This is a study of the social, economic, and political role of Vodka in nineteenth-century Russia. Since the `Green Serpent' first appeared in sixteenth-century Muscovy, it has played a vital part in Russian life. Vodka became an essential part of Russian working-class celebrations: personal, religious, and commercial. Trade in Vodka redistributed wealth upwards through Russian society over several centuries. Indeed, Russia's status as a great power was underpinned by it: by the nineteenth century, it generated one-third of government revenue - enough to cover most of the costs of the vast army. The dependence on Vodka of both people and state has endured into the Gorbachev era. But despite Vodka's key role in Russian history, and the complex network of corruption associated with it, the subject has been ignored by most historians until now. This study concentrates on an important transitional era in the history of Vodka: the early nineteenth century. During this period, Vodka taxes played the role that salt taxes had played in the ancien regime in France. The abolition of the tax farm in 1863 should be seen as one of the most important of the `Great Reforms' of the 1860s, an era which, in many ways, parallels the glasnost of the 1980s.

In this masterful work of historical scholarship, Zeev Sternhell, an internationally renowned Israeli political scientist and historian, presents a controversial new view of the fall of democracy and the rise of radical nationalism in the twentieth century. Sternhell locates their origins in the eighteenth century with the advent of the Anti-Enlightenment, far earlier than most historians. The thinkers belonging to the Anti-Enlightenment (a movement originally identified by Friederich Nietzsche) represent a perspective that is antirational and that rejects the principles of natural law and the rights of man. Sternhell asserts that the Anti-Enlightenment was a development separate from the Enlightenment and sees the two traditions as evolving parallel to one another over time. He contends that J. G. Herder and Edmund Burke are among the real founders of the Anti-Enlightenment and shows how that school undermined the very foundations of modern liberalism, finally contributing to the development of fascism that culminated in the European catastrophes of the twentieth century.

Broken Threads tells the story of the destruction of the Jewish fashion industry under the Nazis. Jewish designers were very prominent in the fashion industry of 1930s Germany and Austria. The emergence of Konfektion, or ready-to-wear, and the development of the modern department store, with its innovative merchandising and lavish interior design, only emphasized this prominence. The Nazis came to see German high fashion as too heavily influenced by Jewish designers, manufacturers and merchandisers. These groups were targeted with a campaign of propaganda, boycotts, humiliation and Aryanization. Broken Threads chronicles this moment of cultural loss, detailing the rise of Jewish design and its destruction at the hands of the Nazis. Superbly illustrated with photographs and fashion plates from the collection of Claus Jahnke, Broken Threads explores this little-known part of fashion and of Nazi history.

Fascism, Nazism, and Communism dominated the history of much of the twentieth century, yet comparatively little attention has focused on popular reactions to the regimes that sprang from these ideologies. Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes is the first volume to investigate popular reactions to totalitarian rule in the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the communist regimes in Poland and East Germany after 1945.
The contributions, written for this volume by internationally acknowledged experts in their fields, move beyond the rather static vision provided by traditional themes of consent and coercion to construct a more nuanced picture of everyday life in the various regimes. The book provides many new insights into the ways totalitarian regimes functioned and the reasons for their decline, encouraging comparisons between the different regimes and stimulating re-evaluation of long-established positions.

In this discourse history, W J Dodd analyses the 'unquiet voices' of opponents whose contemporary critiques of Nazism, from positions of territorial and inner exile, focused on the 'language of Nazism'. Individual chapters review 'precursor' discourses; Nazi public discourse from 1933 to 1945; the testimonies of 'unquiet voices' abroad, and in private and published texts in the 'Reich'; attempts to 'denazify the language' (1945-49), and the legacies of the Nazi past in a retrospective discourse of 'coming to terms' with the Nazi past. In the period from 1945, the book focuses on contestations of 'tainted language' and instrumentalizations of the Nazi past, and the persistence of linguistic taboos in contemporary German usage. Highly engaging, with English translations provided throughout, this book will provide an invaluable resource for scholars of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and German history and culture; as well as readers with a general interest in language and politics.

Arthur Kenneth Chesterton, cousin of G.K. Chesterton, grew up in South Africa where he developed his "colonial outsider" view of England and of the First World War. By the age of 21, Chesterton was an archetypal "angry young man" - ex-colonial, ex-officer with literary interests and accomplishments. As an increasingly disillusioned literary critic and newspaper editor, he created a world based on his reading of English literature - an idealized version of British society. The result was a cultural despair which sealed his acceptance of fascism in 1933. In this biography, David Baker examines the socio-psychological profile of A.K. Chesterton to help explain the nature of fascism. The author questions previous academic interpretations, suggesting that a definition of fascist ideology must be broadened to take account of its fatal attraction to those who might have remained self-assured members of a democratic society.

At the end of the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of German children were sent to the front lines in the largest mobilisation of underage combatants by any country before or since. Hans Dunker was just one of these children. Identified as gifted aged 9, he left his home in South America in 1937 in pursuit of a 'proper' education in Nazi Germany. Instead, he and his schoolfriends, lacking adequate training, ammunition and rations, were sent to the Eastern Front when the war was already lost in the spring of 1945. Using her father's diary and other documents, Helene Munson traces Hans' journey from a student at Feldafing School to a soldier fighting in Zawada, a village in present-day Czech Republic. What is revealed is an education system so inhumane that until recently, post-war Germany worked hard to keep it a secret. This is Hans' story, but also the story of a whole generation of German children who silently carried the shame of what they suffered into old age.

This vivid biography is a study of the life and times of the Italian poet-activist, Lauro de Bosis. Remarkably productive as a poet, cultural diplomat, and political subversive, de Bosis founded and lead an underground resistance group, the National Alliance for Liberty. His actions culminated in a dramatic solo flight over Rome in October 1931, showering the city with protest leaflets against the Fascist dictatorship before plunging to his death. This feat brought world attention to the existence of anti-Fascism, much to Mussolini's chagrin and rage.

De Bosis's story, told against the backdrop of Rome's politics in the 1920s, is at once personal, national, and international. World figures --- from Mussolini, Croce, Ezra Pound, to Walter Lippmann, Thornton Wilder, and his lover, the actress Ruth Draper --- were all within de Bosis's compass. Gifted, quirky, original, and impulsive but principled to the point of giving up both personal love and family for his cause, his life shows how Mussolini's regime systematically cleared out the cream of Italy's young liberal intellectuals. Based on previously untapped archival resources, this is the first biography of a young, gifted Italian poet who dared to challenge the power of a totalitarian state with his practical idealism and fierce determination to protect Italy's fragile democracy from il Duce.

The prevailing sentiment of contemporary intellectuals is that the human condition has never been better. History is regarded as lengthy episode of oppression that human beings have gradually but steadily fought to overcome with considerable success. Evidence of these successes that are commonly offered include increased material consumption, better health and longer life expectancy, technological development and, above all, the ongoing triumph of "democracy" and "human rights."

However, the nineteenth and twentieth century produced an array of dissident thinkers that expressed a great skepticism of modern civilization. Their individual critiques were often vastly different from one another. Yet the common idea that emerges from work of these genuine intellectual mavericks is one that laments the loss of traditional societies, and pessimism about the new world that modernity has brought. Instead, the modern project has been regarded by thinkers as different as Nietzsche, G.K. Chesterton and Alain De Benoist to have been a cultural and spiritual degeneration that diminished rather than elevated the nobility of man.

This work by Keith Preston examines the ideas of these thinkers, and considers the potential relevance of their insights in the postmodern age.

Elazar examines the social and political processes that determined the character of Fascist organization in Italy and its seizure of state power first in the provinces and then in the nation. She argues that the Fascists' "modus operandi" shaped the political struggles they engaged in and reflexively determined their own political significance. Employing both primary and secondary historical sources, Elazar reveals the crucial internal political struggles and inner contradictions through which Fascism was invented.

The political strategy of paramilitary organization and assault on labor and the Socialists carried out by the Fascist Action Squads in collusion with men of property was crucial in determining their seizure of power. But this also determined the ideological and organizational contours of Fascism itself. The Fascist Squads' alliances with men of property made them a formidable faction within the Fascist organization that could and did challenge Mussolini's authority. The making of Fascism is thus marked by the irony of the relationship between Mussolini and his political power base--the Squads. The very element of paramilitary organization that was decisive in the Fascists' seizure of power in the provinces had to be submerged by Mussolini if he was to preserve his power. Historical and comparative sociologists, political sociologists, and students of Italian Fascism and Italian history will find this new explanation of the making of Fascism both provacative and fascinating.

This work seeks to take a fresh look at the contentious question of the longevity and popularity of Mussolini's regime in Italy. In particular, it draws upon new research to challenge what has been the most influential paradigm over the last couple of decades, namely, the interpretation of Italian fascism as a consensual dictatorship.

Helen Graham here brings together leading historians of international renown to examine 20th-century Spain in light of Franco's dictatorship and its legacy. Interrogating Francoism uses a three-part structure to look at the old regime, the civil war and the forging of Francoism; the nature of Franco's dictatorship; and the 'history wars' that have since taken place over his legacy. Social, political, economic and cultural historical approaches are integrated throughout and 'top down' political analysis is incorporated along with 'bottom up' social perspectives. The book places Spain and Francoism in comparative European context and explores the relationship between the historical debates and present-day political and ideological controversies in Spain. In part a tribute to Paul Preston, the foremost historian of contemporary Spain today, Interrogating Francoism includes an interview with Professor Preston and a comprehensive bibliography of his work, as well as extensive further readings in English. It is a crucial volume for all students of 20th-century Spain.

In 2007, the Pontine Marshes, are very much part of the Italian national landscape. A traveller who takes a Eurostar train from Rome to Naples will pass through the marshes, which are a marshland only in name (Agro Pontino in Italian). It is hard to see the landscape of the Pontine Marshes and to simultaneously cast a historical eye back eighty years to when the area was avoided by people. It is hard to realize, today, that the Pontine Marshes were the focus for an extraordinary national land reclamation and urbanization project during Mussolini's fascist regime. Between 1930 and 1939, the marshes became the target of massive national investment, internal migration (often non-voluntary) and engineering work. In the 1930s, the Pontine Marshes became key protagonists in national culture: featured in newsreels, newspapers and propaganda, they became a metaphor for the regime's modernizing drive and ambition to create a new Italy where one had not been able to exist before. In particular, the regime's planners clamored to create New Towns in the reclaimed marshes; these were to be planned along fascist lines, and populated with selected colonists from the north. Written by an Oxford University professor Federico Caprotti, this book is about the Pontine Marshes project and brings together cohesive strands of research which have not appeared alongside one another before. For example, the book explores the architectural and urban planning aspects of the totalitarian minds which devised and built the New Towns; the lived experience of the 'colonists' who were forced to populate the new cities; the technological aspects which made the project possible, such as the fight against malaria, seen by fascism to be a 'non-totalitarian' disease; and finally, the promotion of the Pontine Marshes project through the press and film. Mussolini Cities will be a welcome addition for collections in Geography and Italian Studies.

Rescue, Relief, and Resistance: The Jewish Labor Committee's Anti-Nazi Operations, 1934-1945 is the English translation of Catherine Collomp's award-winning book on the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC). Formed in New York City in 1934 by the leaders of the Jewish Labor Movement, the JLC came to the forefront of American labor's reaction to Nazism and antisemitism. Situated at the crossroads of several fields of inquiry-Jewish history, immigration and exile studies, American and international labor history, World War II in France and in Poland-the history of the JLC is by nature transnational. It brings to the fore the strength of ties between the Yiddish-speaking Jewish worlds across the globe. Rescue, Relief, and Resistance contains six chapters. Chapter 1 describes the political origin of the JLC, whose founders had been Bundist militants in the Russian empire before their emigration to the United States, and asserts its roots in the American Jewish Labor movement of the 1930s. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss how the JLC established formal links with the European non-communist labor movement, especially through the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions. Chapter 4 focuses on the approximately 1,500 European labor and socialist leaders and left-wing intellectuals, including their families, rescued from certain arrest and deportation by the Gestapo. Chapter 5 deals with the special relationship the JLC established with currents in the Resistance in France, partly financing its underground labor and socialist networks and operations. Chapter 6 is devoted to the JLC's support of Jews in Poland during the war: humanitarian relief for those in the occupied territory under Soviet domination and political and financial support of the combatants of the Warsaw ghetto in their last stand against annihilation by the Wermacht. The JLC has never commemorated its rescue operations and other political activities on behalf of opponents of fascism and Nazism, nor its contributions to the reconstruction of Jewish life after the Holocaust. Historians to this day have not traced its history in a substantial way. Students and scholars of Holocaust and American studies will find this text vital to their continued studies.

How did Italians living in Britain respond to Mussolini's fascism? What links did ex-pat fascists forge with the British Right? To what extent did Italophilia exist in Britain during the Mussolini years?"Exporting Fascism" addresses these questions, which have long been ignored by historians. While there is much material available about Nazi sympathizers in the United Kingdom, there is comparatively very little about Italophile fascist sympathizers. The author uncovers the policy of Mussolini's government to transform Italian communities abroad into 'little Fascist Italies'. Ambassador Dino Grandi had great success in the fascistization campaign of Italian emigrants through such means as Italian community newspapers and fascist summer camps and schools.The author also examines the links forged between Italian fascism and the British Right. Specifically, she uncovers the Italophilia that dominated the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the first half of the 1930s, later to be replaced with an admiration for National Socialism. She also examines the BUF's activities within Italy, which have thus far remained almost entirely unknown."Exporting Fascism "sheds new light on a neglected aspect of the international fascist movement at the dawn of the Second World War.

Greta Kuckhoff belonged to the anti-Nazi resistance group 'The Red Orchestra' and was condemned to death in 1943. Her sentence was later commuted to imprisonment and she was liberated by the Red Army in 1945. She spent the next thirty years working to commemorate the group's antifascist resistance. Through radio broadcasts, letters, exhibitions, journal articles, film, and autobiography, she fought against Cold War narratives which condemned the group as traitors or hailed them as Soviet spies. Using previously unpublished archival sources, this book traces the fascinating life writings of this key figure from the GDR. It draws attention to gendered politics of remembering, to the role of memories of the Holocaust, and to the political identities offered by these diverse forms of commemoration. In doing so, it provocatively intervenes in the contentious debates about remembering antifascism in contemporary Germany.

The Nazis put a remarkable amount of effort into anti-Semitic propaganda, intending to bring ordinary Germans around to the destructive ideology of the Nazi party. Julius Streicher (1885-1946) spearheaded many of these efforts, publishing anti-Semitic articles and cartoons in his weekly newspaper, Der Sturmer, the most widely read paper in the Third Reich. Streicher won the close personal friendship of Hitler and Himmler, and drew deserved attacks from the world press. Bytwerk's biography examines Streicher's use of propaganda techniques, and the hate literature towards Jews that continued to appear after his death, bearing his influence.

The Krupp industrial empire was one of Germany's wealthiest and most powerful corporations, and it contributed to the armaments used in several of its country's wars. British journalist Peter Batty tells the story of the Krupp family and the company they started during the industrial revolution, and how subsequent Krupps produced cannons used in the Franco-Prussian War, U-boats and shells for World War I, and the countless weapons and vehicles, including the biggest cannon ever made, for Hitler's army. The House of Krupp recounts the trial at Nuremberg of magnate Alfried Krupp, and the rebirth and astounding success of his company in the years after the war years that saw Alfried become one of the richest men in the world."

Deportations by train were critical in the Nazis' genocidal vision of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Historians have estimated that between 1941 and 1944 up to three million Jews were transported to their deaths in concentration and extermination camps. In his writings on the "Final Solution," Raul Hilberg pondered the role of trains: "How can railways be regarded as anything more than physical equipment that was used, when the time came, to transport the Jews from various cities to shooting grounds and gas chambers in Eastern Europe?" This book explores the question by analyzing the victims' experiences at each stage of forced relocation: the round-ups and departures from the ghettos, the captivity in trains, and finally, the arrival at the camps. Utilizing a variety of published memoirs and unpublished testimonies, the book argues that victims experienced the train journeys as mobile chambers, comparable in importance to the more studied, fixed locations of persecution, such as ghettos and camps.