Document analysis: Extract from Bernt Engelmann’s autobiographical memoir, In Hitler’s Germany, (1986), pp.1-4 While political violence during the reign of the Third Reich is copiously documented, the intimidation and oppression in the lead up to Nazi capture of power is less well known. Bernt Engelmann’s autobiographical memoir In Hitler’s Germany, written half a century after…
Tag: Third Reich
Cultural Theory and Images
The three images perused for this exercise do provide the viewer with broad interpretative scope. When looked at without cognizant of the title or the context in which they were made, the range of possible meanings contained in them grows. Take, say, the imaged titled Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Spread Fingers, 1911. Self portraits are…
Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl – A Happy Ending
The Holocaust is undoubtedly the most tragic event in the history of modern human civilization. One has to go back many centuries in time to point a catastrophe of such magnitude – for example, the Black Death that afflicted most of Europe and wiped out nearly a third of its then population. The difference of…
Legitimacy and the Triumph of the Will
In global geo-politics, the term legitimacy comes up for discussion quite often. This is especially true with regards to a government’s military actions in its foreign affairs. But a distinction will have to be made between ‘legitimacy’ and ‘legality’. ‘Legitimacy’ is seen as a matter of keeping to the spirit of the law, where as…
Compare and Contrast World War 1 and World War 2
Both the first as well as the second world wars are landmark events in modern world history. Both wars are marked by involvement of the prevailing world powers of the day. In the case of World War 1 (WW1), the principal actors were the European powers of Britain, Germany, Austria, etc with nominal participation from…