Account Rendered A Dossier On My Former Self

Account Rendered was first published in Germany in 1963 as Fazit: Kein Rechtfertigungsversuch or Account Rendered: No attempt at justification. Maschmann wrote to Hannah Arendt that her intent in writing this memoir was to help her former Nazi colleagues think about their actions, and to help others “better understand” why people like her had been drawn to Hitler. Written as a letter to an unnamed Jewish girl, this memoir details the trajectory of a socially-conscious, well-educated, middle-class girl as she joins the Hitler Youth, supervises the eviction of Polish farmers from their land and works in the high echelons of Nazi press and propaganda. Maschmann was arrested in 1945, at the age of 33, completed mandatory de-Nazification and became a freelance journalist. This eBook edition includes a new introduction explaining how the Publishers identified Maschmann’s high school Jewish friend, Marianne Schweitzer Burkenroad, born in 1918 and now living in California. In an afterword, she recounts for the first time her friendship with Maschmann and her reactions to Account Rendered. Listen here to a conversation about this eBook on WAMC. “[Account Rendered is an] important document of its time [...] I have the impression that you are totally sincere, otherwise I wouldn’t have written back to you.” — letterfrom Hannah Arendt to Melita Maschmann “[A] soul-searching record in which [Melita Maschmann] attempts to state and understand her guilt as a Nazi... her account here is intelligent and convincing.” —Kirkus Reviews “There weren’t a lot of books by former Nazis in the Sixties. I found in [Account Rendered] someone who had been overtaken by history, was struggling to make sense of what no longer made sense, and to understand why it had once done so. In other books, the Jews were an abstraction. For Maschmann, the Jews were neighbors and friends, which complicated the process of dehumanization that she participated in. The memoir seemed believable and honest in ways that other testimonies from the defeated did not.” — Arthur Samuelson, former Editor-in-Chief, Schocken Books “Melita Maschmann’s candid [book], sub-titled ‘No attempt at justification,’ is a valuable study of the political seduction of youthful zeal” — Der Spiegel

"Account Rendered" was first published in Germany in 1963 as "Fazit: Kein Rechtfertigungsversuch" or "Account Rendered: No attempt at justification." Maschmann wrote to Hannah Arendt that her intent in writing this memoir was to help her former Nazi colleagues think about their actions, and to help others "better understand" why people like her had been drawn to Hitler. Written as a letter to an unnamed Jewish girl, this memoir details the trajectory of a socially-conscious, well-educated, middle-class girl as she joins the Hitler Youth, supervises the eviction of Polish farmers from their land and works in the high echelons of Nazi press and propaganda. Arrested in 1945 at the age of 33, Maschmann completed mandatory de-Nazification and became a freelance journalist. This edition includes a new introduction explaining how the Publishers identified Maschmann's high school Jewish friend, Marianne Schweitzer Burkenroad, born in 1918 and located her in California. In an afterword, she recounts for the first time her friendship with Maschmann and her reactions to Account Rendered. "["Account Rendered" is an] important document of its time [...] I have the impression that you are totally sincere, otherwise I wouldn't have written back to you." - letter from Hannah Arendt to Melita Maschmann "[A] soul-searching record in which [Melita Maschmann] attempts to state and understand her guilt as a Nazi... her account here is intelligent and convincing." - Kirkus Reviews "There weren't a lot of books by former Nazis in the Sixties. I found in ["Account Rendered"] someone who had been overtaken by history, was struggling to make sense of what no longer made sense, and to understand why it had once done so. In other books, the Jews were an abstraction. For Maschmann, the Jews were neighbors and friends, which complicated the process of dehumanization that she participated in. The memoir seemed believable and honest in ways that other testimonies from the defeated did not." - Arthur Samuelson, former Editor-in-Chief, Schocken Books "Melita Maschmann's candid [book], sub-titled 'No attempt at justification, ' is a valuable study of the political seduction of youthful zeal" - Der Spiegel

Hvad fik det tyske folk til at støtte eller deltage i folkedrabet på jøderne i Hitlers holocaust. Nazisterne brugte ifølge Kühne almene menneskelige behov som fællesskab, samhørighed og solidaritet til at forme en nation og misbrugte de samme værdier til at ægge til deltagelsen i folkedrabet

“Reads like a thriller . . . As timely as it is chilling and engrossing.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz The Axmann Conspiracy is the previously untold true story of the Nazi threat that continued in the wake of World War II, the espionage that defeated it, and two fascinating men whose lives forever altered the course of post-war Germany. A trusted member of Hitler's inner circle, Artur Axmann, the head of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend), witnessed the Führer commit suicide in his Berlin bunker—but he would not let the Reich die with its leader. He led a group of Nazis, including Martin Bormann, intent on escaping the encircling Red Army. Evading capture during the Battle of Berlin, and with access to remnants of the regime’s wealth, Axmann had enough adult followers to reestablish the Nazi party in the very heart of Allied-occupied Germany. U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps Officer Jack Hunter was the perfect undercover operative. Fluent in German, he posed as a black marketeer to root out Nazi sympathizers and saboteurs after the war, and along with other CIC agents uncovered the extent of Axmann’s conspiracy. It threatened to bring the Nazis back into power—and the task fell to Hunter and his team to stop it.

This book offers a compelling new analysis of Nazi educational policy, arguing that in order to understand National Socialism, we need to understand its policies on youth.

In this book, James Sias investigates the psychologies of those who have acted in ways widely regarded as evil, and uses this psychological data as a basis for developing his own theory of evil. Sometimes, he claims, an action is so horrific and despicable that a term like “wrong” seems to fall short of capturing its moral status. Likewise, occasionally a person’s character is corrupt in such a way that ordinary trait terms like “selfish” or “insensitive,” or more general labels like “bad” or “immoral,” seem inadequate. In such cases, we often resort to calling the person or action “evil.” But what does this term mean? What is it that makes a person or action morally evil? Taking a cue from Hannah Arendt, Sias argues that this sort of evil is essentially a matter of regarding others as “morally superfluous.” In other words, evil is a matter of utter moral disregard. In the course of developing and defending this view, Sias also describes and critiques a number of prominent theories of evil proposed by philosophers in recent years.

A single word - "Auschwitz" - is sometimes used to encapsulate the totality of persecution and suffering involved in what we call the Holocaust. Yet focusing on a single concentration camp, however horrific the scale of crimes committed there, leaves an incomplete story, truncates a complexhistory and obscures the continuing legacies of Nazi crimes.Mary Fulbrook's encompassing book explores the lives of individuals across a full spectrum of suffering and guilt, each one capturing one small part of the greater story. Using "reckoning" in the widest possible sense to evoke how the consequences of violence have expanded almost infinitely throughtime, from early brutality through programs to euthanize the sick and infirm in the 1930s to the full functioning of the death camps in the early 1940s, and across the post-war decades of selective confrontation with perpetrators and ever-expanding commemoration of victims, Fulbrook exposes thedisjuncture between official myths about "dealing with the past" and the extent to which the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators evaded responsibility. In the successor states to the Third Reich - East Germany, West Germany, and Austria - prosecution varied widely. Communist East Germany pursued Nazicriminals and handed down severe sentences; West Germany, caught between facing up to the past and seeking to draw a line under it, tended toward selective justice and reintegration of former Nazis; and Austria made nearly no reckoning at all until the mid-1980s, when news broke about Austrianpresidential candidate Kurt Waldheim's past. The continuing battle with the legacies of Nazism in the private sphere was often at odds with public remembrance and memorials.Following the various phases of trials and testimonies, from those immediately after the war to those that stretched into the decades following, Reckonings illuminates shifting public attitudes toward both perpetrators and survivors, and recalibrates anew the scales of justice.