This is the untold story of how some of Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe - especially in Britain, where their contacts included the press baron and Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and the future King Edward VIII. Using previously unexplored sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, Karina Urbach unravels the story of top-level go-betweens such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, and the seductive Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who rose from a life of poverty in Vienna to become a princess and an intimate of Adolf Hitler. As Urbach shows, Coburg and other senior aristocrats were tasked with some of Germany's most secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens, as he readied Germany for conflict during the 1930s - and later, in the Second World War. Tracing what became of these high-level go-betweens in the years after the Nazi collapse in 1945 - from prominent media careers to sunny retirements in Marbella - the book concludes with an assessment of their overall significance in the foreign policy of the Third Reich.

The Political Economy of Populism explores the interplay between identity, the economy and inequality to explain the dynamics of populist votes since the beginning of the 20th century. The book discusses the political and economic implications of populist governance using data on populist incumbencies and linking it to historical data on the macro economy and democracy. Chapters draw from the most recent political science, economics and other social science literature, as well as historical data, to explain the long-term causes and consequences of populism. Populism emerges and gains traction when political entrepreneurs exploit underlying identity conflicts for political gains. As the distributional consequences of both economic distress and economic growth typically favor the elite over the poor and the lower middle class, economic shocks usually sharpen the underlying identity conflicts between the groups. The book provides evidence of significant differences in the ways fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by incumbent populists in Latin America, Europe and the OECD. The work concludes by suggesting avenues through which a 21st century social consensus can be built, so that our society can avoid repeating the mistakes that led to wars and failed economic experiments in the 20th century. The Political Economy of Populism marks a significant contribution to the study of populism and is suited to students and scholars across the social sciences, including economics, political science and sociology.

Now updated with a new introduction and bibliography Ian Kershaw's classic study of popular responses to Nazi policy and ideology explores the political mentality of 'ordinary Germans' in one part of Hitler's Reich. Basing his account on many unpublished sources, the author analyses socio-economic discontent and the popular reaction to the anti-Church and anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis, and reveals the bitter divisions and dissent of everyday reality in the Third Reich, in stark contrast to the propaganda image of a 'National Community' united behind its leaders. The focus on one particular region makes possible a depth of analysis that takes full account of local and social variations, and avoids easy generalization; but the findings of this study of ordinary behaviour in a police state have implications extending far beyond the confines of Bavaria or indeed Germany in this period.

"Well researched, readable, and very interesting" --Choice "Nazis in Newark is a model local history that reaches well beyond the border of Essex County, New Jersey, to the national and international arenas. By recounting so many sides of the complicated encounter between Nazis and Jews in Newark, Warren Grover has fashioned a world of street politics, boycotts, Nazi louts and Jewish bruisers that is as compelling and telling in its detail as any grand tome on the supposed failures and successes of American Jewish resistence to the Holocaust... I recommend Nazis in Newark. I intend to use it as a cornerstone of my teaching for some time to come." --Professor Michael Alexander The Jewish Quarterly Review "Very few people today realize that the U.S. mainland was the scene of battles against the Nazis. Warren Grover has produced an outstanding work on this subject. The writing is incisive, the ideas are both original and insightful and the thesis masterfully developed and executed. Must reading for anyone interested in American history and ethnic studies." --William B. Helmreich, CUNY Graduate Center and author of The Enduring Community "Thanks to tenacious research and deft story-telling, Warren Grover has put the politics of extremism in one city in the shadow of Fascism, Nazism and Communism, and has thus illuminated the terrible dilemmas of the 1930s. His book also compels the reader to consider an historical anomaly: champions of the Third Reich come across as victims whose civil liberties were infringed, and the gangs of Newark responsible for these violations tended to be Jewish. Such ironies make Nazis in Newark worth the interest of anyone intrigued by ethnic conflict and politcal violence in urban America." --Stephen Whitfield, Max Richter Professor of American Civilization, Brandeis University "In this fast-paced, thorough study of anti-Nazism in Newark, scholar Warren Grover tells the compelling story of how that city's Jews battled their Nazi enemies in the streets and in the marketplace. With meticulous research, Grover adds an important new chapter to our understanding of Jewish reaction. He chronicles how tough, blue collar Jews physically intimidated home-grown Nazis in such groups as the German-American Bund, while a mild-mannered Jewish physician organized an economic boycott against German goods being sold in some of Newark's finest stores. Grover amply demonstrates that Newark's Jews were neither oblivious nor passive toward the enemy in their midst." --Alan M. Kraut, American University "Warren Grover tells a fascinating story in Nazis in Newark. He is a prominent local historian who knows the demography and history of Newark and its environs like the back of his hand. His analysis of the attitude of various groups in Newark toward the threat to Jews posed by Nazism is especially insightful." --Bennett Muraskin, Jewish Currents

In 1945, French political prisoners returning from the concentration camps of Germany coined the phrase 'the concentrationary universe' to describe the camps as a terrible political experiment in the destruction of the human. This book shows how the unacknowledged legacy of a totalitarian mentality has seeped into the deepest recesses of everyday popular culture. It asks if the concentrationary now infests our cultural imaginary, normalizing what was once considered horrific and exceptional by transforming into entertainment violations of human life. Drawing on the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and the analyses of violence by Agamben, Virilio, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, it also offers close readings of films by Cavani and Haneke that identify and critically expose such an imaginary and, hence, contest its lingering force.

During World War II, Croatia became a fascist state under the control of the Ustasha Movement - allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Here, Goran Miljan examines and analyzes for the first time the ideology, practices, and international connections of the Ustasha Youth organization. The Ustasha Youth was an all-embracing fascist youth organization, established in July 1941 by the `Independent State of Croatia' with the goal of reeducating young people in the model of an ideal `new' Croat. This youth organization attempted to set in motion an all-embracing, totalitarian national revolution which in reality consisted of specific interconnected, mutually dependent practices: prosecution, oppression, mass murder, and the Holocaust - all of which were officially legalized within a month of the regime's accession to power. To this end education, sport, manual work and camping took place in specially established Ustasha Youth Schools. In order to justify their radical policies of youth reeducation, the Ustasha Youth, besides emphasizing national character and the importance of cultural and national purity, also engaged in transnational activities and exchanges, especially with the Hlinkova mladez [Hlinka Youth] of the Slovak Republic. Both youth organizations were closely modelled after the youth organizations in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. This is a little studied part of the history of World War II and of Fascism, and will be essential reading for scholars of Central Europe and the Holocaust.

In one of the darker aspects of Nazi Germany, churches and universities - generally respected institutions - grew to accept and support Nazi ideology. Robert P. Ericksen explains how an advanced, highly educated, Christian nation could commit the crimes of the Holocaust. This book describes how Germany's intellectual and spiritual leaders enthusiastically partnered with Hitler's regime, thus becoming active participants in the persecution of Jews, and ultimately, in the Holocaust. Ericksen also examines Germany's deeply flawed yet successful postwar policy of denazification in these institutions. Complicity in the Holocaust argues that enthusiasm for Hitler within churches and universities effectively gave Germans permission to participate in the Nazi regime.

'For its historical depth, analytical vigour and mobilizational potential, this book is unparalleled ... every page is an urgent invitation to resist' David Lammy MP The bestselling author of PostCapitalism offers a guide to resisting the far right The far right is on the rise across the world. From Modi's India to Bolsonaro's Brazil and Erdogan's Turkey, fascism is not a horror that we have left in the past; it is a recurring nightmare that is happening again - and we need to find a better way to fight it. In How to Stop Fascism, Paul Mason offers a radical, hopeful blueprint for resisting and defeating the new far right. The book is both a chilling portrait of contemporary fascism, and a compelling history of the fascist phenomenon: its psychological roots, political theories and genocidal logic. Fascism, Mason powerfully argues, is a symptom of capitalist failure, and it has haunted us throughout the twentieth century. History shows us the conditions that breed fascism, and how it can be successfully overcome. But it is up to us in the present to challenge it, and time is running out. From the ashes of COVID-19, we have an opportunity to create a fairer, more equal society. To do so, we must ask ourselves: what kind of world do we want to live in? And what are we going to do about it?

An accessible new study the spread of fascism and the far immediately after the First World War and the resulting disastrous consequences across Europe.

Anthropologist and social critic Ghassan Hage explores one of the most complex and troubling of modern phenomena: the desire for a white nation. In this prickly, strongly argued book, he asks whether that desire is indeed limited to "racists." Drawing upon the Australian experience, Hage draws conclusions that might also be applicable in France, the United States, of Great Britian, each being examples of multicultural environment under the control of white culture. Hage argues that governments have promise white citizens they would lose nothing under multiculturalism. But on the ground - where people live - migrant settlement has changed neighborhoods, challenged white control, created new demands from non-whites, and led to white backlash. This provocative book suggessts that white racists and white multiculturalists may share more assumptions than either group suspects.

'Meticulous... Probably the most disturbing portrait of Hitler I have ever read' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times By the summer of 1939 Hitler was at the zenith of his power. Yet despite initial triumphs in the early stages of war, the Fuhrer's fortunes would turn dramatically as the conflict raged on. Realising that victory was lost, and with Soviet troops closing in on his Berlin bunker, Hitler committed suicide in April 1945; one week later, Nazi Germany surrendered. His murderous ambitions had not only annihilated his own country, but had cost the lives of millions across Europe. In the final volume of this landmark biography, Volker Ullrich argues that the very qualities - and the defects - that accounted for Hitler's popularity and rise to power were what brought about his ruin. A keen strategist and meticulous military commander, he was also a deeply insecure gambler who could be shaken by the smallest setback, and was quick to blame subordinates for his own disastrous mistakes. Drawing on a wealth of new sources and scholarship, this is the definitive portrait of the man who dragged the world into chaos.

The White Rose tells the story of Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, who in 1942 led a small underground organization of German students and professors to oppose the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazi Party. They named their group the White Rose, and they distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime. Sophie, Hans, and a third student were caught and executed.
Written by Inge Scholl (Han's and Sophie's sister), The White Rose features letters, diary excerpts, photographs of Hans and Sophie, transcriptions of the leaflets, and accounts of the trial and execution. This is a gripping account of courage and morality.
CONTRIBUTORS: Dorthe Solle.

This book analyzes sensationalized Nazi and Holocaust representations in Anglo-American cultural and political discourses. Recognizing that this history is increasingly removed from contemporary life, it explains how irreverent representations can help rejuvenate the story for successive generations of new learners. Surveying seventy-five-years of transatlantic activities, the work erects counterposing categorizes of "constructive and destructive memorializing," providing scholars with a new framework for elucidating both this history and its historicization.

A Daily Telegraph History Book of the Year 'An astonishing story... brilliantly told' Antony Beevor 'Gripping... Will appeal to anyone who relishes Ben Macintyre's tales of wartime espionage and cryptic codes.' Sunday Telegraph Summertime, 1935. On a lake near Berlin, a young man is out sailing when he glimpses a woman reclining in the prow of a passing boat. Their eyes meet - and one of history's greatest conspiracies is born. Harro Schulze-Boysen had already shed blood in the fight against Nazism by the time he and Libertas Haas-Heye began their whirlwind romance. She joined the cause, and soon the two lovers were leading a network of antifascists that stretched across Berlin's bohemian underworld. Harro himself infiltrated German intelligence and began funnelling Nazi battle plans to the Allies, including the details of Hitler's surprise attack on the Soviet Union. But nothing could prepare Harro and Libertas for the betrayals they would suffer in this war of secrets - a struggle in which friend could be indistinguishable from foe. Drawing on unpublished diaries, letters and Gestapo files, Norman Ohler spins an unforgettable tale of love, heroism and sacrifice.

This book tells the story of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the largest nonsectarian refugee relief agency in the world. Founded in the 1930s by socialist militants, the IRC attracted the support of renowned progressives such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Norman Thomas, and Reinhold Niebuhr. But by the 1950s it had been absorbed into the American foreign policy establishment. Throughout the Cold War, the IRC was deeply involved in the volatile confrontations between the two superpowers and participated in an array of sensitive clandestine operations. The IRC thus evolved from a small organization of committed activists to a global operation functioning as one link in the CIA's covert network.

The life of Jorian Jenks (1899-1963) has great potential to upset settled assumptions. Why did a sensitive and intelligent man from a liberal family become a fascist? How did a Blackshirt go green? The son of an eminent academic, from his childhood onwards Jenks instead longed to farm. Lacking the means to do so, he worked as a farm bailiff and then, in New Zealand, as a government agricultural instructor. Finally, a legacy permitted him to come home and become a tenant farmer. Struggling to survive in the economic depression of the 1930s, he became an author and activist for rural reconstruction. Then, having lost faith in the established parties, he joined the British Union of Fascists. Becoming one of the Blackshirts' leading figures, he was imprisoned without trial during the war. On his release, Jenks returned to the struggle, this time in the cause of ecology, becoming a pioneer of today's organic movement and a founder of the Soil Association. This book draws on an extensive range of sources, a large proportion of which were previously unseen by historians. For the first time, it portrays the private and public life of this unusual man, revealing many hitherto un-glimpsed facets of Jenks' life.

Hugh Trevor-Roper was one of the most gifted historians of the 20th century. His scholarly interests ranged widely - from the Puritan Revolution to the Scottish Enlightenment. Yet he was also fascinated by the events of his own lifetime and wrote widely on issues of espionage and intelligence, as well as maintaining a fascination with the workings - and personalities - of Nazi Germany. In this volume, a variety of contributors - many of whom knew Trevor-Roper personally - engage with his scholarship and analyse his finest achievements as an historian. Covering the full range of Trevor-Roper's interests, this book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to better understand this great academic and his work.

This book traces the many efforts of the German Resistance to forge alliances with Hitler's opponents outside Germany. The Allied agencies, notably the British Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department, were ill-prepared to deal with the unorthodox approaches of the Widerstand. Ultimately, the Allies' policy of "absolute silence," the Grand Alliance with the Soviet Union, and the demand for "unconditional surrender" pushed the war to its final denouement, disregarding the German Resistance. Von Klemperer's scholarly and detailed study uncovers the activities and beliefs of numerous individuals who fought against Nazism within Germany. He explores the formation of their policy and analyzes the relations of the Resistance with the Vatican and the ecumenical movement, the intelligence agencies of the Allied powers, and the resistance movements outside Germany. Measured by the conventional standards of diplomacy, the German Resistance to Hitler was a failure. However, von Klemperer shows that many of the principles and strategies of the German Resistance, albeit ignored or overridden by the Allies during wartime, were to find their place in the concerns of international relations in the post-war period.

This book offers an intriguing examination of the everyday operations of the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. How was the Gestapo able to detect the smallest signs of non-compliance with Nazi doctrines--especially "crimes" pertaining to the private spheres of social, family, and sexual life? How could the police enforce policies such as those designed to isolate Jews, or the foreign workers brought to Germany after 1939, with such apparent ease? Addressing these questions, Gellately argues that the key factor in the successful enforcement of Nazi racial policy was the willingness of German citizens to provide authorities with information about suspected "criminality." He demonstrates that without some degree of popular participation in the operation of institutions such as the Gestapo, the regime would have been seriously hampered in the "realization of the unthinkable," not only inside Germany but also in many of the occupied countries. The product of extensive archival research, this incisive study surveys the experiences of areas across Germany, drawing out national, local, and regional implications.

Mussolini in myth and memory. Paul Corner looks at the brutal reality of the Italian dictator's fascist regime and confronts the nostalgia for dictatorial rule evident today in many European countries. Mussolini has rarely been taken seriously as a totalitarian dictator; Hitler and Stalin have always cast too long a shadow. But what was a negative judgement on the Duce, considered innocuous and ineffective, has begun to work to his advantage. As has occurred with many other European dictators, present-day popular memory of Mussolini is increasingly indulgent; in Italy and elsewhere he is remembered as a strong, decisive leader and people now speak of the 'many good things' done by the regime. After all, it is said, Mussolini was not like 'the others'. Mussolini in Myth and Memory argues against this rehabilitation, documenting the inefficiencies, corruption, and violence of a highly repressive regime and exploding the myths of Fascist good government. But this short study does not limit itself to setting the record straight; it seeks also to answer the question of why there is nostalgia - not only in Italy - for dictatorial rule. Linking past history and present memory, Corner's analysis constructs a picture of the realities of the Italian regime and examines the more general problem of why, in a moment of evident crisis of western democracy, people look for strong leadership and take refuge in the memory of past dictatorships. If, in this book, Fascism is placed in its totalitarian context and Mussolini emerges firmly in the company of his fellow dictators, the study also shows how a memory of the past, formed through reliance on illusion and myth, can affect the politics of the present.

A New Yorker staff writer, investigates his grandfather, a Nazi Party Chief, in this "unflinching, gorgeously written, and deeply moving exploration of morality, family, and war” Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain ‘The book we need right now’ Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal What do we owe the past? How to make peace with a dark family history? Burkhard Bilger hardly knew his grandfather growing up. His parents immigrated to Oklahoma from Germany after World War II, and though his mother was an historian, she rarely talked about her father or what he did during the war. Then one day a packet of letters arrived from Germany, yellowing with age, and a secret history began to unfold. Karl Gönner was a schoolteacher and Nazi party member from the Black Forest. In 1940, he was sent to a village in occupied France and tasked with turning its children into proper Germans. A fervent Nazi when the war began, he grew close to the villagers over the next four years, till he came to think of himself as their protector, shielding them from his own party’s brutality. Yet he was arrested in 1946 and accused of war crimes. Was he guilty or innocent? A vicious collaborator or just an ordinary man, struggling to atone for his country’s crimes? Bilger goes to Germany to find out. What follows is a literary suspense story: a tale of chance encounters and serendipitous discoveries in villages and dusty archives across Germany and France. Intimate and far-reaching, Fatherland is an extraordinary odyssey through the great upheavals of the past century, tracing one family’s path through history’s wreckage. For readers of Bart van Es’s The Cut Out Girl or Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with the Amber Eyes, this is a story of middle lands, torn allegiances and loaded family inheritance.

For fascism, myth was reality-or was realer than the real. Fascist notions of the leader, the nation, power, and violence were steeped in mythic imagery and the fantasy of transcending history. A mythologized primordial past would inspire the heroic overthrow of a debased present to achieve a violently redeemed future. What is distinctive about fascist mythology, and how does this aspect of fascism help explain its perils in the past and present? Federico Finchelstein draws on a striking combination of thinkers-Jorge Luis Borges, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Schmitt-to consider fascism as a form of political mythmaking. He shows that Borges's literary and critical work and Freud's psychoanalytic writing both emphasize the mythical and unconscious dimensions of fascist politics. Finchelstein considers their ideas of the self, violence, and the sacred as well as the relationship between the victims of fascist violence and the ideological myths of its perpetrators. He draws on Freud and Borges to analyze the work of a variety of Latin American and European fascist intellectuals, with particular attention to Schmitt's political theology. Contrasting their approaches to the logic of unreason, Finchelstein probes the limits of the dichotomy between myth and reason and shows the centrality of this opposition to understanding the ideology of fascism. At a moment when forces redolent of fascism cast a shadow over world affairs, this book provides a timely historical and critical analysis of the dangers of myth in modern politics.

Who was the scientific progenitor of eugenic thought? Amir Teicher challenges the preoccupation with Darwin's eugenic legacy by uncovering the extent to which Gregor Mendel's theory of heredity became crucial in the formation - and radicalization - of eugenic ideas. Through a compelling analysis of the entrenchment of genetic thinking in the social and political policies in Germany between 1900 and 1948, Teicher exposes how Mendelian heredity became saturated with cultural meaning, fed racial anxieties, reshaped the ideal of the purification of the German national body and ultimately defined eugenic programs. Drawing on scientific manuscripts and memoirs, bureaucratic correspondence, court records, school notebooks and Hitler's table talk as well as popular plays and films, Social Mendelism presents a new paradigm for understanding links between genetics and racism, and between biological and social thought.