Is a new approach on research on Nazi perpetrators ( Neue Täterforschung ) warranted, to allow a deeper insight into their minds ? This article argues no, because the availability of sources, not the historian’s intentions, defines what can be done. In most cases, particularly with low - level perpetrators, the source material is very limited, often consisting only of tombstone - data, which offer little insight in the mentality of perpetrators. However, problems in analysis exist, even when a great amount of person - related information is available. A good example is the case of an important SS - perpetrator, Erich von dem Bach - Zelewski. His rendering of facts, as well as his interpretations of them, vary greatly according to time and personal circumstances. This case study shows that a comparative evaluation of documents is indispensable, and caution against an unreflected use of the attribute “authentic”, too.

The economist and SS officer Dr. Hanns Bobermin rose to important positions in the “Deutscher Gemeindetag”, an enforced centralized communal organization, and, foremost, in the SS industry. His curriculum vitae exemplifies how an individual could successfully position himself in the “Third Reich” and participate in the NS rule. This included the participation in the pillaging of Polish and Jewish factory owners as well as the exploitation of concentration camp prisoners in Auschwitz. After his release from allied custody, networking links established before 1945 helped him to once more achieve a respected bourgeois existence.

The Wehrmacht’s penal court system served to maintain the functionality of the Wehrmacht and was, therefore, an element of the war of annihilation. The essay enquires into the course of the careers of the actors in the Wehrmacht’s judicial system. Exemplarily, the career path of a judge from the Regional Court of Appeals in Hamburg to the military justice system and back to the civilian justice system is analysed. Thereby, the reintegration of the NS judges into the Federal Republic of Germany, a state founded on the rule of the law, is discussed. By combining the biography of this Wehrmacht judge with his sentencing, the room for maneuvering available to the actors of the Wehrmacht’s judicial system is explained. Only after long political debates an attempt was made in the late 1950’s to determine the NS incrimination of numerous judges in the judicial service of the Federal Republic. However, the realization of these investigations remained insufficient and, often, without any consequences.

The essay is an enquiry into the storage and transformation of national socialist violence as well as an analysis of the transfer and the modification of the self-perception of the SS into the early Federal Republic of Germany. The central focus of the essay is placed on the photography collections of two former members of the Waffen SS, an SS general and a common soldier. During the 1950’s, both were organized in the “Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegen­seitigkeit” (HIAG) (aid organization based on mutuality). The HIAG offered a framework for the transfer of social practices and social interaction from the national socialist into the democratic society. The essay describes the “praxeological archive” of the Waffen SS and stresses its importance for the social cohesion of the HIAG.

Aurel Kolnai (1900–1973) was a moral and political philosopher who in 1938 published “The War against the West”, a critical study of Nazi Socialist ideology. Because the book sold well and received very good reviews Kolnai was asked by his publisher, Victor Gollancz, to give two lectures at the Left Book Club summer school in August 1939, one of which under the headline of “The pivotal principles of NS ideology” covered main topics of his book. This handwritten manuscript is published here for the first time. The Hannah Arendt Institute is planning a historical-critical German edition of Kolnai’s “The War against the West”.