Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T15:29:28.970Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legacies of the Third Reich: Concentration Camps and Out-group Intolerance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2020

JONATHAN HOMOLA Open the ORCID record for JONATHAN HOMOLA [Opens in a new window] ,
MIGUEL M. PEREIRA Open the ORCID record for MIGUEL M. PEREIRA [Opens in a new window]  and
MARGIT TAVITS Open the ORCID record for MARGIT TAVITS [Opens in a new window]
JONATHAN HOMOLA*
Affiliation:
Rice University
MIGUEL M. PEREIRA*
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
MARGIT TAVITS*
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
*
*Jonathan Homola, Assistant Professor, Rice University, homola@rice.edu.
†Miguel M. Pereira, PhD Candidate, Washington University in St. Louis, m.pereira@wustl.edu.
‡Margit Tavits, Professor, Washington University in St. Louis, tavits@wustl.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We explore the long-term political consequences of the Third Reich and show that current political intolerance, xenophobia, and voting for radical right-wing parties are associated with proximity to former Nazi concentration camps in Germany. This relationship is not explained by contemporary attitudes, the location of the camps, geographic sorting, the economic impact of the camps, or their current use. We argue that cognitive dissonance led those more directly exposed to Nazi institutions to conform with the belief system of the regime. These attitudes were then transmitted across generations. The evidence provided here contributes both to our understanding of the legacies of historical institutions and the sources of political intolerance.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 114 , Issue 2 , May 2020 , pp. 573 - 590
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2020 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We would like to thank Avidit Acharya, Robin Best, Carles Boix, Volha Charnysh, Connor Huff, Noam Lupu, Shom Mazumder, five anonymous reviewers, Ken Benoit, and Thomas König for helping develop and improve our article. Special thanks to William Simoneau, who played a crucial role in the early stages of the project. Jara Kampmann and Julia Klinger in the GESIS Secure Data Center were extremely helpful during our analysis of the ALLBUS data. Earlier versions of the article were presented at MPSA 2018, APSA 2018 (where it received the SAGE best paper award), the University of Texas, Penn State University, ETH Zürich, University of Bergen, Princeton University, and McGill University. Funding for this research was provided by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/J0GBTX.

References

REFERENCES

Acharya, Avidit, Blackwell, Matthew, and Sen, Maya. 2016a. “The Political Legacy of American Slavery.” The Journal of Politics 78 (3): 621–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acharya, Avidit, Blackwell, Matthew, and Sen, Maya. 2016b. “Explaining Causal Findings without Bias: Detecting and Assessing Direct Effects.” American Political Science Review 110 (3): 512–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acharya, Avidit, Blackwell, Matthew, and Sen, Maya. 2018. “Explaining Attitudes from Behavior: A Cognitive Dissonance Approach.” The Journal of Politics 80 (2): 400–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderlini, Luca, Gerardi, Dino, and Lagunoff, Roger. 2010. “Social Memory, Evidence, and Conflict.” Review of Economic Dynamics 13 (3): 559–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ast, Theresa L. 2013. Confronting the Holocaust . Charleston, NC: Createspace.Google Scholar
Bennhold, Katrin. 2018. “German Schools Tour Nazi Concentration Camps to Combat Antisemitism.” The Independent, March 14. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/nazi-concentration-camps-german-school-tours-antisemitism-auschwitz-sachsenhausen-holocaust-a8252411.html.Google Scholar
Bisin, Alberto, and Verdier, Thierry. 2000. “A Model of Cultural Transmission, Voting and Political Ideology.” European Journal of Political Economy 16 (1): 5–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braun, Sebastian, and Kvasnicka, Michael. 2014. “Immigration and Structural Change: Evidence from Post-War Germany.” Journal of International Economics 93 (2): 253–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braun, Sebastian, and Mahmoud, Toman Omar. 2014. “The Employment Effects of Immigration: Evidence from the Mass Arrival of German Expellees in Postwar Germany.” The Journal of Economic History 74 (1): 69–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buggeln, Marc. 2014. Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps . Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Burleigh, Michael, and Wippermann, Wolfgang. 1991. The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Charnysh, Volha. 2015. “Historical Legacies of Interethnic Competition: Anti-Semitism and the EU Referendum in Poland.” Comparative Political Studies 48 (13): 1711–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charnysh, Volha, and Finkel, Evgeny. 2017. “The Death Camp Eldorado: Political and Economic Effects of Mass Violence.” American Political Science Review 111 (4): 801–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowell, Alan. 1995. “Teaching Nazi Past to German Youth.” The New York Times, June 9. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/09/world/teaching-nazi-past-to-german-youth.html.Google Scholar
Davis, Keith E., and Jones, Edward E.. 1960. “Changes in Interpersonal Perception as a Means of Reducing Cognitive Dissonance.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 61 (3): 402–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Degner, Juliane, and Dalege, Jonas. 2013. “The Apple Does Not Fall Far from the Tree, or Does It? A Meta-Analysis of Parent-Child Similarity in Intergroup Attitudes.” Psychological Bulletin 139 (6): 1270–304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Douglas, Ray M. 2012. Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War . New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Duriez, Bart, and Soenens, Bart. 2009. “The Intergenerational Transmission of Racism: The Role of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation.” Journal of Research in Personality 43 (5): 906–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Richard J. 2006. The Third Reich in Power . New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
EVS. 2016. European Values Study 2008: Integrated Dataset (EVS 2008)—Restricted Use File . Cologne: GESIS Data Archive. doi: 10.4232/1.12253.Google Scholar
Falck, Oliver, Heblich, Stephan, and Link, Susanne. 2012. “Forced Migration and the Effects of an Integration Policy in Post-WWII Germany.” The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 12 (1): 1–27.Google Scholar
Falter, Jürgen W., Lindenberger, Thomas, and Schumann, Siegfried. 2009. Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik, 1919–1933. Cologne: GESIS Data Archive. doi: 10.4232/1.8351.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D., and Laitin, David D.. 2000. “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity.” International Organization 54 (4): 845–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Festinger, Leon. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance . Evanston: Row, Peterson.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Funke, Manuel, Schularick, Moritz, and Trebesch, Christoph. 2016. “Going to Extremes: Politics after Financial Crises, 1870–2014.” European Economic Review 88: 227–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellately, Robert. 2001. Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany . Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. 2017. ALLBUS/GGSS 2016 (Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften/German General Social Survey 2016) . Cologne: GESIS Data Archive. doi: 10.4232/1.12796.Google Scholar
GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. 2018. ALLBUS/GGSS (Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften/German General Social Survey) – Sensitive Regional Data . Cologne: GESIS Data Archive. doi: 10.4232/1.13010.Google Scholar
Grosfeld, Irena, Rodnyansky, Alexander, and Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina. 2013. “Persistent Antimarket Culture: A Legacy of the Pale of Settlement after the Holocaust.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5 (3): 189–226.Google Scholar
Grosser, Thomas. 2001. “Die Aufnahme der Heimatvertriebenen in Württemberg-Baden und die regionalen Rahmenbedingungen ihrer Integration 1946–1956.” In Heimat und Exil: Emigration und Rückwanderung, Vertreibung und Integration in der Geschichte der Tschechoslowakei, ed. Heumos, Peter. München: Oldenbourg, 223–61.Google Scholar
Hadzic, Dino, Carlson, David, and Tavits, Margit. 2017. “How Exposure to Violence Affects Ethnic Voting.” British Journal of Political Science. Published online December 4, 2017. doi: 10.1017/S0007123417000448.Google Scholar
Hänisch, Dirk. 1989. “Inhalt und Struktur der Datenbank ‘Wahl- und Sozialdaten der Kreise und Gemeinden des Deutschen Reiches von 1920 bis 1933’.” Historical Social Research 14: 39–67.Google Scholar
Harteveld, Eelco, and Ivarsflaten, Elisabeth. 2018. “Why Women Avoid the Radical Right: Internalized Norms and Party Reputations.” British Journal of Political Science 48 (2): 369–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetherington, Marc, and Suhay, Elizabeth. 2011. “Authoritarianism, Threat, and Americans’ Support for the War on Terror.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (3): 546–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homola, Jonathan, and Tavits, Margit. 2018. “Contact Reduces Immigration-Related Fears for Leftist but Not for Rightist Voters.” Comparative Political Studies 51 (13): 1789–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imhoff, Roland, and Banse, Rainer. 2009. “Ongoing Victim Suffering Increases Prejudice the Case of Secondary Anti-Semitism.” Psychological Science 20 (12): 1443–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jäckle, Sebastian, and König, Pascal D.. 2017. “The Dark Side of the German ‘Welcome Culture’: Investigating the Causes Behind Attacks on Refugees in 2015.” West European Politics 40 (2): 223–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaienburg, Hermann. 1996. Konzentrationslager und deutsche Wirtschaft 1939–1945. Opladen: Leske und Budrich.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kandler, Christian, Bell, Edward, and Riemann, Rainer. 2016. “The Structure and Sources of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation.” European Journal of Personality 30 (4): 406–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriesi, Hanspeter, Grande, Edgar, Lachat, Romain, Dolezal, Martin, Bornschier, Simon, and Frey, Timotheos. 2006. “Globalization and the Transformation of the National Political Space: Six European Countries Compared.” European Journal of Political Research 45 (6): 921–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme. 2014. Deutsche jüdische Häftlinge in den Konzentrationslagern . Hamburg: KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme.Google Scholar
Ludeke, Steven G., and Krueger, Robert F.. 2013. “Authoritarianism as a Personality Trait: Evidence from a Longitudinal Behavior Genetic Study.” Personality and Individual Differences 55 (5): 480–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupu, Noam, and Peisakhin, Leonid. 2017. “The Legacy of Political Violence across Generations.” American Journal of Political Science 61: 836–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazumder, Soumyajit. 2018. “The Persistent Effect of U.S. Civil Rights Protests on Political Attitudes.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (4): 922–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaren, Lauren M. 2003. “Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe: Contact, Threat Perception, and Preferences for the Exclusion of Migrants.” Social Forces 81 (3): 909–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Megargee, Geoffrey P. 2009. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Vol. I . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Jacob M., Nyhan, Brendan, and Torres, Michelle. 2018. “How Controlling for Post-Treatment Variables Can Ruin Your Experiment and What to Do about It.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (3): 760–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MPIDR [Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research] and CGG [Chair for Geodesy and Geoinformatics, University of Rostock]. 2011. MPIDR Population History GIS Collection (Partly Based on Hubatsch and Klein 1975 ff). Rostock.Google Scholar
Norris, Pippa, and Inglehart, Ronald. 2018. Cultural Backlash: The Rise of Authoritarian Populism . New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nunn, Nathan, and Wantchekon, Leonard. 2011. “The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa.” The American Economic Review 101 (7): 3221–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Obenaus, Herbert. 1996. “Die Außenkommandos des Konzentrationslagers Neuengamme in Hannover.” In Konzentrationslager und deutsche Wirtschaft 1939–1945, ed. Kaienburg, Hermann. Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 211–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pastor, Doreen. 2018. “Are Mandatory Visits to Concentration Camp Memorials the Answer?” Discovery Society, March 6. Available at: https://discoversociety.org/2018/03/06/are-mandatory-visits-to-concentration-camp-memorials-the-answer/.Google Scholar
Rees, Jonas H., Allpress, Jesse A., and Brown, Rupert. 2013. “Nie Wieder: Group-Based Emotions for In-Group Wrongdoing Affect Attitudes Toward Unrelated Minorities.” Political Psychology 34 (3): 387–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rotella, Katie N., and Richeson, Jennifer A.. 2013. “Motivated to ‘Forget’ the Effects of In-Group Wrongdoing on Memory and Collective Guilt.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 4 (6): 730–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selb, Peter, and Munzert, Simon. 2018. “Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933.” American Political Science Review 112 (4): 1050–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpser, Alberto, Slater, Dan, and Wittenberg, Jason. 2018. “Dead but Not Gone: Contemporary Legacies of Communism, Imperialism, and Authoritarianism.” Annual Review of Political Science 21: 23.1–23.21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M., Hagendoorn, Louk, and Prior, Markus. 2004. “Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities.” American Political Science Review 98 (1): 35–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sofsky, Wolfgang. 1997. The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp . Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sontheimer, Michael. 2005. “Why Germans Can Never Escape Hitler’s Shadow.” Spiegel Online, March 10. Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany-s-nazi-past-why-germans-can-never-escape-hitler-s-shadow-a-345720.html.Google Scholar
Spenkuch, Jörg L., and Tillmann, Philipp. 2018. “Elite Influence? Religion and the Electoral Success of the Nazis.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (1): 19–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinbacher, Sybille. 1993. Dachau—die Stadt und das Konzentrationslager in der NS-Zeit . Frankfurt am Main: Lang.Google Scholar
Sullivan, John L., Marcus, George E., Feldman, Stanley, and Piereson, James E.. 1981. “The Sources of Political Tolerance: A Multivariate Analysis.” American Political Science Review 75 (1): 92–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vansteelandt, Sijn. 2009. “Estimating Direct Effects in Cohort and Case-Control Studies.” Epidemiology 20 (6): 851–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Voigtländer, Nico, and Voth, Hans-Joachim. 2012. “Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 127 (3): 1339–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voigtländer, Nico, and Voth, Hans-Joachim. 2015. “Nazi Indoctrination and Anti-Semitic Beliefs in Germany.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (26): 7931–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: Link

Homola et al. Supplementary Materials

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/J0GBTX
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Homola et al. Supplementary Materials

Homola et al. Supplementary Materials

Download Homola et al. Supplementary Materials(PDF)
PDF 3.2 MB