Winner of the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research The scale and the depth of Nazi brutality seem to defy understanding. What could drive people to fight, kill, and destroy with such ruthless ambition? Observers and historians have offered countless explanations since the 1930s. According to Johann Chapoutot, we need to understand better how the Nazis explained it themselves. We need a clearer view, in particular, of how they were steeped in and spread the idea that history gave them no choice: it was either kill or die. Chapoutot, one of France's leading historians, spent years immersing himself in the texts and images that reflected and shaped the mental world of Nazi ideologues, and that the Nazis disseminated to the German public. The party had no official ur-text of ideology, values, and history. But a clear narrative emerges from the myriad works of intellectuals, apparatchiks, journalists, and movie-makers that Chapoutot explores. The story went like this: In the ancient world, the Nordic-German race lived in harmony with the laws of nature. But since Late Antiquity, corrupt foreign norms and values-Jewish values in particular-had alienated Germany from itself and from all that was natural. The time had come, under the Nazis, to return to the fundamental law of blood. Germany must fight, conquer, and procreate, or perish. History did not concern itself with right and wrong, only brute necessity. A remarkable work of scholarship and insight, The Law of Blood recreates the chilling ideas and outlook that would cost millions their lives.

The far right is on the rise across Europe, pushing a battle scenario in which Islam clashes with Christianity as much as Christianity clashes with Islam. From the margins to the mainstream, far-right protesters and far-right politicians call for the defence of Europe's Christian culture. The far right claims Christianity. This book investigates contemporary far-right claims to Christianity. Ulrich Schmiedel and Hannah Strommen examine the theologies that emerge in the far right across Europe, concentrating on Norway, Germany and Great Britain. They explore how churches in these three countries have been complicit, complacent or critical of the far right, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. Ultimately, Schmiedel and Strommen encourage a creative and collaborative theological response. To counter the far right, Christianity needs to be practiced in an open and open-ended way which calls Christians into contact with Muslims.

While fascism perhaps reached its peak in the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini, it continues to permeate governments today. This reference work explores the history of fascism and how it has shaped daily life up to the present day. Perhaps the most notable example of Fascism was Hitler's Nazi Germany. Fascists aimed to control the media and other social institutions, and Fascist views and agendas informed a wide range of daily life and popular culture. But while Fascism flourished around the world in the decades before and after World War II, it continues to shape politics and government today. This reference explores the history of Fascism around the world and across time, with special attention to how Fascism has been more than a political philosophy but has instead played a significant role in the lives of everyday people. Volume one begins with a introduction that surveys the history of Fascism around the world and follows with a timeline citing key events related to Fascism. Roughly 180 alphabetically arranged reference entries follow. These entries discuss such topics as conditions for working people, conditions for women, Fascist institutions that regulated daily life, attitudes toward race, physical culture, the arts, and more. Primary source documents give readers first-hand accounts of Fascist thought and practice. A selected bibliography directs users to additional resources. A timeline lists and describes key events related to fascism An overview essay surveys the history and significance of fascism around the world Alphabetically arranged reference entries provide information about fascist thought and daily life up to the present day Entries cite works for further reading and provide cross-references A selection of annotated primary source documents gives readers first-hand accounts of fascism in theory and practice A selected, general bibliography directs readers to the most important resources on fascism

The trial of major Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg was a landmark event in the development of modern international law, and continues to be highly influential in our understanding of international criminal law and post-conflict justice. This volume offers a unique collection of the most important essays written on the Trial, discussing the key legal, political and philosophical questions raised by the Trial both at the time and in historical perspective.
The collection focuses on pieces from those involved in the Tribunal, discussing the establishment of the Tribunal, the Trial itself, and the debate that followed the Judgment. Also included are representative essays of the academic debate that has surrounded Nuremberg in the sixty years since the Trial. Ranging from the contribution of Nuremberg to the substantive development of international criminal law to the philosophical evaluation of legalism in post-conflict international relations, the perspectives provided by the essays offer a unique overview of the persistent significance of Nuremberg across a range of academic disciplines.
The collection also features newly translated essays from key German, Russian and French writers, available in English for the first time; a new essay by Guenael Mettraux examining the Nuremberg legacy in contemporary international criminal justice, and an exhaustive bibliography of the literature on Nuremberg.

Following the brutal invasion and occupation of Poland, the Nazis moved swiftly to realize one of their key ideological aims, the expansion of German living space: deport Jews, bring in German settlers and subjugate the rest of the population to a selection process to separate Poles from ethnic Germans. As simple as this might have seemed initially, the various parts of the German occupation machinery soon found themselves embroiled in a bitter fight about the essence of Germanness and how to identify a German. Gerhard Wolf reveals an astonishing development in which a more inclusivist understanding of Germanness based on a more traditional notion of Volk eventually won out against one that was based on Rasse and much more exclusivist. This had important implications, as Wolf can show, as it paved the way for turning around three million Poles into German citizens. Parallel to the mass deportation and mass murder of Christian Poles and the genocide of Jewish Poles, the Nazis paradoxically thus also presided over the largest (forced) assimilation program in German history. Students and scholars of the Polish occupation, the Holocaust, and Nazism will find new analysis of German imperialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in this important book.

A Globe and Mail Fall 2019 Book to Watch Whoever you are, you are sure to be a severe critic of Fascism, and you must feel the servile shame. But even you are responsible for your inaction. Do not seek to justify yourself with the illusion that there is nothing to be done. That is not true. Every person of courage and honour is quietly working for a free Italy. Even if you do not want to join us, there are still TEN THINGS which you can do. You can, and therefore you must. These unsayable words, printed on leaflets that rained down on Mussolini's headquarters in the heart of Rome at the height of the dictator's power, drive the central drama of Possess the Air. This is the story of freedom fighters who defied Italy's despot by opposing the rising tide of populism and xenophobia. Chief among them: poet and aviator Lauro de Bosis, firstborn of an Italian aristocrat and a New Englander, who transformed himself into a modern Icarus and amazed the world as he risked his life in the skies to bring Il Duce down. Taras Grescoe's inspiring story of resistance, risk, and sacrifice paints a portrait of heroes in the fight against authoritarianism. This is an essential biography for our time.

6 June, 1944. 156,000 troops from 12 different countries, 11,000 aircraft, 7,000 naval vessels, 24 hours. D-Day - the beginning of the Allied invasion of Hitler's formidable 'Fortress Europe' - was the largest amphibious invasion in history. There has never been a battle like it, before or since. But beyond the statistics and over sixty years on, what is it about the events of D-Day that remain so compelling? The courage of the men who fought and died on the beaches of France? The sheer boldness of the invasion plan? Or the fact that this, Rommel's 'longest day', heralded the beginning of the end of World War II? One of the defining battles of the war, D-Day is scored into the imagination as the moment when the darkness of the Third Reich began to be swept away. This is the story of D-Day, told through the voices of over 1,000 survivors - from high-ranking Allied and German officers, to the paratroopers who landed in Normandy before dawn, the infantry who struggled ashore and the German troops who defended the coast. Cornelius Ryan captures the horror and the glory of D-Day, relating in emotive and compelling detail the years of inspired tactical planning that led up to the invasion, its epic implementation and every stroke of luck and individual act of heroism that would later define the battle. In the words of its author, The Longest Day is a story not of war, but of the courage of men.

This volume focuses on the dramatic developments in Italian history from 1900 to 1945. It presents a lively discussion of Italy's experiences of modernization, two world wars, and the impact of the totalitarian Fascist experiment. Among the many topics covered by the book are the rise and fall of Fascism, Italy's industrial revolution, changes in everyday life, the Futurist movement in the arts, and Gramsci's political philosophy.

Der Band schliesst an den 1999 in zwei Teilen erschienenen Bd. II: 1934/35 an und dokumentiert wie dieser in reprasentativer Auswahl die Gesamtpolitik der Regierung Hitlers. 212 aufwandig kommentierte Aktenstucke fuhren zu den wesentlichen Problemen, mit denen die Reichsregierung konfrontiert war, und hellen Entscheidungsablaufe im Vorfeld wichtiger Gesetze und Erlasse und ihre Intentionen auf. Dazu wird neben dem Fonds der Reichskanzlei-Akten auch die Uberlieferung der Reichsministerien systematisch herangezogen. Mitberucksichtigt sind unvollendete Projekte, welche die Ziele des Nationalsozialismus oft in besonderer Weise charakterisieren. Im Anhang werden wiederum alle "Fuhrervortrage" des Chefs der Reichskanzlei regestenartig nachgewiesen. Gilt das Olympiajahr 1936 in landlaufiger Sicht als eine Phase relativer Friedfertigkeit und Ruhe, so vermitteln die amtlichen Dokumente das Bild eines Jahres, das in mehrfacher Beziehung unverkennbar Schwellencharakter tragt: Der Vierjahresplan leitete in einen Zustand permanenter Mobilmachung uber, deren erklartes Ziel die kriegerische Ausweitung des deutschen "Lebensraums" war; das Rustungsvolumen begann die Soliditat der Staatsfinanzen vollends zu untergraben; die Aussenhandelskrise weitete sich zur allgemeinen Versorgungskrise, Lohne und Preise wurden nur dank rigider Eingriffe in labiler Balance gehalten; in den durch Staatsauftrage aufgeblahten Branchen schlug die eben erreichte Vollbeschaftigung in Arbeitskraftemangel um. Dagegen stagnierte die angekundigte nationalsozialistische "Rechtserneuerung," wie Hitler auch die Reichs- und Verwaltungsreform einstellte. In der Rassenpolitik erubrigte das Ziel vollstandiger Vertreibung der Juden jeden weiteren Versuch, wenigstens ihren Minderstatus verlassig zu fixieren. Auch mit der Abdrangung der Kirchen aus ihrer offentlichen Stellung machte das Regime nun ernst. Aus der Presse: "Die Dokumentations- und Editionsgrundsatze der gesamten Reihe bewahren sich auch in diesem Band. Er vermittelt mit seiner dichten und somit das diktatoriale System aus der Perspektive einer Schlusselinstitution gut erfassenden Quellenauswahl einen tiefen und exemplarisch zu nennenden Eindruck." Bernd Sosemann in der FAZ vom 08.08.2003"

Benito Mussolini has persistently been described as an 'actor' - and also as a master of illusions. In her vividly narrated account of the Italian dictator's relationship with the theatre, Patricia Gaborik discards any metaphorical notions of Il Duce as a performer and instead tells the story of his life as literal spectator, critic, impresario, dramatist and censor of the stage. Discussing the ways in which the autarch's personal tastes and convictions shaped, in fascist Italy, theatrical programming, she explores Mussolini's most significant dramatic influences, his association with important figures such as Luigi Pirandello, Gabriele D'Annunzio and George Bernard Shaw, his oversight of stage censorship, and his forays into playwriting. By focusing on its subject's manoeuvres in the theatre, and manipulation of theatrical ideas, this consistently illuminating book transforms our understandings of fascism as a whole. It will have strong appeal to readers in both theatre studies and modern Italian history.

This book collects important and representative writings that respond to the Nazi atrocities and death camps. Written by theologians, literary figures, cultural critics, philosophers, and others, these writings survey the major themes in Western culture that the Holocaust raises and the most provocative and influential responses to these themes and to the Holocaust itself.

The fascinating untold story of how Nazi architects and planners envisioned and began to build a model "Aryan" society in Norway during World War II Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. From ideal new cities to a scenic superhighway stretching from Berlin to northern Norway, plans to remake the country into a model "Aryan" society fired the imaginations of Hitler, his architect Albert Speer, and other Nazi leaders. In Hitler's Northern Utopia, Despina Stratigakos provides the first major history of Nazi efforts to build a Nordic empire-one that they believed would improve their genetic stock and confirm their destiny as a new order of Vikings. Drawing on extraordinary unpublished diaries, photographs, and maps, as well as newspapers from the period, Hitler's Northern Utopia tells the story of a broad range of completed and unrealized architectural and infrastructure projects far beyond the well-known German military defenses built on Norway's Atlantic coast. These ventures included maternity centers, cultural and recreational facilities for German soldiers, and a plan to create quintessential National Socialist communities out of twenty-three towns damaged in the German invasion, an overhaul Norwegian architects were expected to lead. The most ambitious scheme-a German cultural capital and naval base-remained a closely guarded secret for fear of provoking Norwegian resistance. A gripping account of the rise of a Nazi landscape in occupied Norway, Hitler's Northern Utopia reveals a haunting vision of what might have been-a world colonized under the swastika.

This is the first book to provide a sustained critical analysis of the literary-aesthetic dimension of French fascism--the peculiarly French form of what Walter Benjamin called the fascist "aestheticizing of politics." Focusing first on three important extremist nationalist writers at the turn of the century and then on five of the most visible fascist intellectuals in France in the 1930s, David Carroll shows how both traditional and modern concepts of art figure in the elaboration of fascist ideology--and in the presentation of fascism as an art of the political.

Carroll is concerned with the internal relations of fascism and literature--how literary fascists conceived of politics as a technique for fashioning a unified people and transforming the disparate elements of society into an organic, totalized work of art. He explores the logic of such aestheticizing, as well as the assumptions about art, literature, and culture at the basis of both the aesthetics and politics of French literary fascists. His book reveals how not only classical humanism but also modern aesthetics that defend the autonomy and integrity of literature became models for xenophobic forms of nationalism and extreme "cultural" forms of anti-Semitism. A cogent analysis of the ideological function of literature and culture in fascism, this work helps us see the ramifications of thinking of literature or art as the truth or essence of politics.

STEAL THIS BOOK, NOT MY VOTE is the first-hand account of the corporate takeover of the State of Wisconsin that began in January 2011 and continues today. From inside the Capitol, learned exactly what is going on as citizens are being arrested and locked out of their own government. Find out how you can help reform election systems and bring checks and balances back to government from town halls across America to the floors of Congress in Washington DC.

Public interest in Adolf Hitler and all aspects of the Third Reich continues to grow as new generations ponder the moral questions surrounding Nazi Germany and its historical legacy. One aspect of Nazism that has not received sufficient attention from historians of the Third Reich is the doctrine’s origins in the Thule Society and its covert activities. A Munich occult group with a political agenda, the Thule Society was led by Rudolf von Sebottendorff, a German commoner who had been adopted by nobility during a sojourn in the Ottoman Empire. After returning to Europe, Sebottendorff embraced a form of theosophy that stressed the racial superiority of Aryans. The Thule Society attempted to establish an anti-Semitic, working-class front for disseminating its esoteric ideas and founded the German Workers’ Party, which Hitler would later transform into the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. Several of the society’s members eventually assumed prestigious posts in the Third Reich. David Luhrssen has written the first comprehensive study of the society’s activities, its cultural roots, and its postwar ramifications in a historical-critical context. Both general readers and academics concerned with European cultural and intellectual history will find that Hammer of the Gods opens new perspectives on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe.

Through a series of interviews Schoppmann presents the life stories of ten lesbians who lived through the Nazi era. This book is a bold reminder of the "forgotten victims" of the Third Reich.

How were the Gestapo able to detect the smallest signs of non-compliance with Nazi doctrines, and how could they enforce their racial policies with such ease? Robert Gellately argues, controversially, that there was a three-way interaction between the Gestapo, the German people, and the implementation of policy; the key factor being the willingness of German citizens to provide the authorities with information about suspected `criminality'.

General Francisco Franco (1892-1975), ruler of Spain for nearly forty years, was one of the most powerful and controversial leaders in that nation's long history. This deeply researched biography treats the three major aspects of his life-personal, military, and political. It depicts his early life, explains his career and rise to prominence as an army officer who became Europe's youngest interwar brigadier general in 1926, and then discusses his role in the affairs of the troubled Second Spanish Republic. Stanley G. Payne and Jesus Palacios examine in detail how Franco became dictator and how his leadership led to victory in the Spanish Civil War that consolidated his regime. They also explore Franco's role in the great repression that accompanied the Civil War-resulting in tens of thousands of executions-and examine at length his controversial role in World War II. This masterful biography highlights Franco's metamorphoses and adaptations to retain power as politics, culture, and economics shifted in the four decades of his dictatorship.

Why fascism was able to conquer only in those countries where social democratic or Stalinist parties blocked the workers and their allies from utilizing a revolutionary situation to remove the capitalists from power.

Fascism is a political ideology which has been identified with totalitarianism, state terror, fanaticism, orchestrated violence, and blind obedience. Yet what is fascism? Why does it hold such strong appeal? Why does it provoke charismatic and dangerous movements? To what may these lead?

With extracts written by fascist thinkers and propagandists both inside and outside Europe, before and after the Second World War, this Reader offers a fascinating insight into the breadths and depths of this expanding political force.

Following France's crushing defeat in June 1940, the Nazis moved forward with plans to reorganize a European continent now largely under Hitler's heel. While Germany's military power would set the agenda, several among the Nazi elite argued that permanent German hegemony required something more: a pan-European cultural empire that would crown Hitler's wartime conquests. At a time when the postwar European project is under strain, Benjamin G. Martin brings into focus a neglected aspect of Axis geopolitics, charting the rise and fall of Nazi-fascist "soft power" in the form of a nationalist and anti-Semitic new ordering of European culture. As early as 1934, the Nazis began taking steps to bring European culture into alignment with their ideological aims. In cooperation and competition with Italy's fascists, they courted filmmakers, writers, and composers from across the continent. New institutions such as the International Film Chamber, the European Writers Union, and the Permanent Council of composers forged a continental bloc opposed to the "degenerate" cosmopolitan modernism that held sway in the arts. In its place they envisioned a Europe of nations, one that exalted traditionalism, anti-Semitism, and the Volk. Such a vision held powerful appeal for conservative intellectuals who saw a European civilization in decline, threatened by American commercialism and Soviet Bolshevism. Taking readers to film screenings, concerts, and banquets where artists from Norway to Bulgaria lent their prestige to Goebbels's vision, Martin follows the Nazi-fascist project to its disastrous conclusion, examining the internal contradictions and sectarian rivalries that doomed it to failure.