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This article examines the influence of Friedrich Ratzel’s idea of the struggle for space and its impact on cultural and national development depicted in German geography and history textbooks from the Wilhelmine era to the Third Reich. Ratzel’s concept of bio-geography conceived the state as a living organism that is the product of humanity’s interaction with the land and also facilitates humanity’s spread across the earth. German textbooks promoted a similar concept of the state in their portrayal of geography and history, the implications of which were appropriated by the National Socialists to support their geopolitical goals.
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The need for constructing an environmental ethics that keeps sustainability in mind is the result of a collision of the realization that the natural environment is neither limitless nor impervious to actions with a view of nature that has been fundamentally instrumentalist and anthropocentric. This paper will borrow from architectural theory in an effort to do two things: First, it will point to some of the limitations of an anthropocentric view of nature and how it impacts efforts to influence environmental policy; second, it will suggest that ideas from Aristotle and Actor Network Theory can help to provide a paradigm within which we can think about nature in a way that offers an alternative framing of questions about the environment.
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Propaganda in the first half of the 20th century is usually associated with the atrocity stories from World War I and the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazi regime and World War II. This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of propaganda and propaganda theory before turning its attention to a theory of propaganda in civil war. It argues that what makes propaganda in a civil war unique is that it is a combination of both political and war propaganda. Current research on propaganda theory emphasizes that propaganda is in service of an ideology and focuses on propaganda as disseminating information that tries to avoid reason and veracity. The chapter argues that propagandists in a civil war setting are presenting the ‘truth’ as they understand it. Informed by Carl Schmitt’s “friend/enemy” distinction in his Concept of the Political, the author argues that each side argued and was convinced that they represented the values and interests of the nation and its people, and that because the stakes of the conflict were so high that all actions could be justified.
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Rolf Brandt (1886-1953) was a German journalist, author, and political commentator. His first work was as a war reporter on the Eastern Front during the opening months of the Great War (World War I). His reports appeared in several important German newspapers (Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and Frankfurter Zeitung) and were compiled and published in 1915 as Fünf Monate an der Ostfront: Kriegsberichte (Five months on the Eastern Front: War reports). Brandt's reports were more than just army-approved press releases. He wrote in a way that constructed a bridge between the home front and the front lines. In the process he employed techniques now associated with literary journalism. With a clear point of view, he told his story through a sequence of scenes, instead of a simple historical narrative, and included genuine dialogue and status details. While scholars of German literary journalism point to Egon Erwin Kisch as the originator of German literary journalism, this study suggests Brandt should be considered an early practitioner of literary journalism in the German language. More interestingly, Brandt's particular brand of literary journalism had an unmistakably conservative nationalist perspective, thus suggesting that it is possible to have a conservative form of literary journalism. © 2019 Literary Journalism Studies. All Rights Reserved.
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Contesting the Origins of the First World War challenges the Anglophone emphasis on Germany as bearing the primary responsibility in causing the conflict and instead builds upon new perspectives to reconsider the roles of the other Great Powers. Using the work of Terrance Zuber, Sean McMeekin, and Stefan Schmidt as building blocks, this book reassesses the origins of the First World War and offers an explanation as to why this reassessment did not come about earlier. Troy R.E. Paddock argues that historians need to redraw the historiographical map that has charted the origins of the war. His analysis creates a more balanced view of German actions by also noting the actions and inaction of other nations. Recent works about the roles of the five Great Powers involved in the events leading up to the war are considered, and Paddock concludes that Germany does not bear the primary responsibility. This book provides a unique historiographical analysis of key texts published on the origins of the First World War, and its narrative encourages students to engage with and challenge historical perspectives.
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