Midterm 2

Question 1

The Legend of the Holy Grail

Answer 1

The most widely known version assumes that the holy grail is a cup of a chalice used by Jesus at the last supper and/or used to later capture his blood on the cross

In other versions it is a precious stone that fell from heaven and possesses magical qualities

The latter version was elaborated in Wolfram von echenbach’s medieval epic Parsifal

Note: there are no grail stories until around 1150 - more than a millennium after the events surrounding the last supper

Question 2

Stories about how the Grail got from the Holy land to Southern France

Answer 2

Some say it was the first crusaders in Jerusalem and then transferred to Europe by the templars, probably to S Frace, where it came into the possession of the cathars

Another version claims that it was brought back to Rome after the destruction of Solomon’s temple in the first Roman-Jewish wars (68 AD) and later taken by the visigoths, when they plundered Rome in 410, to Carcassonne in the south of France.

Others say it was brought by Maria Magdalene and Joseph of arimathea to southern France right after the crucifixion

Question 3

Otto Rahns main source

Answer 3

Parzivial by Wolfram von Eschenbach (1160-1220; Life Dates uncertain)

Written around 1200-10. Builds on and greatly expands the unfinished Perceval, the story of the grail by Chrétien de Troyes (written app. 1180-90) which is the first literary text to mention the Grail

In Chrétiens Perceval, the grail is a kind of bowl. Wolfram depicts it as a strange stone of extraterrestrial origin with magical properties. But as in the case of Chrétien de Troyes, no mention of Jesus and/or the last supper

Question 4

Otto Rahn and the Grail

Answer 4

Otto rahn (1904-39)

Instrumental in linking the grail legend to the history of the cathars

Cathar comes from Greek = the pure ones (unknown whether they gave themselves this name)

Basically, catharcism was a “heretic” mvmt within Christianity prominent in N Italy and S France in the high Middle Ages with strong dualist tendencies
*dualism = there are 2 gods
* the bad, material god of the Old Testament who created this inferior material world, and the good, spiritual god of the New Testament
* we are spirits caught in matter and have to try to return to the spiritual domain by overcoming matter

Accordingly, the Catholic Church with all its priests and bishops is useless and in league with the bad god

Question 5

Catharcism & Catholic Church

Answer 5

Catharcism was becoming fairly wide spread in Europe, the one area where it became a major problem for the Catholic Church - so major that pope innocent III had to call for a full scale crusade - was the languedoc region in S France (known for its comparatively liberal atmosphere and its troubadour culture)

Question 6

Rahns exploration

Answer 6

Years exploring the cave system in montségur, the last stronghold of the cathars

He learned about a local legend according to which just before the fall of the castle a few cathar knights secretly escaped and hid the cathar treasure -which according to those legends believed by rahn including the grail- in a cave (he never found it)

According to his books it is still there in a cave whose entrance is blocked by a large rock and protected by 100 vipers (this is of course not true)

Question 7

Languedoc

Answer 7

Pope innocent III calls for the Albigensian crusade against the heretic “cathars” 1209-1229 - named after the town of Albi

Massacre of Béziers 21 July 1209. (Kill them all. God will recognize his own)

After the end of the war, the inquisition moves in

Siege of montsegur, the cathar stronghold may 1243- march 1244

Question 8

Connecting the grail to the cathars

Answer 8

1. Somehow, the grail (whether cup, bowl, or stone) made it from jersusalem to the S France. Well known legends:

(a) Joseph of arimathea brought it to Britain after the death of Jesus

(b) the Roman’s sacked Jerusalem (70 AD) and brought it to Rome. The visigoths sacked Rome (410 AD) and brought it to the S France

c) the templars found it in Jerusalem after the first crusade (1096-99) and smuggled it out

2. The cathars became the keepers of the grail. The night before the storming of mostsegur, they hit it somewhere in the vicinity of the castle. And it is still there

Question 9

Himmler & Rahn

Answer 9

Rahn told the grail/cathar story in his book crusade against the grail (1933)

Himmler was so impressed that he offered rahn to generously finance further quests in search of the holy grail if he joined the SS (he did)
* the result was a second more radical book titled lucifers court (1937)

Essentially, rah turned the cathars into a kind of Aryan community that could trace its intellectual roots back to ancient India and Tibet

It is not quite clear if rahn believed in this Aryan twist or if it was edited that way

The crusade of the Catholic Church against the cathars could now be reinterpreted as a Jewish-Christian conspiracy to wipe out an old Aryan faith

If rahn were able to find the grail, this would not only prove that the grail really exists, it would also be a potent artifact for the revival of the Aryan religion

Himmler grew increasingly suspicious of rahn

He was not able to provide a family tree going back to 1750 - afraid to do so b/c there was Jewish ancestry on his mothers side

Rahn was gay and not good at keeping it a secret

As an interdisciplinary measure he was put on guard duty in the SS concentration camps dachau and buchenwald

Rahn quit the SS early 1939 and committed suicide in the Tyrolesn alps on or around 13 march 1939 - almost to the day 695 yrs after the fall of montsegur

Question 10

German Drug History

Answer 10

In many ways German is the quintessential ersatz nation. Deprived of coffee in the two world wars, it created substitutes now for it. Denied a bona Fide political revolution, it staged surrogates in physics, philosophy, and music. Lacking colonies that could be ransacked for exotic plants with marketable pharmacologies properties, it excelled at creating artificial replacements. From a chemists perspective, the world is marked by the highly uneven distribution of highly desirable molecules; and at no place and time in history was this imbalance felt more acutely than in Germany b/w the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century. As a result, no other country went to such extremes to correct the imbalance.

The famed German drug industry begins in the early 19th C.:

Sertürner’s feat was followed by the isolation of cocaine and the dvlpment of aspirin, heroin, and methadone. Though methemphetamine was first synthesized by Japanese scientists at the end of the nineteenth century, German chemists soon took over and excelled at breaking bad. Inspired the (then still legal) use of the American amphetamine Benzedrine (Jesse owens - olympics), Fritz Hauschild, head chemist of the Temmler works in Berlin, patented a new method of synthesizing meth. Ohler notes “was convinced that a performance enhancing substance was a perfect fit for an age in which everyone was talking about new beginnings”

In 1938, temmler began selling their pills as a nonprescription drug under the brand name “pervitin”

Perfvitin started its career as a multipurpose drug in search of a fitting disease, only to be used by many for whom the drug itself became the disease. Among the targeted clientele groups were housewives. It did not take long for the drug to be discovered by the usual suspects: shift workers, students, and physicians awash in free samples

Question 11

Friedrich sertürner

Answer 11

1783-1841

Germanys first drug star

First to isolate alkaloid - morphine from opium (1803)

In fact the first pharmacist to successfully isolate the active ingredient of a medicinal plant or herb. Proceeds to self experiment and almost kills himself and his friends doing so

Question 12

Fritz Hauschild

Answer 12

1908-74

Develops the methamphetamine pervitin for the temmler works in 1937

Stays in the GDR (east Germany) after the war

Professor of pharmacology at the university of Leipzig as of 1949

• not instrumental in starting the east German doping program

Question 13

Nazi drug policy

Answer 13

The third Reichs drug policy - ‘drug’ here understood in the widest possible sense ranging from minor intoxicants (beer) to hard drug (cocaine, meth) contains a couple of symptomatic features

Question 14

Nazi drug policy (i)

Answer 14

Some of the drug policies recall the ways in which the third Reich viewed women and the female body in particular

Women’s bodies are designed by nature to give birth and thus designed to perpetuate the race, childbirth is political and no longer a private act

The slogan dein Körper gehört dir (your body belongs to you) which arose in the 1920s and became famous in the 1960s, was harshly disputed by the Nazis. Bodies belonged to the race (especially bodies that can give birth to other bodies), and hence are a matter of immediate governmental interest

In much the same way, excessive drug abuse (alcoholism) was no longer merely individual self abuse but a crime against the national body

Protecting and nurturing your bodies amounts to moral abligation because it is a racial imperative

Question 15

Nazi drug policy (ii)

Answer 15

Starting already in the 1920s (before the Nazis came to power) the German language underwent a criminalization of drugs that did not occur to this extent in English

English drug
1. Medicinal
2. Recreational (mostly illegal)
Listerine and LSD

German Droge (n)
1. Recreational only

English drug and German Droge derive from Dutch droog (“dry”) - it refers to the dried goods from foreign countries, in most cases colonies stacked in harbour warehouses. In English, however, the word ‘drugs’ can refer to medicinal and recreational drugs. German Droge, not to mention the very pejorative Rauschgift (intoxicating poison), only refers to the latter

Increasingly, this linguistic bias was both in pop culture and political propaganda fused with chauvinist and frequently racist notions - the drug dealer was coded as a dangerous foreigner (Jewish or otherwise)

Question 16

Nazi drug policy (iii)

Answer 16

Nazi drug policy is less concerned with the addictive properties of a given substance than with the addictive personality of users

The personality types can be racialized

Some Nazi Pharma-racial “experts” went as far to associate certain races with certain drugs, arguing that races prefer drugs that enhance their innate proclivities. -aryans are bold by nature and adventurous, which is enhanced by alcohol hence they like to drink. Orientals allegedly have vivid fantasies that they enhance with opium or hashish. Mongols reputedly prefer nu,bing drugs that induce a nirvana-like empty state of mind.

Jews are said to be nervous and excitable, hence they prefer drugs that either excite them even more (cocaine) or that, temporarily relax them.
Since Jews allegedly do not drink alcohol (or are immune to it) they are prone to peddle it and thus make Germans drink too much

Question 17

Nazi drug policy (iv)

Answer 17

The methamphetamine pervitin was widely marketed as an across-the-counter antidepressant. Even after its obvious side effects and addictive qualities had forced health officials including Reich health leader Conti to ensure that it could no longer be sold over the counter but needed a prescription, the German armed forces distributed millions of pills to the soldiers

It has been argued that some of the early German successes, especially the “blitzkrieg” against Poland and France, heavily depended on drugged soldiers

There is no doubt that towards the end of the war, soldiers sent out on a suicide mission (submarines) and teenager pressed into the final Defense were frequently given pervitin or speed cocktails

Military exigencies override ideological concern

Question 18

Leonardo Conti

Answer 18

1900-45

Joined NS party and SA in 1923

Reichsgesundheitsführer - Reichs health leader (1939-44)

Involved in the early state of the T4 program and medical experiments in buchenwald

Engaged in combating excess pervitin consumption

Question 19

Nazi drug policy (v)

Answer 19

It is interesting to note that a phrase like “Nazis on speed” not only refers to meth abuse in the third Reich - it should also be read literally in the sense of velocity

Just as the Nazi party was a political mvmt obsessed with physical movement (autobahn, sports, blitzkrieg) the third Reich was obsessed with accelerated efficiency - the key German word is Leistung, which translates as performance and achievement

This fit b/w Nazi modernization and the role of meth like pervitin in Part anticipates the rise of ‘accelerating’ drugs such as cocaine in the 1980s

Question 20

Nazi drug policy (vi)

Answer 20

Fora Long time after war, German drug policy (which until the 1970s was among the harshest in western societies) appealed - as in many other nations - to the notion of “public health”

The term was introduced by Leonardo Conti to replace the more charged term “racial hygiene” (rassenhygenie)

This is an interesting example of the way in which, at least on the lexical level, the Nazis sought to soften their radical stance in order to make their policies more acceptable. It also enabled legislation passed b/w 1933-45 to stay in effect after the war because it did not come with obvious nazi tinge

Question 21

Pervitin & Blitzkriegen

Answer 21

In Order to understand how pervitin fits into the war narrative, one must grasp the. broader German intersection of strategy and geography

Confronted repeatedly over the course of modern history with the looking prospect of a two-front war a d the knowledge that Germany lacked the resources to sustain an extended conflict, Prussian and German military planners had to ensure rapid deployments and equally swift victories- as most famously, in the case then(failed) schliefen plan of 1914

Germany must wage its campaigns and wars quickly or not al at all. Blitzkrieg represented the ultimate response to these constraints. It was, in a nutshell the operational deployment of a tactical innovation in the face of overriding strategic challenges

To break the trench warfare of WW1, ther German army developed stormtrooper tactics with small, independent units breaking through weak points and fanning out behind the enemy

WWII motorized the procedure by replacing infantry with tank brigades and motorized divisions that overran enemy lines to create psychological and logistical havoc in the hinterland. For these operations to succeed, speed a d perseverance were of the essence. You not only had to move fast, you also had to keep moving at a rapid pace for several days. Inevitably, blitzkrieg runs up against physiological limits: it highlights the old truth that a soldiers greatest enemy is not another soldier but fatigue

Question 22

Otto Friedrich Ranke

Answer 22

1899-1959

Germanys army’s chief expert on combat physiology (wehrphysologie)

Conducts experiments with performance enhancing substances and becomes the chief promoter for the military use of pervitin

Distinguished postwar career at the university of Tübingen

“A soldiers greatest enemy in war is fatigue”

Question 23

Pervitin & blitzkrieg pt.2

Answer 23

Otto Ranke started to conduct experiments in 1938 only to discover what their students, most of whom would be off to war, already knew: when it comes to staying awake over textbooks or in tanks, a methamphetsmine like pervitin heats caffeine, booze and placebos. It beats the allied forces drug of choice, Benzedrine, which, after all, is a mere Amphetamine. If speed-the drug- had not already existed, it would have been invented by a kind of war whose very name is speed:

While the Wehrmacht did not care about the civilian legislation pushed by Leonardo Conti it did adopt guidelines restricting distribution of the drug, whose negative effects soon became evident: pervitin at first extremely effective, rapidly leads to addiction, physical breakdown, adm psychotic delusions. Following a period of fairly indiscriminate use in the earlier stages of the war, specific orders were issued that medics hand out tablets only in extreme situations. These extreme situations however (and here the story fully descends into the murderous cynicism in which the Nazi regime specialized), where frequently created by the Germans themselves.

Young teenagers called up in the losing days of the war were fed speed before facing against red army tanks; pervitin was used for suicide missions in mini subs operations that had a 90% casualty rate; and at the behest of the army, concentration camp inmates but had to endure exhaustion experiments to determine the best drug cocktail for frontline soldiers.

But for all the damage pervitin caused whether the drug played a decisive role in the war remains an open question. All things considered, it is realistic to assume that military history would have been much the same had the product been restricted to housewives

Nonetheless recent military historian have been more open to discussing the importance of pervitin. In the end, it comes down to defining ver precise conditions to justify the statement that speed had a decisive impact on campaign. This is possible for may 1940: the German offensive absolutely depended on armoured (tank) brigades breaking through and staying mobile for a couple of days. But the notion that the Wehrmacht consisted of a mass of crackheads speeding toward Stalingrad is as credible as the view that the majority of US soldiers spent their Vietnam days on acid

Question 24

Blitzkrieg points

Answer 24

1. Through a German word (“lightning war”), it is popularized by the Americans and hardly ever used in Germany until after the war
2. There is nothing new or revolutionary about “blitzkrieg”, it is the update of a particular form of fighting some military historians call the “German way of war”
3. The “German way of war” is nothing specifically German; it is a way of waging war that is particularly prominent and necessary in Prussian and German military history
4. It is necessary because Prussia/Germany does not have the resources for a sustained war. It must win its wars quickly or lose. I’m addition, P/G often faces a two-front war from E and the W
5. All this becomes very apparent in WW1; the next war will have to be fought differently

Question 25

Hitler & drugs

Answer 25

The question whether or not Hitler was addicted to drugs (and if so, which drugs came into play) is less important than asking why some people obsess over the issue. Sometimes it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that it is a mixture of naivety and escapism. Everything Hitler did can be traced back to drugs (alternately, to his physical ailments) - that is a dangerous oversimplification. Also, it is escapist; talking about what Hitler did to himself relieves us from talking about what he did to others. And there is the problematic spectre of reduced responsibility: he was under the influence of drugs, hence he is under the law less guilty

Nonetheless, a few pointers:

(i) so,e of Hitlers characteristic traits predisposed him for drug addiction:

4 key traits:

1. Hypochondria (obsessed with dying early)
2. Extreme narcissism
3. Withdrawal into imaginary worlds
4. Quick fixes rather than long term projects

(ii) more importantly, as when asking whether it is necessary to qualify in what particular context the allegedly addictive behaviour would have an impact. No wonder how much pervitin or eukadol Hitler took, it would be extremely difficult to show that it had an impact on his social or economic policies, let alone the holocaust. Drug-related mood swings (euphoria, their part in a tight top-down communication infrastructure- such as the top-down infrastructure of military command. Once Hitler makes himself the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht in late 1941 and starts to micromanage many aspects of the war, including there is a link b/w his personality (and personality changes) and direct consequences. Also, while Hitler hardly appeared or spoke I’m public after 1941, he still needed the energy to exert influence on his immediate surroundings at the military headquarters. In the old days hitlers persuasiveness as a public speaker, as unconvincing as it may appear today, was based on mass audience feedback. Arguably, to replace his big audiences he needed uppers in order to build up and project persuasive confidence even when it was obvious that the war was lost

(iii) the story of hitlers drug abuse revolves around him:

Theodor morell

Morell may have not been quite the quack others made him out to be, but from the pov of medical ethics he was a failure. He turned from dr to dealer. In the early days of their twisted symbiosis, morell catered to hitlers preference for quick fixes by administering all kinds of (meth-amplified?) multivitamin cocktails for a quick boost. Later, as the war-related pressures mounted, he gave in to hitlers demands that he administer stronger substances (especially eukadol). He thereby turned his patient into a drug addict. To this day it is not clear whether hitlers extreme physical decay in the last years of the war was primarily due to Parkinson’s disease or a consequence of morell’s concoctions

Question 26

Theodor Morell

Answer 26

1886-1948

Hitters personal physician as of 1936

Question 27

Senicide key points

Answer 27

Doctors are “biological warriors” whose focus is on the collective body of the people. The individual body is a cell; it is part of the people’s body. If it does not contribute properly to the collective body, it must be removed.

The more German is under pressure during the war, the more the above will be radicalized. Everybody must contribute as much as possible. The most radical implication is that there are only 2 groups: the healthy and the dead. There is no middle ground. Ultimately, there is no longer any tolerance for anything that keeps you from work - be it laziness, illness, or age.

Question 28

Recap pervitin: Senicide notes

Answer 28

It did not take long for experts to realize pervitin was dangerous. Early tests - already undertaken before the war - concluded that while pervitin does not increase strength or intelligence, it does appear to supply additional reservoirs of energy for endurance exercise and prolonged periods of avoiding sleep.

The trouble is that pervitin does not give you extra resources you did not have before, rather it allows you to deter your point of exhaustion at which your body shuts down in order to maintain your iron reserve for basic functioning. Drs realized this was potentially deadly, especially if pervitin were to be taken by athletes who have learned to defer the point of exhaustion on their own. With an extra push a physical breakdown would coincide with a terminal shutdown. There are no reserves left in your body and it works itself to death

Question 29

Seniphobia & Nazi regime

Answer 29

Official started to discuss the future health and insurance policies to be implemented after the war.

Most of the following was planned not done:

It starts with the obsession with youth which at times leads to an expression of seniphobia (fear or hatred of age and the aged)

First, the pension system is to be changed. You no longer receive a pension simply because you paid into a pension fund. You will be subject to gvmt scrutiny to determine whether you are in need and worthy of one.
“Only those should be taken care of by the state who fully served the community and who by virtue of their selflessness engagement were valuable members of the Volk”
Here, the Nazis once again combines radical ideology goals based on pseudo-scientific reasoning with cynical pragmatics. On the other hand, national or racial character traits (the Aryan of Germanic “idealistic” ability to work for the community) are turned into a duty. If you are capable of working for the good of your community you must do so. It is your destiny to be a workaholic, and you will be judged accordingly. “The will to perform alone determines the social value of any person” on the other hand, it is a convenient way for the state to save money

It would be better if there was no such thing as retirement. Efforts should be undertaken to ensure that people work more and longer. “At 70 nobody has the right to feel old” (besides who really enjoys retirement: “those die happily who are allowed to die in harness”)
Therefore, “a strictly biological and desirable goal of health policy is to reach a state at which the gradual decline of performance prior to death coincides with the final termination of performance” (essentially: you work until the day you die, b/c once you no longer work there is no reason why you should continue to live

The goal of medicine therefore is not to prolong life but to prolong the productive phase of life. This is the same logic as the pervitin test above. It is necessary to push back the “unproductive stage of life” this must be done for the community: “if we are not successful in keeping septuagenarians able to work and perform, then we can just as well give up what we are doing, for it has no value”

In future Nazi Germany, Lebenszeit (lifetime) and lebensarbeitszeit (life time work) coincide. There is no Freizeit (free time). Free time = Arbeitsvorbereitungszeit

Of course, instead of extending the “work life time” you could shorten lifetime: “for individuals and their families it may be desirable to grow old, but for the community at large it is most important to care for those age groups that are still fully capable of working. From this point of view it would be preferable if the average life expectancy were around 60”

Question 30

Long term policies (Senicide)

Answer 30

These visions grow out of nazism obsession with (racially coded) youth and performance :”we have to attain a tremendously fanatical will to be strong and healthy”. But as is often the case in Nazi Germany, there is a fatal merging of short-term and long-term goals. Just as the so-called Aktion Reinhard - the elimination of over a million Jews in the vernal government of Poland - is both part of the overall plan to eliminate all Jews and a measure to deal with looming food shortages of 1942, the treatment of the elderly especially in 1943 is both an expression of the long-term policies outlines above and a direct reaction to the increasing difficult conditions of war

Some measures include:

*restriction of medical care for the elderly
*restriction of food allocations (e.g. on ration cards) for the elderly
*relocation to rural homes and hospices (more economic to run, and it frees up urgently needed space urban facilities for those injured in bombing raids
*in practical terms, blurring of the boundaries of the treatment of psychiatric patients (frequently deemed “unworthy life”) and the elderly
*”wild euthanasia” - the beginning of Senicide, that is, the random killing - not endorsed, explicitly encouraged or organized, but frequently tolerated - especially of infirm elderly patients

Question 31

A meme Senicide notes

Answer 31

An influential 1972 science article reporting from a mr America bodybuilding contest states: “the first use of male steroids to improve performance is said to have been in WW2 when German troops took them before battle to enhance aggression”

No source is given simply because it is not true. The ensuing meme is based on hazy, displaced memories of some German drug that allegedly made “super soldiers” and the factual use of testosterone and other steroids as performance enhancing drugs by Soviet athletes (allegedly starting in the 1952 Olympics). Pervitin is confused with steroids; and if one totalitarian regime (USSR) used it, then other one (third Reich) must have used it as well, especially given the fact that (I) Germany was the world leader in steroid research in the 1930s and (ii) the Nazis kept putting statues of men who looked like they had spent a lot of time taking steroids

Question 32

George Strasser

Answer 32

Early leading “left” wing nazi

Question 33

Carl Stephenson

Answer 33

Born in vienne died in Berlin
Nazi party member 6,127,698 as on 1938

Founder and clowned of the Carl Stephenson publishing house

First claim to fame: wrote a contemptuous and very effective expose of Tarzan the untamed as a anti-German novel

Question 34

What is unrealistic and dangerous about the ants?

Answer 34

EoA: evolved, have weapons, appear to be able to see, d not move on but occupy

LvtA: the sheer size of the swarm

Question 35

What is the relationship among humans?

Answer 35

EoA: incompetent leader, no clear goal or command structure; mixed ethnicities; confused by women

LvA: charismatic leader, clear purpose, subordination of inferior race; exclusion of women’s

Question 36

How is Brazil/the jungle depicted?

Answer 36

EoA: almost a different planet; hostile and inhospitable; huams (or at least Europeans do not belong there)

LvA: hostile and tough, but ripe for the taking; terra nullius (nobody’s land) in need of a colonizer

Question 37

Maria sybilla Merian

Answer 37

Illustrator with expertise in botany and entomolgy

Travels to Suriname

Publishes metamorphosis in sector um surinamensium in 1705

Cont first western detailed description of army ants (including bridge building)