Based on extensive archival work, Stormtrooper Families combines stormtrooper personnel records, Nazi Party autobiographies, published and unpublished memoirs, personal letters, court records, and police-surveillance records to paint a picture of the stormtrooper movement as an organic product of its local community, its web of interpersonal relationships, and its intensely emotional internal struggles. Extensive analysis of Nazi-era media across the political spectrum shows how the public debate over homosexuality proved just as important to political outcomes as did the actual presence of homosexuals in fascist and antifascist politics. As children in the late-imperial period, the stormtroopers witnessed the first German debates over homosexuality and political life. As young adults, they verbally and physically battled over these definitions, bringing conflicts over homosexuality and masculinity into the center of Weimar Germany's most important political debates. Stormtrooper Families chronicles the stormtroopers' personal, political, and sexual struggles to explain not only how individual gay men existed within the Nazi movement but also how the public meaning of homosexuality affected fascist and antifascist politics-a public controversy still alive today.

Germany's financial collapse in the summer of 1931 was one of the biggest economic catastrophes of modern history. It led to a global panic, brought down the international monetary system, and turned a worldwide recession into a prolonged depression. The crisis also contributed decisively to the rise of Hitler. Within little more than a year of its onset, the Nazis were Germany's largest political party at both the regional and national level, paving the way for Hitler's eventual seizure of power in January 1933. The origins of the collapse lay in Germany's large pile of foreign debt denominated in gold-backed currencies, which condemned the German government to cut spending, raise taxes, and lower wages in the middle of a worldwide recession. As political resistance to this policy of austerity grew, the German government began to question its debt obligations, prompting foreign investors to panic and sell their German assets. The resulting currency crisis led to the failure of the already weakened banking system and a partial sovereign default. Hitler managed to profit from the crisis because he had been the most vocal critic of the reparation regime responsible for the lion's share of German debts. As the financial system collapsed, his relentless attacks against foreign creditors and the alleged complicity of the German government resonated more than ever with the electorate. The ruling parties that were responsible for the situation lost their credibility and became defenceless in the face of his onslaught against an establishment allegedly selling the country out to her foreign creditors. Meanwhile, these creditors hesitated too long to take the wind out of Hitler's sails by offering debt relief. In this way, a financial crisis soon developed into a political catastrophe for both Europe and the world.

Our understanding of culture and of the catastrophe unleashed by National Socialism have always been regarded as interrelated. For all its brutality, Nazism always spoke in the name of the great German tradition, often using such "high culture" to justify atrocities committed. Were not such actions necessary for the defense of classical cultural values and ideal images against the polluted, degenerate groups who sought to sully and defile them? Ironically, some of National Socialism's victims confronted and interpreted their experiences precisely through this prism of culture and catastrophe. Many of these victims had traditionally regarded Germany as a major civilizing force. In fact, from the late eighteenth century on, German Jews had constructed themselves in German culture's image. Many of the German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who became victims of National Socialism had been raised and completely absorbed in the German humanistic tradition. One of the most stark existential dilemmas they were forced to confront was the stripping away of this spiritual inheritance, the experience of expropriation from their own culture. Steven Aschheim here engages the multiple aspects of German and German-Jewish cultural history which touch upon the intricate interplay between culture and catastrophe, providing insights into the relationship between German culture and the origins, dispositions, and aftermath of National Socialism. He analyzes the designation of Nazism as part of the West's cultural code representing an absolute standard of evil, and sheds light on the problematics of current German, Jewish, and Israeli inscriptions of Nazism and its atrocities, capturing the ongoing centralrelevance of that experience to contemporary culture and collective individual self-definitions.

Stanely G. payne here presents a full history of fascism in interwar Europe, as well as a survey of fascist theory and postwar fascism. The author examines all major fascist movements as well as other forms of authoritarian nationalism and provides a comprehensive work on generic fascism to date. The book traces the phenomenon of fascism through the history of ideas, previous political movements, and the events of the First World War. Although the focus is principally fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the book also gives detailed attention to the Romanian Iron Guard, Franco's Spain, Japan and proto-fascist movements around the globe. The author explores the reasons for both the limits of fascism's appeal and the historical transcendence of the "fascist era".The inclusion of other forms of authoritarian nationalism lays a foundation for comparative analysis and leads to a more workable definition of authoritarianism. It should be useful reading for students studying the rise of totalitarianism in twentieth-century Europe and for those concerned about the rise of ultranationalism today.

This volume investigates a galaxy of diverse networks and intellectual actors who engaged in a broad political environment, from conservatism to the most radical right, between the World Wars. Looking beyond fascism, it considers the less-investigated domain of the 'Latin space', which is both geographical and cultural, encompassing countries of both Southern Europe and Latin America. Focus is given to mid-level civil servants, writers, journalists and artists and important 'transnational agents' as well as the larger intellectual networks to which they belonged. The book poses such questions as: In what way did the intellectuals align national and nationalistic values with the project of creating a 'Republic of Letters' that extended beyond each country's borders, a 'space' in which one could produce and disseminate thought whose objective was to encourage political action? What kinds of networks did they succeed in establishing in the interwar period? Who were these intellectuals-in-action? What role did they play in their institutions' and cultural associations' activities? A wider and intricate analytical framework emerges, exploring right-wing intellectual agents and their networks, their travels and the circulation of ideas, during the interwar period and on a transatlantic scale, offering an original contribution to the debate on interwar authoritarian regimes and opening new possibilities for research.

In this authoritative study, one of the first to appear in English, Erik Levi explores the ambiguous relationship between music and politics during one of the darkest periods of recent cultural history. Utilising material drawn from contemporary documents, journals and newspapers, he traces the evolution of reactionary musical attitudes which were exploited by the Nazis in the final years of the Weimar Republic, chronicles the mechanisms that were established after 1933 to regiment musical life throughout Germany and the occupied territories, and examines the degree to which the climate of xenophobia, racism and anti-modernism affected the dissemination of music either in the opera house and concert hall, or on the radio and in the media.

From 1931 to 1937, as Germany's police merged with security services of the National Socialists, the standards of police work, such as professionalism, protecting the state, and the image of `good' guys fighting `bad' were perverted. Browder closely details this transition by following the lives of the men who participated in it.

This book revolves around the intricate interplay between culture and catastrophe. It seeks to engage the various permutations, the complexity and the unresolved dimensions of this connection, especially as it relates to the origins, disposition and aftermath of National Socialism. It examines various German and Jewish responses to Nazism and its roots, and demonstrates the ongoing relevance of that experience to contemporary culture and collective and individual self-definitions.

In 2003, the occupation of a state-owned building in Rome led to the emergence of a new extreme-right youth movement: CasaPound Italia (CPI). Its members described themselves as 'Fascists of the Third Millennium', and were unabashed about their admiration for Benito Mussolini. Over the next 15 years, they would take to the street, contest national elections, open over a hundred centres across Italy, and capture the attention of the Italian public. While CPI can count only on a few thousands votes, it enjoys disproportionate attention in public debates from the media. So what exactly is CasaPound? How can we explain the high profile achieved by such a nostalgic group with no electoral support? In this book, Caterina Froio, Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Giorgia Bulli and Matteo Albanese explore CasaPound Italia and its particular political strategy combining the organization and style of both political parties and social movements and bringing together extreme-right ideas and pop-culture symbols. They contend that this strategy of hybridization allowed a fringe organization like CasaPound to consolidate its position within the Italian far-right milieu, but also, crucially, to make extreme-right ideas routine in public debates. The authors illustrate this argument drawing on unique empirical material gathered during five years of research, including several months of overt observation at concerts and events, face-to-face interviews, and the qualitative and quantitative analysis of online and offline campaigns. By describing how hybridization grants extremist groups the leeway to expand their reach and penetrate mainstream political debates, this book is core reading for anyone concerned about the nature and growth of far-right politics in contemporary democracies. Providing a fresh insight as to how contemporary extreme-right groups organize to capture public attention, this study will also be of interest to students, scholars and activists interested in the complex relationship between party competition and street protest more generally.

Right-wing populism is a global phenomenon that challenges several pillars of liberal democracy, and it is often described as a dangerous political ideology because it resonates with the fascist idea of power in terms of anti-pluralism and lack of minorities' protection. In Western Europe, many political actors are exploiting the fears and insecurities linked to globalization, economic crisis, and mass migrations to attract voters. However, while right-wing populist discourses are mainstream in certain countries, they are almost completely taboo in others. Why is right-wing populism so successful in Italy, Austria, and France while in Germany it is marginal and socially unacceptable? It is because each country developed a certain collective memory of the fascist past, which stigmatizes that past to different levels. For this reason, right-wing populism can find favorable conditions to thrive in certain countries, while in others it is considered as an illegitimate and dangerous idea of power. Through a comparative study of eight European countries, this book shows that short-term factors linked to levels of corruption, economic situation, and quality of democracy interact with long-term cultural elements and collective memories in determining the social acceptability of right-wing populist discourses.

Highlighting the "mass" nature of interwar European fascism has long become commonplace. Throughout the years, numerous critics have construed fascism as a phenomenon of mass society, perhaps the ultimate expression of mass politics. This study deconstructs this long-standing perception. It argues that the entwining of fascism with the masses is a remarkable transubstantiation of a movement which understood and presented itself as a militant rejection of the ideal of mass politics, and indeed of mass society and mass culture more broadly conceived. Thus, rather than "massifying" society, fascism was the culmination of a long effort on the part of the elites and the middle-classes to de-massify it. The perennially menacing mass - seen as plebeian and insubordinate - was to be drilled into submission, replaced by supposedly superior collective entities, such as the nation, the race, or the people. Focusing on Italian fascism and German National Socialism, but consulting fascist movements and individuals elsewhere in interwar Europe, the book incisively shows how fascism is best understood as ferociously resisting what Elias referred to as "the civilizing process" and what Marx termed "the social individual." Fascism, notably, was a revolt against what Nietzsche described as the peaceful, middling and egalitarian "Last Humans."

Over the past few decades, extreme-right political parties have won increasing support throughout Europe. The largest and most sophisticated of these is the French National Front. Led by the charismatic Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Front is now the third most important political force in France after the mainstream right and the socialists.This clear and comprehensive book explores the antecedents for the meteoric rise of the National Front. Beginning with a political history of the extreme right from 1945 to 1995, Harvey Simmons traces links between Le Pen and French neo-fascist and extreme-right organizations of the 1950s and 1960s, and concludes with analyses of the Front's antisemitism, racism, organization, ideology, language, electorate, and views on women. Simmons argues that the Front is not a party like any other, but a major threat to French democracy.

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Contrary to those who have insisted that there was no meaningful connection between American and German racial repression, Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real, sustained, significant, and revealing interest in American race policies. As Whitman shows, the Nuremberg Laws were crafted in an atmosphere of considerable attention to the precedents American race laws had to offer. German praise for American practices, already found in Hitler's Mein Kampf, was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and the most radical Nazi lawyers were eager advocates of the use of American models. But while Jim Crow segregation was one aspect of American law that appealed to Nazi radicals, it was not the most consequential one. Rather, both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws--the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened, but too harsh. Indelibly linking American race laws to the shaping of Nazi policies in Germany, Hitler's American Model upends understandings of America's influence on racist practices in the wider world.

Friedrich Reck might seem an unlikely rebel against Nazism. Not just a conservative but a rock-ribbed reactionary, he played the part of a landed gentleman, deplored democracy, and rejected the modern world outright. To Reck the Nazis were ruthless revolutionaries in Gothic drag, and helpless as he was to counter the spell they had cast on the German people, he felt compelled to record the corruptions of their rule. The result is less a diary than a sequence of stark and astonishing snapshots of life in Germany between 1936 and 1944. We see the Nazis at the peak of power, and the murderous panic with which they respond to approaching defeat; their travesty of traditional folkways in the name of the Volk; and the author's own missed opportunity to shoot Hitler. This riveting book is not only, as Hannah Arendt proclaimed it, "one of the most important documents of the Hitler period" but a moving testament of a decent man struggling to do the right thing in a depraved world.

Across Europe and the world, far right parties have been enjoying greater electoral success than at any time since 1945. Right-wing street movements draw huge supporters and terrorist attacks on Jews and Muslims proliferate. It sometimes seems we are returning to the age of fascism. To explain this disturbing trend, David Renton surveys the history of fascism in Europe from its pre-war origins to the present day, examining Marxist responses to fascism in the age of Hitler and Mussolini, the writings of Trotsky and Gramsci and contemporary theorists. Renton theorises that fascism was driven by the chaotic and unstable balance between reactionary ambitions and the mass character of its support. This approach will arm a new generation of anti-fascists to resist those who seek to re-enact fascism. Rewritten and revised for the twentieth anniversary of its first publication, Renton's classic book synthesises the Marxist theory of fascism and updates it for our own times.

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.

Since the birth of fascism in the 1920s, well before the global renaissance of "white nationalism," the United States has been home to its own distinct fascist movements, some of which decisively influenced the course of US history. Yet long before Antifa became a household word in the United States, they were met, time and again, by an equally deep antifascist current. Many on the left are unaware that the United States has a rich antifascist tradition, because it has rarely been discussed as such, nor has it been accessible in one place. This reader reconstructs the history of US antifascism the twenty-first century, showing how generations of writers, organisers, and fighters spoke to each other over time.

Nearly half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich, Nazism remains a subject of extensive historical inquiry, general interest, and, alarmingly, a source of inspiration for resurgent fascism in Europe. Goodrick-Clarke's powerful and timely book traces the intellectual roots of Nazism back to a number of influential occult and millenarian sects in the Habsburg Empire during its waning years. These sects combined notions of popular nationalism with an advocacy of Aryan racism and a proclaimed need for German world-rule.

This book provides the first serious account of the way in which Nazism was influenced by powerful millenarian and occult sects that thrived in Germany and Austria almost fifty years before the rise to power of Adolf Hitler.

These millenarian sects (principally the Ariosophists) espoused a mixture of popular nationalism, Aryan racism, and occultism to support their advocacy of German world-rule. Over time their ideas and symbols, filtered through nationalist-racist groups associated with the infant Nazi party, came to exert a strong influence on Himmler's SS.

The fantasies thus fueled were played out with terrifying consequences in the realities structured into the Third Reich: Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka, the hellish museums of Nazi apocalypse, had psychic roots reaching back to millenial visions of occult sects. Beyond what the TImes Literary Supplement calls an intriguing study of apocalyptic fantasies, this bizarre and fascinating story contains lessons we cannot afford to ignore.

This edited volume traces the rise of far right vigilante movements - some who have been involved in serious violence against minorities, migrants and other vulnerable groups in society, whereas other vigilantes are intimidating but avoid using violence. Written by an international team of contributors, the book features case studies from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, and Asia. Each chapter is written to a common research template examining the national social and political context, the purpose of the vigilante group, how it is organised and operates, its communications and social media strategy and its relationship to mainstream social actors and institutions, and to similar groups in other countries. The final comparative chapter explores some of the broader research issues such as under which conditions such vigiliantism emerges, flourishes or fails, policing approaches, masculinity, the role of social media, responses from the state and civil society, and the evidence of transnational co-operation or inspiration. This is a groundbreaking volume which will be of particular interest to scholars with an interest in the extreme right, social movements, political violence, policing and criminology.

Political theorist Laurie M. Johnson deals with Jung's analysis of the effects of modern scientific rationalism on the development of communism, fascism and Nazism in the 20th century and applies this analysis to the rise of the New Right in the 21st century. Jung's thought provides much needed insight into contemporary ideologies such as neoliberalism, Identitarianism and the Alt-Right. Johnson explains Jungian analytical psychology as it relates to these topics, with a chapter devoted to Jung's views of Friedrich Nietzsche, who exemplifies the modern problem with his proclamation that God is dead, and an in-depth discussion of Jung's views on truth and the psychological function of religion as a safeguard against deadly mass movements. She then turns to Jung's treatment of anti-Semitism and the Nazi movement, and his views on race and racism. Johnson applies these historical insights to the current manifestations of mass psychological disruption in the clash between neoliberals and the right-wing populist and Identitarian movements on the rise in North America and Europe. She concludes by discussing the search for an authentic and meaningful life in a West that rejects extremism and is open to authentic spiritual experiences as a counterbalance to mass mindedness. Ideological Possession and the Rise of the New Right will appeal to both undergraduate and graduate students of psychology and intellectual history. The book will also be of interest to those wishing to understand the new nationalist, nativist and Identarian movements.

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

Inspired by recent works on Nazi empire, this book provides a framework to guide occupation research with a broad comparative angle focusing on human interactions. Overcoming national compartmentalization, it examines Nazi occupations with attention to relations between occupiers and local populations and differences among occupation regimes. This is a timely book which engages in historical and current conversations on European nationalisms and the rise of right-wing populisms.