How did the academy react to the rise, dominance, and ultimate fall of Germany's Third Reich? Did German professors of the humanities have to tell themselves lies about their regime's activities or its victims to sleep at night? Did they endorse the regime? Or did they look the other way, whether out of deliberate denial or out of fear for their own personal safety?The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich is a collection of groundbreaking essays that shed light on this previously overlooked piece of history.

The Betrayal of the Humanities accepts the regrettable news that academics and intellectuals in Nazi Germany betrayed the humanities, and explores what went wrong, what occurred at the universities, and what happened to the major disciplines of the humanities under National Socialism.

The Betrayal of the Humanitiesdetails not only howindividual scholars, particular departments, and even entire universities collaborated with the Nazi regime but also examines the legacy of this era on higher education in Germany. In particular, it looks at the peculiar position of many German scholars in the post-war world having to defend their own work, or the work of their mentors, while simultaneously not appearing to accept Nazism.

Bernard M. Levinson serves as Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies and of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he holds the Berman Family Chair in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible. He is the author of four books, including Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation andLegal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel, and six edited volumes.

Robert P. Ericksen is the Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies Emeritus at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He has written or edited six books, includingTheologians under Hitler,Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany, and (edited with Susannah Heschel)Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust.

List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface
I. Nazi Germany and the Historical Humanities
1. The History of the Humanities in the Third Reich, by Alan E. Steinweis
2. The "Orient" and "Us", by Suzanne L. Marchand
3. Luther Scholars, Jews, and Judaism during the Third Reich, by Christopher J. Probst
4. Gerhard von Rad's Struggle against the Nazification of the Old Testament, by Bernard M. Levinson
5. Jewish Studies in the Service of Nazi Ideology, by Anders Gerdmar
6. Hermann Grapow, Egyptology, and National Socialist Initiatives for the Humanities, by Thomas Schneider
7. German Assyriology, by Johannes Renger
8. National Socialist Archaeology as a Faustian Bargain, by Bettina Arnold
II. Law, Music, and Philosophy in the Third Reich
9. Hitler's Willing Law Professors, by Oren Gross
10. The Music of Arnold Schoenberg, by Michael Cherlin
11. Political Philosophy, by Emmanuel Faye
III. Nazi Germany and Beyond
12. The Nazification and Denazification of the University of Göttingen, by Robert P. Ericksen
13. The University of Göttingen and Its Postwar Response to Persecuted Colleagues, by Aniko Szabo
14. Italian Fascism, by Franklin Hugh Adler
15. Is There an Anti-Jewish Bias in Today's University?, by Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Index of Scholars and Related Academic Figures Examined
Index of Paramilitary and Military Roles Held
Index of Universities and Academic Institutions Examined
Index of Authors
Subject Index