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.

How valid are the assertions of contemporary radicals who insist that they are "Marxists"? A. James Gregor measures the distance that separates today's radicals from the belief system of Marx and Engels. He finds that the characteristic qualities of modern mass-mobilizing movements bear more impressive similarities to the paradigmatic Fascism of Benito Mussolini than to "classical Marxism." Thus he offers a new conceptual framework for the analysis of contemporary totalitarian movements and established regimes. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Adolf Hitler was the first head of state to have his own personal pilot and airplane. His interest in aviation as a propaganda weapon as well as transportation led him to order the establishment of a special air squadron, the Fliegerstaffel des Fuehrers. To command this unique unit, he chose Hans Baur, veteran World War I combat ace and pioneering airline pilot. During the 1930s and World War II, the Fuehrer's own pilot and special aircraft flew the famous and the infamous. Baur flew Hitler, his inner circle and visiting dignitaries throughout Europe, to Hitler's secret headquarters and to the far-flung battlefields of the Eastern Front.

Treating the tumultuous period from 1901 to the late 1920s, this book describes social and political conflict in the cradle of agrarian fascism

Originally published in 1983.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

'I go with the certainty of a sleepwalker along the path laid out for me by Providence' Adolf Hitler, 14 March 1936

More than half a century after his suicide and the destruction of his entire movement, Hitler continues to prey on the modern mind to a degree which is quite unique. The sheer scale of the evils he unleashed on the world have made him a demonic figure without equal in modern history.

Ian Kershaw's Hitler allows us to come closer than ever before to a serious understanding of the man and of the catastrophic sequence of events which allowed a bizarre misfit to climb from a Viennese doss-house to leadership of one of Europe's most sophisticated countries.

With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, this biography re-creates the world which first thwarted and then nurtured the young Hitler - from his Habsburg provincial roots to pre-War Vienna, from the crucible of the Great War to the toxic political world of 1920s Bavaria.

As Hitler's seemingly pitiful fantasy of being Germany's saviour attracted more and more support, Kershaw brilliantly conveys why so many Germans adored him, connived with him or felt powerless to resist him. At so many points the German élites could have prevented Hitler's rise but each time they misjudged the monster in their midst, until it was too late.

The book ends in 1936 with the march into the Rhineland. Through this extraordinary coup Hitler gained an unassailable hold over both the German people and the German military. Looking back on his astonishing triumphs Hitler now fully believed in his own cult: there was nothing he could not achieve. With Germany now firmly (and willingly) under his heel, he turned his eyes to the wider world.

The volume contains the most systematic documentation available in English of the Nazi programmes of racial and eugenic extermination, including a case study of the occupation of Poland. There is a general account of the Nazi empire and of the development of German occupation policies, and the book also covers German foreign policy 1933-1945. Following the opening up of the archives in Eastern Europe, the past decade has seen the publication of important research on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, and three chapters have been substantially revised in the light of this research.

Foreign volunteers fought on behalf of General Franco and the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War for a right-wing cause whose aim was to smash democracy. These assorted adventurers, fascists, and Catholic crusaders were on the winning side, but their role has remained strangely hidden until now. Men from Portugal and Morocco signed on for money and adventure. General Eoin O'Duffy organised 700 Irishmen in a modern Crusade; 500 Catholic Frenchmen fought in the 'Jeanne D'Arc' unit; and thirty British volunteers, including aristocrats and working-class fascists, also took up arms. Romanian Iron Guard extremists died at Majadahonda and an Indian volunteer fought in the fascist militia. There were Russians, Americans, Finns, Belgians, Greeks, Cubans, and many more. Goose-stepping alongside the volunteers were fascist conscripts from Germany and Italy, in training for the next world war. Foreigners, whether unknown individuals like British pilot Cecil Bebb or infamous figures like the German dictator Adolf Hitler, were essential to Franco's victory. Without Bebb - - who flew General Francisco Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco in 1936, a journey which was to precipitate the onset of the Spanish Civil War - - the war would never have started; without Hitler, Franco would never have won.

This book explores the fascist influences that continue to permeate modern culture and thought. Through a skillful combination of historical narrative, cultural criticism and theological analysis, the author demonstrates how fascism, perhaps unknowingly, affects our thinking. The author also offers guidance and hope for those shaken by ideological crosscurrents as he convincingly demonstrates that Christian theology does not stifle the truth.

Marion Cave Rosselli is remembered as the 'perfect companion' of the Italian Antifascist leader Carlo Rosselli, assassinated in Paris in June 1937. But little is known about the young English student fired with revolutionary enthusiasm who moved to Florence in 1919, witnessed the violent march of fascism to power and thereafter became a resolute adversary of the Mussolini dictatorship. Based on a wealth of little-used private and public archives, this biography retraces her journey from a modest home on the outskirts of London to the first underground Antifascist opposition in Italy, from the prison island of Lipari to exile in Paris and the United States. It reveals the social, cultural and existential factors which underpinned her unflinching political engagement alongside her husband. It also highlights the many challenges faced by Antifascist women within a highly patriarchal movement by bringing to life the figure of a woman who challenged the traditional division of labour within the family and struggled to carve a political role for herself. Reconstructing Marion Cave Rosselli's experience in relation to the multiple political, social and cultural worlds she moved in, this book broadens our understanding of the Antifascist movement and offers a richly detailed portrait of a time full of hopes, anxieties and disappointments.

"Robert Proctor is an outstanding historian of science and an outstanding historian of the Third Reich. By establishing Nazism's pioneering contributions in the areas of preventive medicine, environmentalism, and public health, he takes us right to the heart of the most difficult questions in the analysis of fascism. His treatment of smoking and cancer will be a revelation. This book troubles the politics and ethics of historical interpretation in the very best ways."--Geoff Eley, author of "Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism" and "Political Change after Bismarck"

"Racily and wittily written, Proctor's interesting book is a brilliant demonstration of how marginal the Nazi past has become to contemporary health issues. A conclusion long since obvious to the former inhabitants of Bosnia or Rwanda, shot or hacked to death, in the very long shadow of the Holocaust."--Michael Burleigh, author of "Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide"

"A profound and provocative analysis of the very essence of medical research and health policy. While Robert Proctor focuses on cancer research in Nazi Germany, his book is a detailed examination of the basic value system underlying medical research and public health policy. This unsettling and fascinating account is a 'must read' for every medical scientist."--William E. Seidelman, M.D., University of Toronto

"This book is a major contribution to the history of science and medicine in the Nazi era. Nazism emerges as a kind of vast hygienic experiment that tried to create an exclusionist utopia, by using both 'good science' and laudable health drives, along with murderous practices aimed at the Jews and others deemed to be'unworthy of life.' The book should be of interest to anyone concerned about the ethical, political, and social implications of modern science."--Robert Gellately, author of "The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy"

"Robert Proctor has once again produced a brilliant volume that will both fascinate and infuriate readers.... Just as he did in his previous book "Racial Hygiene" Proctor's analysis tears at the very fabric of our belief that good science is moral science. ...This book will force all of us to sit up and think about the consequences of our actions and our moral responsibilities to account for just what we are doing in the name of scientific neutrality and objectivity."--David Rosner, author of "Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth Century America"

"Professor Proctor has written a compelling and wonderfully readable account of how Nazi physicians confronted cancer. Sophisticated research went with racial megalomania, as German researchers targeted diet, occupation, smoking, and radium as cancer-inducing. Understanding the Nazi politics of medical research and disease eradication is both haunting and instructive for modern efforts to overcome cancer."--Paul Weindling, author of "Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945"

"Proctor's book should fundamentally alter the way we view science under the swastika. Without minimizing either the crimes of the Nazi regime or the complexity of its internal politics, Proctor shows that National Socialist health initiatives ran the entire spectrum from barbaric to benign. This should be essential reading, not just for historians of scienceand medicine, but for anyone interested in the history of the Third Reich."--Diane Paul, author of "Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present" and "The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nurture Debate"

"A fascinating account of medical and public-health ideas and policies in Nazi Germany. Its ironic emphasis on the--in retrospect--'rational' aspects of Hitler-era attitudes toward environmental contaminants, tobacco, and diet underlines the complex and contingent relationships among medicine, ideology, science, and policy."--Charles Rosenberg, author of "Explaining Epidemics"

"Lively prose and clear organization make this a wonderful book. "The Nazi War on Cancer" makes a major contribution to the field of Nazi history, with its attention to 'progressive' concerns within repressive and racialized settings. Rather than 'normalizing' evil, Proctor refines it in his sustained discussions of the ethical paradoxes he has encountered in his research."--Claudia Koonz, Duke University

"This book is interesting, informative, original, well-researched and well-written, and critical yet balanced in its judgments. It breaks new ground, and should attract considerable interest among and beyond historians of science, medicine, and National Socialism."--Mark Walker, Union College

"This book is interesting, informative, original, well-researched and well-written, and critical yet balanced in its judgments. It should attract considerable interest among and beyond historians of science, medicine, and National Socialism."--Mark Walker, author of "German National Socialism" and the "Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939-1949 and Nazi Science"

Liberated, licentious, or merely liberal, the sexual freedoms of Germany's Weimar Republic have become legendary. The home of the world's first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a progressive, secular vision of sexual liberation. Immortalized - however misleadingly - in Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and the musical Cabaret, Weimar's freedoms have become a touchstone for the politics of sexual emancipation. Yet, as Laurie Marhoefer shows in Sex and Weimar Republic, those sexual freedoms were only obtained at the expense of a minority who were deemed sexually disordered. In Weimar Germany, the citizen's right to sexual freedom came with a duty to keep sexuality private, non-commercial, and respectable. Sex and the Weimar Republic examines the rise of sexual tolerance through the debates which surrounded "immoral" sexuality: obscenity, male homosexuality, lesbianism, transgender identity, heterosexual promiscuity, and prostitution. It follows the sexual politics of a swath of Weimar society ranging from sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld to Nazi stormtrooper Ernst Rohm. Tracing the connections between toleration and regulation, Marhoefer's observations remain relevant to the politics of sexuality today.

"The Devil in History" is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the authorOCOs personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth centuryOCOs experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of charisma of leaders within these political movements, the place of violence within these systems, and their legacies in contemporary politics.The author discusses thinkers who have shaped contemporary understanding of totalitarian movementsOCopeople such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, Fran ois Furet, Tony Judt, Ian Kershaw, Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Pipes, and Robert C. Tucker. As much a theoretical analysis of the practical philosophies of Marxism-Leninism and Fascism as it is a political biography of particular figures, this book deals with the incarnation of diabolically nihilistic principles of human subjugation and conditioning in the name of presumably pure and purifying goals. Ultimately, the author claims that no ideological commitment, no matter how absorbing, should ever prevail over the sanctity of human life. He comes to the conclusion that no party, movement, or leader holds the right to dictate to the followers to renounce their critical faculties and to embrace a pseudo-miraculous, a mystically self-centered, delusional vision of mandatory happiness."

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.

In this book, acclaimed historian David Brewer investigates explores 1940s Greece -- one of the most tumultuous decades in Greece's modern history. Beginning in 1941, the occupation of Greece by Germany was intensely brutal: children starved on the streets of Athens; the Jewish population was decimated in the Holocaust; heroic acts of resistance were met with vicious reprisals. When Greece was finally freed from Nazi rule in 1944, the fractured and embittered nation became engulfed in civil war, as conflict flared between the British and American-sponsored government and communist-led rebels. In Greece, The Decade of War, Brewer expertly analyses these events and in doing so provides a compelling military and political history.

Fascism has traditionally been characterized as irrational and anti-intellectual, finding expression exclusively as a cluster of myths, emotions, instincts, and hatreds. This intellectual history of Italian Fascism--the product of four decades of work by one of the leading experts on the subject in the English-speaking world--provides an alternative account. A. James Gregor argues that Italian Fascism may have been a flawed system of belief, but it was neither more nor less irrational than other revolutionary ideologies of the twentieth century. Gregor makes this case by presenting for the first time a chronological account of the major intellectual figures of Italian Fascism, tracing how the movement's ideas evolved in response to social and political developments inside and outside of Italy.

Gregor follows Fascist thought from its beginnings in socialist ideology about the time of the First World War--when Mussolini himself was a leader of revolutionary socialism--through its evolution into a separate body of thought and to its destruction in the Second World War. Along the way, Gregor offers extended accounts of some of Italian Fascism's major thinkers, including Sergio Panunzio and Ugo Spirito, Alfredo Rocco (Mussolini's Minister of Justice), and Julius Evola, a bizarre and sinister figure who has inspired much contemporary "neofascism."

Gregor's account reveals the flaws and tensions that dogged Fascist thought from the beginning, but shows that if we want to come to grips with one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century, we nevertheless need to understand that Fascism had serious intellectual as well as visceral roots.

This volume continues the series that scrutinizes, from a risk perspective, the current phenomenon of authoritarianism, as displayed by the new radical right (also known as alternative right), and whether it represents real democracy or an unacceptable hegemony potentially resulting in elected dictatorships and abuses as well as dysfunctional government and harm to many parties. The book identifies and analyzes risk issues arising from the radical-right phenomenon in many forms, including the personal safety and security of individual citizens, ethno-religious minorities, and other minorities and vulnerable groups, as well as threats to organizations, public order and national security, to democratic governance, and to international security. As chapters reveal, the cross-flow of ideological, organizational, and dark money support emanating primarily from US corporate foundations, lubricates the fusion of corporate and radical-right interests nationally, transnationally, and globally. This volume gathers contributions from eight leading academic authors and provides a detailed examination of the fusion of mutual interests between, on the one hand, powerful corporate leaders, executives, and wealthy oligarchs and, on the other, radical-right political leaders, parties and intermediary organizations promoting radical-right causes. The two worlds feed off, enable, and strengthen each other. Of particular relevance to the third decade of the 21st century is an examination of the corporate/radical-right stance on the COVID-19 pandemic and the phenomenon of wild allegations and grand conspiracy theories disseminated by the radical-right against their enemies.

During World War II, jazz embodied everything that was appealing about a democratic society as envisioned by the Western Allied powers. Labelled 'degenerate' by Hitler's cultural apparatus, jazz was adopted by the Allies to win the hearts and minds of the German public. It was also used by the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, to deliver a message of Nazi cultural and military superiority. When Goebbels co-opted young German and foreign musicians into 'Charlie and his Orchestra' and broadcast their anti-Allied lyrics across the English Channel, jazz took centre stage in the propaganda war that accompanied World War II on the ground. The Jazz War is based on the largely unheard oral testimony of the personalities behind the German and British wartime radio broadcasts, and chronicles the evolving relationship between jazz music and the Axis and Allied war efforts. Studdert shows how jazz both helped and hindered the Allied cause as Nazi soldiers secretly tuned in to British radio shows while London party-goers danced the night away in demimonde `bottle parties', leading them to be branded a `menace' in Parliament. This book will appeal to students of the history of jazz, broadcasting, cultural studies, and the history of World War II.

Photography and fascism in interwar Europe developed into a highly toxic and combustible formula. Particularly in concert with aggressive display techniques, the European fascists were utterly convinced of their ability to use the medium of photography to manufacture consent among their publics. Unfortunately, as we know in hindsight, they succeeded. Other dictatorial regimes in the 1930s harnessed this powerful combination of photography and exhibitions for their own odious purposes. But this book, for the first time, focuses on the particularly consequential dialectic between Germany and Italy in the early-to-mid 1930s, and within each of those countries vis-a-vis display culture. The 1930s provides a potent case study for every generation, and it is as urgent as ever in our global political environment to deeply understand the central role of visual imagery in what transpired. Photofascism demonstrates precisely how dictatorial regimes use photographic mass media, methodically and in combination with display, to persuade the public with often times highly destructive-even catastrophic-results.

Dissonant Lives is not a standard 'history of Germany' in the twentieth century, or even of the German dictatorships. It is concerned with the ways in which Germans of different ages and life stages lived through this terrible period in German history, and how they interpreted, confronted, and responded to the multiple challenges of their times. In volume one, Mary Fulbrook examines the violent eruptions of the two world wars and the rise of Nazism, exploring the experiences and perceptions of selected individuals, and how major historical events affected the course of their lives and their outlooks. In doing so, she provides a new understanding of the ways in which not only the character of the German state, economy, and social structure changed over the century, but also the very character of the German people themselves.

How remittances-money sent by workers back to their home countries-support democratic expansion In the growing body of work on democracy, little attention has been paid to its links with migration. Migration and Democracy focuses on the effects of worker remittances-money sent by migrants back to their home countries-and how these resources shape political action in the Global South. Remittances are not only the largest source of foreign income in most autocratic countries, but also, in contrast to foreign aid or international investment, flow directly to citizens. As a result, they provide resources that make political opposition possible, and they decrease government dependency, undermining the patronage strategies underpinning authoritarianism. The authors discuss how international migration produces a decentralized flow of income that generally circumvents governments to reach citizens who act as democratizing agents. Documenting why dictatorships fall and how this process has changed in the last three decades, the authors show that remittances increase the likelihood of protest and reduce electoral support for authoritarian incumbents. Combining global macroanalysis with microdata and case studies of Senegal and Cambodia, Migration and Democracy demonstrates how remittances-and the movement of people from authoritarian nations to higher-income countries-foster democracy and its expansion.

"Few books on European history in recent memory have caused such controversy and commotion", wrote Robert Wohl in 1991 in a major review of Neither Right nor Left. Listed by Le Monde as one of the forty most important books published in France during the 1980s, this explosive work asserts that fascism was an important part of the mainstream of European history, not just a temporary development in Germany and Italy but a significant aspect of French culture as well. Neither right nor left, fascism united antibourgeois, antiliberal nationalism and revolutionary syndicalist thought, each of which joined in rejecting the political culture inherited from eighteenth-century France. From the first, Sternhell's argument generated strong feelings among people who wished to forget the Vichy years, and his themes drew enormous public attention in 1994, as Paul Touvier was condemned for crimes against humanity and a new biography probed President Mitterand's Vichy connections. The author's new preface to the paperback edition of Neither Right nor Left speaks to the debates of 1994 and reinforces the necessity of acknowledging the past, as President Chirac has recently done on France's behalf.

In "Regulatory Politics in Transition" Marc Eisner argues that to understand fully the importance of regulatory policy we need to survey the critical policy shifts brought about during the Progressive period, the New Deal, and the contemporary period. Eisner adopts a regulatory regime framework to address the combination of policy change and institutional innovation across multiple policies in each period.

For each of these periods Eisner examines economic structural changes and the prevailing political economic and administrative theories that conditioned the design of new policies and institutions. Throughout, Eisner adds a valuable historical dimension to the discussion of regulation, by showing how policies and institutions were shaped by particular historical and political circumstances. The new edition examines how the efficiency regime of the 1980s found a new expression in the regulatory reinvention during the Clinton presidency. Moreover, it explores the impact of globalization trends and international regimes upon the politics of regulation and asks whether a new global regime is on the horizon.

A groundbreaking history of Europe's "new lefts," from the antifascist 1920s to the anti-establishment 1960s In the 1960s, the radical youth of Western Europe's New Left rebelled against the democratic welfare state and their parents' antiquated politics of reform. It was not the first time an upstart leftist movement was built on the ruins of the old. This book traces the history of neoleftism from its antifascist roots in the first half of the twentieth century, to its postwar reconstruction in the 1950s, to its explosive reinvention by the 1960s counterculture. Terence Renaud demonstrates why the left in Europe underwent a series of internal revolts against the organizational forms of established parties and unions. He describes how small groups of militant youth such as New Beginning in Germany tried to sustain grassroots movements without reproducing the bureaucratic, hierarchical, and supposedly obsolete structures of Social Democracy and Communism. Neoleftist militants experimented with alternative modes of organization such as councils, assemblies, and action committees. However, Renaud reveals that these same militants, decades later, often came to defend the very institutions they had opposed in their youth. Providing vital historical perspective on the challenges confronting leftists today, this book tells the story of generations of antifascists, left socialists, and anti-authoritarians who tried to build radical democratic alternatives to capitalism and kindle hope in reactionary times.