemitism but also influenced Nazi health and social policy. Eugenicists of Jewish origin became victims of the system they had helped to construct. Analyzes how racial hygiene theories were incorporated into Hitler's racial antisemitism and became the basis for the Nazi sterilization and euthanasia programs which, in turn, became the basis for the mass murder of the Jews.
At a time of increasing international concern with immigration this book is a timely reminder of the enormous contribution generations of academic refugees have made to learning the world over. The essays celebrate both the work of the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics and the achievements of the scholars themselves.
This volume provides an indispensable resource for anyone studying the Holocaust. The reference entries are enhanced by documents and other tools that make this volume a vital contribution to Holocaust research. This volume showcases a detailed look at the multifaceted attempts by Germany's Nazi regime, together with its collaborators, to annihilate the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. Several introductory essays, along with a rich chronology, reference entries, primary documents, images, and a bibliography provide crucial information that readers will need in order to try to understand the Holocaust while undertaking research on that horrible event. This text looks not only at the history of the Holocaust, but also at examples of resistance (through armed violence, attempts at rescue, or the very act of survival itself); literary and cultural expressions that have attempted to deal with the Holocaust; the social and psychological implications of the Holocaust for today; and how historians and others have attempted to do justice to the memory of those killed and seek insight into why the Holocaust happened in the first place.
The essays collected in The Politics of Heredity explore the political factors underlying shifts in thinking about the role of nature and nurture in shaping human behavior, and about the desirability and feasibility of controlling human reproduction. They ask why many assumptions that were simply taken for granted as late as the 1950s and '60s came to be considered fundamentally mistaken in the 1970s and '80s. They also suggest that some apparent shifts in thinking were not as deep as they may seem, and that changes in rhetoric may obscure the stability of core underlying beliefs.
The first general theory of the influence of norms--moral, legal and social--on genocide and mass atrocity. How can we explain--and prevent--such large-scale atrocities as the Holocaust? In Unconscionable Crimes, Paul Morrow presents the first general theory of the influence of norms--moral, legal and social--on genocide and mass atrocity. After offering a clear overview of norms and norm transformation, rooted in recent work in moral and political philosophy, Morrow examines numerous twentieth-century cases of mass atrocity, drawing on documentary and testimonial sources to illustrate the influence of norms before, during, and after such crimes.
Social Policy: Theory and practice is a fully revised, updated and extended edition of a bestselling social policy textbook, extensively reworked and adapted to meet the needs of its international readership. The book lays out the architecture of social policy as a field of study, binding the discussion of theory to the understanding of social policy in practice. It aims to provide students and practitioners with a sense of the scope, range and purpose of the subject while developing critical awareness of problems, issues and common fallacies. Written in an accessible and engaging style, it explains what social policy is and why it matters; looks at social policy in its social context; considers policy, the role of the state and the social services; explores issues in social administration and service delivery; and focuses on the methods and approaches of the subject. For practitioners, there are discussions of the techniques and approaches used to apply social policy in practice. For students, there are boxes raising issues and reviewing case studies, questions for discussion and a detailed glossary. The book’s distinctive, path–breaking approach makes it invaluable for students studying social policy at a range levels, professionals and practitioners in the field of social policy.
The existence of an Indo-European linguistic family, allowing for the fact that several languages widely dispersed across Eurasia share numerous traits, has been demonstrated for several centuries now. But the underlying factors for this shared heritage have been fiercely debated by linguists, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists. The leading theory, of which countless variations exist, argues that this similarity is best explained by the existence, at one given point in time and space, of a common language and corresponding population. This ancient, prehistoric, population would then have diffused across Eurasia, eventually leading to the variation observed in historical and modern times. The Indo-Europeans: Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West argues that despite its acceptance and use by most researchers from different disciplines, such a model is inherently flawed. This book describes how, beginning in the late eighteenth century, Europeans began a quest for a supposed original homeland, from which a small conquering people would one day spread out, bringing their language to Europe and parts of Asia (India, Iran, Afghanistan). This quest was often closely tied to ideological preoccupations and it was in its name that the Nazi leadership, claiming for the Germans the status of the purest Indo-Europeans (or Aryans), waged genocide. The last part of the book summarizes the current state of knowledge and current hypotheses in the fields of linguistics, archaeology, comparative mythology, and genetics. The culmination of three decades of research, this book offers a sweeping survey of the historiography of the Indo-European debate and poses a devastating challenge to the Indo-European origin story at its roots.
Paul Lerner traces the intertwined histories of trauma and male hysteria in German society and psychiatry and shows how these concepts were swept up into debates about Germany's national health, economic productivity, and military strength in the years surrounding World War I. From a growing concern with industrial accidents in the 1880s through the shell shock "epidemic" of the war, male hysteria seemed to bespeak the failings of German masculinity. In response, psychiatrists struggled to turn male-hysterical bodies into fit workers and loyal political subjects. Medical approaches to trauma valorized work and productivity as standards of male health, and psychiatric treatment--whether through hypnosis, electric current, or suggestion--concentrated on turning debilitated soldiers into symptom-free workers. These concerns endured through the Weimar period, as "nervous veterans" competed for disability compensation amid the republic's political crises and economic upheavals. Hysterical Men shows how wartime psychiatry furthered the process of medical rationalization. Lerner views this not as a precursor to the brutalities of Nazi-era psychiatry, but rather as characteristic of a more general medicalized modernity. The author asserts, however, that psychiatry's continual skepticism toward trauma resonated powerfully with the radical right's celebration of war and violence and its supposedly salutary effects on men and nations.
This chronologically-arranged collection of articles demonstrates the complex and multifaceted nature of the Holocaust. From January 1933 and the ascent to office of Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany, through to October 1945 and the opening of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, The Holocaust in 100 Histories takes an episodic approach to consider some of the people, ideas, groups, and events that characterized the genocide which unfolded against the backdrop of the Nazi period and the Second World War. Paul R. Bartrop shines a light on Nazi perpetrators, Righteous Gentiles who helped save Jews during the Holocaust, Jewish resisters, as well as movements, events, and developments during the Third Reich and the war years. The 100 entries included in the book provide both a series of snapshots and a pathway to understanding how the Holocaust was manifested-or defied -during the years between 1933 and 1945. Its structure enables readers to access the Holocaust in or out of sequence, reading individual entries as appropriate, while the book also contains key primary source documents, further reading suggestions and discussion questions designed to prompt debate and further study.
We all know that Darwin's theory played a vital role in genetic engineering. This book explores the social origins, showing people how metaphorically sat upon "coat-tails" to further their own campaigns, who in the end try to justify everything starting from capilatism right down to the World War II. This book provides essays that will enhance our knowledge about the way we look at genetic engineering.
An exciting reinterpretation of Social Darwinism, questioning conventional assumptions and proffering an alternative reading of a discourse of 'peace biology'.
What does collectivism mean in social policy? What does thinking collectively imply for policy? In this book, well-respected author Paul Spicker lends a complementary voice to his Reclaiming individualism, reviewing collectivism as a dimension of political discourse. Breaking down his analysis to examine collectivism through substantive, moral and methodological lenses, he reviews a series of arguments for co-operative effort, solidarity and collective responsibility. Taking a dispassionate and methodical approach, the author explores what collectivism means in social policy and what value it offers to the field.
The follow up to the bestseller Learning To Succeed, this book examines one of the key themes of its predecessor, how schools in disadvantaged areas can be effective. An essential purchase for anyone interested in education.
The Holocaust: The Basics is a concise introduction to the study of this seismic event in mid twentieth-century human history. The book takes an original approach as both a narrative and thematic introduction to the topic, and provides a core foundation for readers embarking upon their own study. It examines a range of perspectives and subjects surrounding the Holocaust, including: the perpetrators of the Holocaust the victims resistance to the Holocaust liberation legacies and survivors' memories of the Holocaust. Suppported by a chronology, glossary, questions for discussion, and boxed case studies that focus the reader's thoughts and develop their appreciation of the subjects considered more broadly, The Holocaust: The Basics is the ideal introduction to this controversial and widely debated topic for both students and the more general reader.
In this masterly twentieth-century history, Paul Ginsborg places the family at center stage, a novel perspective from which to examine key moments of revolution and dictatorship. His groundbreaking book spans 1900 to 1950 and encompasses five nation states in the throes of dramatic transition: Russia in revolutionary passage from Empire to Soviet Union; Turkey in transition from Ottoman Empire to modern Republic; Italy, from liberalism to fascism; Spain during the Second Republic and Civil War; and Germany from the failure of the Weimar Republic to the National Socialist state. Ginsborg explores the effects of political upheaval and radical social policies on family life and, in turn, the impact of families on revolutionary change itself. Families, he shows, do not simply experience the effects of political power, but are themselves actors in the historical process. The author brings human and personal elements to the fore with biographical details and individual family histories, along with a fascinating selection of family photographs and portraits. From WWI—an indelible backdrop and imprinting force on the first half of the twentieth century—to post-war dictatorial power and family engineering initiatives, to the conclusion of WWII, this book shines new light on the profound relations among revolution, dictatorship, and family.
This study traces how the environmental effects of industrialization reverberated through the cinema of Germany’s Weimar Republic. In the early twentieth century, hygiene encompassed the myriad attempts to create healthy spaces for life and work amid the pollution, disease, accidents, and noise of industrial modernity. Examining classic films—including The Last Laugh, Faust, and Kuhle Wampe—as well as documentaries, cinema architecture, and studio practices, Paul Dobryden demonstrates how cinema envisioned and interrogated hygienic concerns about environmental disorder. Framing hygiene within the project of national reconstruction after World War I, The Hygienic Apparatus explores cinema’s material contexts alongside its representations of housework, urban space, traffic, pollution, disability, aging, and labor. Reformers worried about the health risks associated with moviegoing but later used film to popularize hygienic ideas, encouraging viewers to see the world and themselves in relation to public health objectives. Modernist architecture and design fashioned theaters into regenerative environments for fatigued spectators. Filmmakers like F. W. Murnau and Slatan Dudow, meanwhile, explored the aesthetic and political possibilities of dirt, contagion, intoxication, and disorder. Dobryden recovers a set of ecological and biopolitical concerns to show how the problem of environmental disorder fundamentally shaped cinema’s relationship to modernity. As accessible as it is persuasive, the book adds to a growing body of scholarship on biopolitics within German studies and reveals fresh ways of understanding the apparatus of Weimar cinema.
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