Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler's Nuremberg Laws from Patton's Trophy to Public Memorial

by Platt,Anthony M.

• ISBN13: 9781594511394
• ISBN10: 159451139X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

At the end of World War II, an American military intelligence team retrieved an original copy of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, signed by Hitler, and turned over this rare document to General George S. Patton. In 1999, after fifty-five years in the vault of the Huntington Library in southern California, the Nuremberg Laws resurfaced and were put on public display for the first time at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. In this far-ranging, interdisciplinary study that is part historical analysis, part cultural critique, part detective story, and part memoir, Tony Platt explores a range of interrelated issues: war-time looting, remembrance of the holocaust, German and American eugenics, and the public responsibilities of museums and cultural centers. This book is based on original research by the author and co-researcher, historian Cecilia O'Leary, in government, military, and library archives; interviews and oral histories; and participant observation. It is both a detailed, scholarly analysis and a record of the author's activist efforts to correct the historical record.

Author Biography

Cecilia O'Leary is a professor of American History at California State University, Monterey Bay. Tony Platt is professor emeritus at California State University, Sacramento.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Definitions	xi
Quotations	xii
Origins Stories	1	(24)
Paradise for Humanists	1	(4)
The Closest You Come	5	(7)
The Last Word	12	(3)
A Suitable Past	15	(7)
Old Wounds	22	(3)
Present Absences	25	(17)
Almost-Jews	25	(7)
The Liberator	32	(4)
A Bolt out of the Blue	36	(2)
Oasis in the City	38	(4)
Tall Like Germans	42	(13)
Singing Germany	42	(8)
Postpone and Postpone	50	(5)
Human Betterment	55	(17)
Racial Hygiene	55	(3)
Eugenic Science	58	(5)
Nordic Internationalism	63	(9)
Blood and Honor	72	(12)
City of the Reich Party Rallies	72	(3)
The Jewish Question	75	(5)
Sentenced Without Guilt	80	(2)
Nazi Icon	82	(2)
Hitler's Signature	84	(14)
Refuge	84	(2)
American Citizen	86	(3)
Problem Child	89	(2)
Discovery at Eichstatt	91	(7)
Patton's Trophy	98	(11)
The Irony of Fate	98	(2)
War's End	100	(3)
The Important One	103	(6)
Outpost of Civilization	109	(12)
Company Village	109	(6)
To Hell with the People	115	(3)
In Their Proper Place	118	(3)
White Man's Burden	121	(11)
Too Much Democracy	121	(6)
Anglo-Saxon State	127	(2)
White City	129	(3)
Loot	132	(13)
Semitic Revenge	132	(4)
Evil Curiosities	136	(1)
Discipline in Peace	137	(1)
Public Presentation	138	(2)
Provenance	140	(5)
In Limbo	145	(15)
Quietly Ignored	145	(2)
Economics of Change	147	(2)
Public Face	149	(2)
Detente	151	(9)
History Lessons	160	(15)
Story of the Objects	160	(5)
Objects of the Story	165	(4)
Reframing	169	(2)
Mining the Past	171	(4)
Past and Present	175	(10)
In the Eyes of Others	175	(4)
Public History	179	(6)
Abbreviations	185	(1)
Chronology	186	(6)
End Notes	192	(50)
Sources and Bibliography	242	(15)
Index	257	(11)
About the Authors	268