While the rest of the world languished in the aftermath of the financial collapse of 1929, peacetime Germany under Hitler experienced dramatic growth as an economic power. These years also saw the stellar rise of German science and technology, when Germans developed the jet engine and the rocket engine; by the end of WWII, an inventory of German “firsts” would include rocket propelled aircraft, ballistic missiles, jet fighters, helicopters, stealth submarines, as well as plans for building space shuttles and stealth bombers; they had also invented nerve gases, discovered nuclear energy, developed coal gasification, invented artificial rubber, the video telephone, the amateur video camera, infrared-based night vision devices, tape recording, TV, live TV, color TV, cable TV, microwave ovens, the anti-baby pill, discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer, built the first computer (Zuse, tube-based), and, last but not least, the electron microscope… A master race after all, perhaps? Hardly, but there is something special about this nation…
By John Wear ∙ January 19, 2020
Germany's Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) was an extraordinary woman of extraordinary accomplishment in many creative fields. This article focuses on Riefenstahl’s remarkable career and the impact her association with Adolf Hitler had on her career, reputation, and life.
By Kerry R. Bolton ∙ November 25, 2015
There’s nothing quite like the sensationalism of combining Nazism with black magic to ensure attention for an author. Since Hitler’s National Socialism has been regarded as “the ultimate in evil,” linking Hitlerism with black magic and Satanism is a logical development. It could be contended that the sensationalism of the dime novel, pop history, and…
By Kerry R. Bolton ∙ September 4, 2015
The party-line of the Left is that Fascism and Nazism were the last resort of Capitalism.[1] Indeed, the orthodox Marxist critique does not go beyond that. In recent decades there has been serious scholarship within orthodox academe to understand Fascism as a doctrine. Among these we can include Roger Griffin,[2] Roger Eatwell,[3] and particularly Zeev…
By Ezra Macvie ∙ October 1, 2011
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, by Adam Tooze, Viking Press, New York, 2006. 799pp. It is a well-worn truism that hunger is a weapon in war, and starvation may claim more victims in war than disease, cold, and the stupendous efforts of each side to kill members of…
By Daniel W. Michaels ∙ June 1, 2002
Copenhagen by Michael Frayn. New York: Anchor, 2000. 132 pages. Daniel W. Michaels is a Columbia University graduate (Phi Beta Kappa, 1954) and a Fulbright exchange student to Germany (1957). Now retired after 40 years of service with the U.S. Department of Defense, he writes from his home in Washington, DC. Peter Frayn’s play Copenhagen,…
By Donald E. Tarter ∙ January 1, 1992
Abstract The Second World War produced two great and memorable scientific and technological teams: the German Peenemünde rocket team under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun, and the American Los Alamos atomic bomb team under the direction of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. Taken together, the contributions of these teams created the post-war capability for…
By Antony Charles ∙ June 1, 1998
Antony Charles is the pen name of an educator and writer who holds both a master’s and a doctoral degree in history. He has taught history and is the author of several books. A resident of North Carolina, he currently works for a government agency. Not only during his lifetime, but also in the decades…
By Andrew Gray ∙ January 1, 1995
John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Savior – 1920-1937, by Robert Skidelsky. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 731 pages. $37.50. ISBN 0713-99110-0 (v. 2). Andrew Gray, a writer and translator, is former office director in the US Department of Commerce. He lives in Washington, DC. This is the second in the three-volume biography that promises…
By Andrew Gray ∙ July 1, 1994
Heisenberg”s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb, by Thomas Powers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Hardcover. 608 pages. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $27.50. ISBN 0-394-51411-4. Andrew Gray Andrew Gray, a writer and translator, is former office director in the US Department of Commerce. He lives in Washington, DC~ “In the years since Hiroshima,”…
By Andrew Gray ∙ January 1, 1994
The Devil’s Music Master: The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler, by Sam H. Shirakawa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hardcover. 506 pages. Photographs. Footnotes. Index. $35.00. ISBN: 0-19-506508-5. Andrew Gray, a writer and translator, is a former office director in the US Department of Commerce. He lives in Georgetown, Washington, DC. Conductors…
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