German Politics and Society

The fact that the Nazis looked to the United States for inspiration has led some to claim that the US served Nazi thinkers as a “model.” This article argues instead that Nazis looked to America as a countermodel for how not to deal with the “Jewish question.” Through an intertextual analysis of visual and textual primary sources, this article demonstrates how the Nazis used America as a projection screen for developing their vision of empire and “redemptive antisemitism.” The Nazis admired the United States’ racist laws and technological development but despised Americans for ignoring the “Jewish threat.” By showing how the Nazis used the United States as a mirror for developing Nazi ideology, this article reintroduces the category of antisemitic ideology to the Historikerstreit 2.0 debate.

As the leading public intellectual of postwar West Germany, Jürgen Habermas was a prominent opponent of the unification of the two Germanies after 1989. While his fears regarding the identity, collective memory, Western orientation, and economic power of a united Germany are important, in contrast to the existing literature, I argue that Habermas's objections are primarily procedural, focusing on the normative deficiencies in Chancellor Helmut Kohl's executive-led, administrative approach to reunification. In Habermas's eyes this procedure short-circuited the democratic processes of public opinion- and will-formation necessary to fulfill the normative presuppositions of popular self-determination. Methodologically, I make this point by reading Habermas's “short political writings” alongside his theoretical writings, especially his early postwar readings of the German constitutional theory. In addition to reframing the debate over his opposition to unification, I also oppose realist critiques of his work by showing that Habermas's theoretical writings have direct implications for contemporary politics.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led the German government to introduce containment measures to suppress transmission. This article tests if compliance with those measures was influenced by trust in the governing, health, and scientific institutions that were managing the crisis. The research draws on a survey collected amid the early days of the pandemic. Principal components analysis uncover three trust dimensions: trust in scientific, political, and regional institutions. Multivariate generalized linear models then find that individuals trusting of scientific and political institutions were more likely to reduce social contacts, avoid crowded places, and maintain social distance. These effects endure net of political partisanship and exposure to social media. By demonstrating that trust influenced compliance, I reframe a public health emergency as one set within a relationship between citizens and the state and advocate for policy learning structures in which the role of trust is more meaningfully incorporated.

This article explores the association of German attitudes toward social welfare and immigration, and how regional and political factors affect that relationship. The data was retrieved from Round 8 of the European Social Survey, which includes 2,852 German participants. Quantitative methodology was used to study the hypotheses. Analyses demonstrate that attitudes on immigration and social welfare are associated. However, the regional factor of Eastern and Western Germany and political self-placement shape the population concerning the relationship between social welfare and immigration. The immigration issue diverges the views of both the leftists and Western Germans to social welfare more than the rightists and Eastern Germans. In this respect, the immigration issue shapes the view of the German welfare state.

Zef Segal, The Political Fragmentation of Germany: Formation of German States by Infrastructures, Maps, and Movement, 1815–1866 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

Christian Karner, Nationalism Revisited: Austrian Social Closure from Romanticism to the Digital Age (New York: Berghahn Books, 2020)

Jennifer Allen, Sustainable Utopias: The Art and Politics of Hope in Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022)

Kevin T. Hall, Terror Flyers: The Lynching of American Airmen in Nazi Germany (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021)

Michael Hughes, The Anarchy of Nazi Memorabilia: From Things of Tyranny to Troubled Treasure (London: Routledge, 2022)

Mark Edward Ruff and Thomas Großbölting, eds., Germany and the Confessional Divide: Religious Tensions and Political Culture, 1871–1989 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2022)

Christoph Lorke, Liebe verwalten: “Ausländerehen” in Deutschland 1870–1945 [Managing love: “Foreign marriages” in Germany 1870–1945] (Paderborn: Brill | Schöningh, 2020)

John P. Miglietta, Hitler's Allies: The Ramifications of Nazi Alliance Politics in World War II (London: Routledge, 2022)

The world of German, Austrian, and Jewish studies, but also that of comparative politics and British affairs, lost one of its great ones! Peter Pulzer lived the first nine years of his life in a turbulent Vienna witnessing a brief civil war between the Socialists and their clerical-conservative, Austro-fascist, and right-radical opponents, the triumph of Austro-Fascism, and its demise at the hand of the Nazis whose Anschluss in 1938 annulled Austria's existence as an independent country. Peter grew up in a deeply assimilated, middle-class Jewish family that was close to the Social Democratic Party and had the young boy classified as konfessionslos in his elementary school devoid of Jewish kids where Peter was categorized alongside a few Protestant boys in a predominantly Catholic environment. Peter's classification did not prevent him from being forced to attend a Jews-only school that was far away from his home. He witnessed how his father and grandfather were violently removed from their apartment and how his father joined the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde—the official organization of the Jewish community—much to his chagrin, since Peter's father deemed himself completely a-religious as well as ethnically apart from Jews. It was not until Yom Kipur of 1938, when Peter was nine years old, that a family friend took Peter to a synagogue where Peter came to see the “Torah.” This friend also taught Peter Hebrew, which his parents accepted as constituting an asset for a possible emigration to Palestine. Other hopeful possibilities were the Anglophone world of Britain, Canada, the United States, and Australia, with Britain emerging as the ultimate option by dint of a retired Anglican clergyman from Hertfordshire sponsoring the family! Peter maintained close contact with this man's family throughout his life.