This book by dynamic scholars James Whisker and John Coe examines the short life of the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, one of the most overlooked individuals in the pantheon of leaders in the Third Reich. Born to German mercantile parents in the Baltic region of the Russian Empire, he was a student in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. Deeply influenced by the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a propaganda pamphlet distributed by the tsar's secret police, he carried it to Germany, where he introduced it to Adolf Hitler. Rosenberg leaned heavily on heterodox Christian writings that challenged mainstream Christian thought. He revived interest in a variety of philosophies and individuals long forgotten, such as the cosmic dualistic Cathars and the mystic Master Eckart von Hochheim. Rosenberg came to view history from a perspective often called "Scientific Racism," which held that the history of humankind had been marked by a struggle between the Aryan race and their supposed inferiors. Race was the newest subject for the application of cosmic dualism, which is the spiritual belief that two fundamental concepts exist. Rosenberg identified the Nazis' task as creating a bulwark against Semitic influences from Europe generally and Germany in particular, and to do so by any means necessary. Rosenberg figured in a long anti-Jewish tradition in Germany, a tortured legacy that began with Martin Luther and continued through many of the prominent German figures of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Rosenberg considered his magnum opus, The Myth of the 20th Century, to be the logical successor work to Foundations of the 19th Century by the composer Richard Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

On 30 January 1933, Alfred Hugenberg's conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) formed a coalition government with the Nazi Party, thus enabling Hitler to accede to the chancellorship. This book analyzes in detail the complicated relationship between Conservatives and Nazis and offers a re-interpretation of the Nazi seizure of power - the decisive months between 30 January and 14 July 1933. The Machtergreifung is characterized here as a period of all-pervasive violence and lawlessness with incessant conflicts between Nazis and German Nationals and Nazi attacks on the conservative Burgertum, a far cry from the traditional depiction of the takeover as a relatively bloodless, virtually sterile assumption of power by one vast impersonal apparatus wresting control from another. The author scrutinizes the revolutionary character of the Nazi seizure of power, the Nazis' attacks on the conservative Burgertum and its values, and National Socialism's co-optation of conservative symbols of state power to serve radically new goals, while addressing the issue of why the DNVP was complicit in this and paradoxically participated in eroding the foundations of its very own principles and bases of support.

In this work Conan Fischer investigates how the public-brawling between Communists and Nazis during the Weimar Era masked a more subtle and complex relationship. It examines the way in which the National Socialists' growth across traditional class and regional barriers came to threaten the Communists on their home ground and forced them to adopt increasingly precarious, comprising strategies to confront this challenge. Encouraged by Moscow, they ascribed a qualified legitimacy to grass-roots Nazism which justified fraternisation with Hitler's ordinary supporters. Fischer's book thereby strengthens and elaborates recent perceptions of Nazism as a populist mass movement and shows the collapse of Weimar to have been even more convoluted and controversial than hitherto believed.

Carefully piecing together the personal letters of Alice 'Liesel' Schwab, Escaping Nazi Germany tells the important story of one woman's emigration from Heilbronn to England. From the decision to leave her family and emigrate alone, to gaining her independence as a shop worker and surviving the Blitz, to the reunion with her brother and parents in England and shared grief as they learn about the fate of family members who died in the Holocaust, her story provides powerful insight into both the everyday realities of German-Jewish refugees in Britain and the ability of letters and life-writing to create transnational networks during times of trauma and separation. Elegantly written and deeply researched, Joachim Schloer's emphatic and unflinching re-telling of Alice Schwab's life sheds new light on the Jewish experience of persecution during the Holocaust and adds nuances to current debates on emigration, memory, and identity. This book is an essential primary resource for scholars of modern European history and Jewish studies, offering a compelling and intimate route into understanding what it meant to be a Jewish refugee caught up in the tragic and tumultuous events of World War II.

During the Cold War Italy witnessed the existence of an anomalous version of a civil conflict, defined as a 'creeping' or a 'low-intensity' civil war. This was due both to the ideological hatred which pervaded political activists both on the right and on the left and to the deliberate exacerbation of these divisions on the part of occult strategists. Political violence escalated, including bomb attacks against civilians, starting with a massacre in Milan, on 12 December 1969, and culminating with the massacre in Bologna, on 2 August 1980. Making use of the literature on national reconciliation and narrative psychology theory, this book examines the fight over the 'judicial' and the 'historical' truth in Italy today, through a contrasting analysis of judicial findings and the 'narratives of victimhood' prevalent among representatives of both the post- and the neo-fascist right. Anna Cento Bull is Professor of Italian History and Politics at the University of Bath. Her publications include Social Identities and Political Cultures in Italy (Oxford: Berghahn, 2000); The Lega Nord and The Northern Question in Italian Politics (London: Palgrave, 2001) (with M. Gilbert) and Speaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s. (Legenda: Oxford, 2005) (edited jointly with A. Giorgio).

Based on careful, intensive research in primary sources, many of these essays break new ground in our understanding of a crucial and tumultuous period. The contributors, drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, offer an in-depth analysis of how the collective memory of Nazism and the Holocaust influenced, and was influenced by, politics and culture in West Germany in the 1960s. The contributions address a wide variety of issues, including prosecution for war crimes, restitution, immigration policy, health policy, reform of the police, German relations with Israel and the United States, nuclear non-proliferation, and, of course, student politics and the New Left protest movement. Philipp Gassert teaches Modern History at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and is DAAD Visiting Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Alan E. Steinweis is the Rosenberg Professor of Modern European History and Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Italy gave us the words 'fascism' and 'totalitarianism', yet globally the dominant image of the regime is one of an incompetent dictatorship served by soldiers who 'would not fight for love nor money on account of their languorous Latin character', as Noel Coward wrote. This book investigates Italian cinema's contribution to stereotypes of victimhood and innocence, otherwise known as Italiani brava gente, by tracing across the postwar period filmmakers, audiences, censors and the unforgettable characters of Italian cinema. The author casts an innovative eye on classic films like Rome Open City and 1900, and analyses in depth many lesser known works, to tease out recurrent trends and ongoing taboos of representation and assess them in a comparative European perspective. From the desperate resolve of neorealism to the bloated mediocrity of Berlusconian revisionist melodramas, Italian cinema has remembered selectively and silently forgotten the most shameful pages of Italy's history.

How could the Right transform itself from a politics of the nobility to a fatally attractive option for people from all parts of society? How could the Nazis gain a good third of the votes in free elections and remain popular far into their rule? A number of studies from the 1960s have dealt with the issue, in particular the works by George Mosse and Fritz Stern. Their central arguments are still challenging, but a large number of more specific studies allow today for a much more complex argument, which also takes account of changes in our understanding of German history in general. This book shows that between 1800 and 1945 the fundamentalist desire for a single communal faith played a crucial role in the radicalization of Germany's political Right. A nationalist faith could gain wider appeal, because people were searching for a sense of identity and belonging, a mental map for the modern world and metaphysical security.

Culture and the arts played a central role in the ideology and propaganda of National Socialism from the early years of the movement until the last months of the Third Reich in 1945. Hitler and his followers believed that art and culture were expressions of race, and that "Aryans" alone were capable of creating true art and preserving true German culture. This volume's essays explore these and other aspects of the arts and cultural life under National Socialism, and are authored by some of the most respected authorities in the field: Alan Steinweis, Michael Kater, Eric Rentschler, Pamela Potter, Frank Trommler, and Jonathan Petropoulos. The result is a volume that offers students and interested readers a brief but focused introduction to this important aspect of the history of Nazi Germany.

In the years between the two world wars, fascism triumphed in Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere, coming to power after intense struggles with the labour movements of those countries. This book, available in paperback for the first time, analyses the way in which the British left responded to this new challenge. How did socialists and communists in Britain explain what fascism was? What did they do to oppose it, and how successful were they? In examining the theories and actions of the Labour Party, the TUC, the Communist Party and other, smaller left-wing groups, the book explains their different approaches, while at the same time highlighting the common thread that ran through all their interpretations of fascism. The author argues that the British left has been largely overlooked in the few specific studies of anti-fascism that exist, with the focus being disproportionately applied to its European counterparts. He also takes issue with recent developments in the study of fascism, and argues that the views of the left, often derided by modern historians, are still relevant today. -- .

" . . . this volume makes a significant contribution to the field of German history, allowing experts in the field as well as researchers in other areas a forceful immersion into the workings and deployment of sexual categories and policies during and following the Third Reich. There is little doubt that it will become a standard text for teaching and future research." -Sexuality & Culture The interrelationship of fascism and sexuality has attracted a great deal of interest for some time now. This collection offers fresh perspectives by leading scholars on the history of sexuality under national socialism on such topics as the persecution of Jewish-gentile sex in the "race defilement" trials, homophobic propaganda and the prosecution of same-sex activity within the Wehrmacht and SS, representations of female sexuality in film, prostitution on home and battle fronts, sexual relations between Germans and foreign forced laborers, and reproductive practices among Jewish survivors. Moreover, the authors provide new insights into the relationships between Nazi sexual politics and antisemitism and challenge assumptions of Nazism as sexually repressive; instead they emphasize the interrelationships between incitement to sexual activity and persecution and mass murder. Dagmar Herzog is Professor of History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and the author of Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton 2004) and Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-revolutionary Baden (Princeton 1996).

No other political party in the history of Britain's fascist tradition has been as successful at the ballot box as today's British National Party (BNP). This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Contemporary British Fascism offers an in-depth study of the BNP and its quest for social and political legitimacy.

From extensive research, including a remarkable interview with the unrepentant chief of Hitler's Women's Bureau, this book traces the roles played by women - as followers, victims and resisters - in the rise of Nazism. Originally publishing in 1987, it is an important contribution to the understanding of women's status, culpability, resistance and victimisation at all levels of German society, and a record of astonishing ironies and paradoxical morality, of compromise and courage, of submission and survival.

This fascinating book examines the position of women under the Nazis. The National Socialist movement was essentially male-dominated, with a fixed conception of the role women should play in society; while man was the warrior and breadwinner, woman was to be the homemaker and childbearer. The Nazi obsession with questions of race led to their insisting that women should be encouraged by every means to bear children for Germany, since Germany's declining birth rate in the 1920s was in stark contrast with the prolific rates among the 'inferior' peoples of eastern Europe, who were seen by the Nazis as Germany's foes. Thus, women were to be relieved of the need to enter paid employment after marriage, while higher education, which could lead to ambitions for a professional career, was to be closed to girls, or, at best, available to an exceptional few. All Nazi policies concerning women ultimately stemmed from the Party's view that the German birth rate must be dramatically raised.

The Nazi's were implacably opposed to feminism and women's independence. Rosa Luxemburg became a symbol of all that most horrified them in German society, in particular because of her involvement in active politics. Nazi ideology saw women in the activist role of 'wives, mothers and home-makers', and their task was to support their fighting menfolk by providing food and making and mending uniforms and flags. The miscellany of women's organisations was dissolved and reunified by Gregor Strasser in 1931, and in 1934 Gertrud Scholtz-Klink became an overall leader of the Nazi Women's Group, after which it functioned primarily as a propaganda channel. Part of the policy of Gleichschaltung (co-ordination) meant that even to join a sewing group, women had to choose the party group or nothing. This book provides a detailed and fascinating picture of the origins, development and functions of the specifically women's organisations associated with the NSDAP from their beginnings in the early 1920s, until their demise in 1945. It traces the history of the Nazi Women's Group, the sources of its members and analyses their ambitions and hopes from the Frauenwerk. Its purpose is above all to make an important contribution to the study of National Socialism as a movement which attracted and held the enthusiasm of a small minority of Germans who, given the chance from 1933, attempted to impose their will on the majority.

This is the first detailed study of Estonian politics during the 1930s. It examines the Estonian Veteran's League, which won a majority in a referendum for its constitutional amendment, creating a strong presidency. The Veterans appeared set to triumph in the 1934 elections, but were thwarted by the establishment of an authoritarian regime. By using formerly unobtainable archival records, this study fills a considerable gap in the literature on the Baltic states and should be of interest to students of fascism.

Why did democracy survive in some European countries between the wars while fascism or authoritarianism emerged elsewhere? This innovative study approaches this question through the comparative analysis of the inter-war experience of eighteen countries within a common comprehensive analytical framework. It combines (social and economic) structure- and (political) actor-related aspects to provide detailed historical accounts of each case which serve as background information for the systematic testing of major theories of fascism and democracy.

"Immersive, nuanced, impeccably researched" IAN RANKIN "Beautifully written and moving" ALLAN MASSIE "Poignant, nostalgic and redolent of the smell of France" SIMON BRETT Family history has always been a mystery to Will Latymer. His father flatly refused to talk about it, and with no other relatives to consult, it seems that a mystery it shall always remain. Until of course, Will meets Ghislaine, his beautiful French cousin, in a chance encounter that introduces him to his grandmother, Madeleine, shut away in a quiet Breton manor with her memories and secrets. Before long, Will has been plunged headlong into the life of Madeleine's great love, his longlost grandfather, Henry Latymer. Reading Henry's old letters and diaries for the first time, Will discovers an idealistic young man, full of hopes and optimism - an optimism that will gradually be crushed as the realities of life under the Vichy regime become glaringly clear. But the more Will delves into Madeleine and Henry's past, and into France's troubled history, the darker the secrets he discovers become, and the more he has cause to wonder if sometimes, the past should remain buried.

A collection of articles which offer an insight into the opinions and attitudes of the German population, the East Europeans and the Poles towards Jews during the period of Nazi persecution. Historians are able to make important distinctions between various periods, groups and regions. At the close of this study is a selection of articles that deal with support for the Jews.

Were those who worked in the theatres of the Third Reich willing participants in the Nazi propaganda machine or artists independent of official ideology? To what extent did Richard Strauss and Carl Orff follow Nazi dogma? How did famous directors such as Gustaf Grudgens and Jurgen Fehling react to the new regime? Why were Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw among the most performed dramatists of the time? And why did the Nazis sanction Jewish theatre? This is the first book in English about theater in the entire Nazi period. Based on contemporary press reports, research in German archives, and interviews with surviving playwrights, actors, and musicians, it is a much needed guide to this neglected area of European culture.

In contrast to Euro-centric works on comparative fascism that set Japan apart from Germany and Italy, this book emphasizes parallels between Japan and its Axis Allies. Romantic nationalist ideologies attracted a strong following in all three nations as they emerged as modern states in the late 1800s. In both Germany and Japan these were, from the beginning, strongly racial in nature. Spurred by grievances against the "status quo" powers, all three took up aggressive policies in the 1930s, producing a short-lived "fascist era." Japan's prominent role demands a broader perspective and consideration of "fascism" as more than a purely European phenomenon.