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The largest enterprise in the capitalist world between 1920 and 1945, the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German National Railway) was at the center of events in a period of great turmoil in Germany. In this, the second volume of his comprehensive history of the Reichsbahn, Alfred Mierzejewski offers the first complete account of the national railway under Hitler's regime. Mierzejewski uses sources that include Nazi Party membership records and Reichsbahn internal memoranda to explore the railway's operations, finances, and political and social roles from 1933 to 1945. He examines the Reichsbahn's role in German rearmament, its own lack of preparations for war, and its participation in Germany's military operations. He shows that despite successfully resisting Nazi efforts to politicize its internal functions, the Reichsbahn cooperated with the government's anti-Semitic policies. Indeed, the railway played a crucial role in the Holocaust by supporting the construction and operation of the Nazi death camps and by transporting Jews and other victims to them.
The largest enterprise in the capitalist world between 1920 and 1932, the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German National Railway) was at the center of events in a period of great turmoil in Germany. In the first detailed history of this important organization, Alfred Mierzejewski presents a sophisticated analysis of the Reichsbahn's operations, finances, and political and social roles. In addition, he uses the story of the Reichsbahn to gain new perspectives on modern German economic and political history. Mierzejewski describes and analyzes the beginnings of the national railway in Germany and the problems that it faced. He examines the Reichsbahn's noncapitalistic, "commonweal" approach to economic management and shows how the railway was used to hold Germany together, especially in the face of Bavarian particularism. Mierzejewski's account also provides unparalleled insight into Germany's reparations policies, demonstrating that Germany was fully capable of paying the Dawes annuities and that the government's claims that reparations paid by the Reichsbahn hurt both the railway and Germany were groundless. A second volume will cover the period from 1933 to 1945.
"The largest enterprise in the capitalist world between 1920 and 1945, the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German National Railway), was at the centre of events in a period of great turmoil in Germany. Alfred Mierzejewski reveals the history of the railway's operations throughout Hitler's regime, showing that, despite resisting efforts to politicise its internal functions, it co-operated with the government's anti-Semitic policies. The railway played a crucial role in the Holocaust: not only did it support the construction and operation of the Nazi death camps, but it transported 3 million Jews to them to be destroyed."--Back cover.
"Crimes against humanity," especially genocide, have been excluded from amnesty since the Nuremburg Trials. On a cultural level, oblivion by decree becomes an obligation to remember. This reversal is well-intended, but it opens up critical questions: Can memory be permanently established? Is it possible to maintain it in a monument? The intervention at Track 17 at Berlin-Grunewald station, a work by architects Nikolaus Hirsch, Wolfgang Lorch, and Andrea Wandel on the site of the deportations from Berlin between 1941 and 1945, is an attempt that aims at a structural connection between memory and oblivion. Referring to Alois Riegl's (the founder of the "Modern Cult of Monuments") differentiati...
The Second World War made the greatest demands on the German Reichsbahn (national railway). Year after year, great quantities of war materiel were transported and almost always delivered. At times the trains rolled over nearly the entire continent of Europe. This heavily illustrated book documents the everyday life along the German rail lines on many war fronts. This is the first book of its kind in English for both the railroad fan as well as the military historian.
In this book Alfred Mierzejewski describes how the German economy collapsed under Allied bombing in the last year of World War II. He presents a broad-based, original study of German wartime industry and transportation, and of Allied air force planning and intelligence, including the first complete analysis in English of the German National Railway. The German industrial economy was extraordinarily dependent on the timely, adequate distribution of coal by railroad and inland waterway. The German National Railway in particular was the pivot of the finely balanced armaments production and distribution system created by Albert Speer. But Allied strategists did not immediately recognize this. On...
A fascinating collection of photographs of East German steam locomotives behind the iron curtain in the 1970s.
Renowned Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg considered the railroads that delivered European Jews into forced labor and systematic slaughter to be not only essential components of the “machinery of destruction” but also emblematic of the amoral bureaucracy that helped to implement the Jewish genocide. German Railroads, Jewish Souls centers around Hilberg’s seminal essay of the same name, a landmark study of Nazi railways long unavailable in English. Supplemented with additional writings from Hilberg, primary source materials, and a comprehensive historical survey from leading scholars Christopher Browning and Peter Hayes, this is a rich and accessible introduction to a topic in Holocaust history that remains understudied even today.
Most Valuable Asset of the Reich: A History of the German National Railway Volume 1, 1920-1932