Fascism Books - Page 5

On the Road to the Wolfs Lair: German Resistance to Hitler

Theodore S. Hamerow

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Valuable insights. 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Contrary to popular understanding, the members of the German military, civil service, and church who opposed Hitler in 1944 had little allegiance to democratic principles, and had mostly welcomed National Socialism. Some quickly became disillusioned by Nazi barbarism. Others were inert until their beloved Germany seemed doomed to total destruction. Many, interestingly, were not opposed to the goals of National Socialism, but only to its policies or methods. In the end, as martyrs, they became symbols of a new, united, democratic Germany.
Their complex and evolving history is well told in this thorough and highly readable account, which will be essential for students of the German resistance, and of interest to anyone concerned with the history of Nazi Germany.

(The "score" rating is a fault of the format. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

Editorial Review:

In the beginning, they rallied behind Hitler in the national interest of Germany. At the end, they sacrificed their lives to assassinate him. A history of German resistance to Hitler in high places, this book offers a glimpse into one of the century's most intractable mysteries--one where players emerge for the first time as real people with complex motives and evolving characters. 11 halftones.

Reflections on Violence

Georges Sorel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The power of myths, the importance of choosing wisely 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful.

"Reflections on violence" was written in 1908 by Georges Sorel, and gives us a good idea of what revolutionary syndicalism was like to him. Even if this book isn't widely read, it is quite important in the history of political ideas.

"Reflections on Violence" is a little difficult to read sometimes, because it was the result of many articles that the author had written regarding many subjects. When he finally put them together he didn't rewrite them, because he believed that to be good, reading must be an exercise that implies a certain amount of work. Well, as a matter of fact he achieved that aim, but all the same the book is well worth the effort.

In "Reflections on violence" Sorel gives great importance to the idea of social myth, because according to him, myths can lead everybody's energy towards a given aim. In his opinion, there is an enormous difference between myths and utopias, due to the fact that myths don't only describe an ideal, but try to reach it. Through utopia you tear yourself from the world, with a myth you transform it (and transforming it you find yourself, because man is creative activity).

Sorel thinks that myths are not rational, and because of that they cannot be judged intellectually. One of the myths he studies is the myth of the general strike. He believed that particular myth could give the proletariat (through syndicalism) enough strenght to fight against the bourgeoisie. Sorel also affirms that violence is positive, because while force gives the workers chains, the violence directed at that force frees them.

In conclusion, I must say I liked this book. When he highlights the importance of myth, I guess he also somehow stresses the tendency human beings have to dedicate their life to an ideal, a cause. And that ideal is likely to be of the utmost importance to us, because our beliefs make us. That is the reason why it is so important to choose the right ideal, the right cause.

The problem is that Sorel doesn't measure the truth of each myth, but merely its efficacy, and by doing so opens the way for all kind of disasters. How can we expect even a little bit of rationality from social life if the ultimate end of that life cannot be evaluated rationally?. And if we cannot understand intellectually our aim (the myth), how can we realise if it is legitimate?. If you can, read this book... It'll make you think !!!

Belen Alcat

Editorial Review:

In this controversial text, Sorel, a noted revolutionary, voices his belief in class warfare as a means of effecting lasting social change. His searching inquiry extends to the functions of violence, the sources of political power, the weapons of revolution, and the role of myths in converting and motivating people.

The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945

Jörg Friedrich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Disappointing 2 out of 5 stars.
6 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Sebald's essay on German literature about WW2 in the volume Campo Santo reminded me of this book, which I read a few months ago. It was a huge success in Germany, and, unfortunately, one suspects at least partly for the wrong reason. The subject, or rather the message, has been a taboo in Germany for rather long.
The history of the allied bombing raids against Germany needs to be written. Friedrich's book is not it. I doubt that it is of much use to anybody, unless the main purpose is the creation of a spirit of self pity.
The book is not historiography, it is a rather impressionist collection of events and isolated facts and harrowing tales. The writer had mountains of material, but he fails to give any structure to his narrative. The list of contents suggests that he arranged material according to subjects, rather than according to chronology, but that is misleading. The chapter titles seem to bear little relation to the chapter contents.
In short, it is a mess.
Why do I give it 2 stars? Only because Friedrich manages to make the single events come alife. The book contains, in that sense, quite a few short tales which would have been better placed in a collection of 'true' war stories.
In a way, the failure of the book is very unfortunate, because it clouds an important issue. I don't want to enter a debate about whether the bombings were 'justified' on a moral level. However I do have the impression that those who say that they were unnecessary have a point. The bombings of cities like Dresden served no military purpose. The stated objective of demoralization was not attained. The war was won by the invading armies from the SU and the US with some help from some others. In other words, very likely the bombing raids had more of a negative impact rather than a positive one for the war effort of the allies.
Sebald in Campo Santo points to the parallell with Vietnam: there, the bombings were useless, the war was lost anyway. In Germany, the bombings were possibly also useless, because the war was won without contribution from them.

Editorial Review:

Combining meticulous research with striking descriptions, Jörg Friedrich renders in acute detail the Allies' air campaign of systematic destruction of civilian life, cultural treasures, and industrial capacities in Germany's city landscape. He includes personal stories and firsthand testimony of German civilians, creating a portrait of unimaginable suffering, horror, and grief. He also draws on official military documents to unravel the reasoning behind the Allies' strikes.

Nazis and the Occult

Paul Roland

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Author responds 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 19 people found this review helpful.

I don't normally post reviews of my own books, but I felt compelled to set the record straight for those who might be considering purchasing my 'Nazis and the Occult' and who might be put off by Charles Levenson's misleading review as I consider this a very serious and psychological study of a subject which has been sensationalised and mythologised in the past. Mr Levenson may object to the look of the book, but no one could over look the fact that I make it very clear that Hitler and his circle were NOT magicians in the traditional sense but manipulators of the mass mind. I also make it clear that Ravenscroft and his Spear of Destiny yarn is just that - pulp fiction that makes for good copy but is certainly not to be taken as historical fact. To dimiss Hitler and his Henchmen as 'evil' or as pawns of a dark power is to take the easy option - we are all responsible for our actions and evil is man made.
I make the point in greater detail in what I consider to be the companion to this book, 'In The Minds Of Murderers - the Art of Criminal Profiling' which includes a lengthy psychological analysis of Hitler and a foreword by FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood.
www.paulroland.net
'No one can deny Paul Roland is a complete master of his subject' (COLIN WILSON)

Hitler: The Pathology of Evil

George Victor

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

At last... 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 14 people found this review helpful.

someone has made sense out of it all...by filling in Hitler's background,as it has never been revealed before...we can understand how madness and evil converged in the persona of one man who managed to murder millions because of his completely illogical beliefs..My whole life I have been trying to understand him(his evil influence),and this book has really helped me considerably.I can even see how his vile minions,the SS,were attracted to him and his ruthlessness..and obeyed him til the end.This is a fact-filled book,yes,but it is extremely well-written and researched,and I have read it over the course of two days.If you are, as I am,fascinated and repulsed at the same time about the most powerful and evil (well..I can't use bad language here,so fill in the blanks)"human being" of the 20th century...then this most excellent book will help you further in understanding just what happened,and why.

Editorial Review:

Victor's book is the first to show that implementation of the Final Solution was actually the root of Hitler's most disastrous military decisions.

A History of Fascism, 1914-1945

Stanley G. Payne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A History Full of Memory Holes 2 out of 5 stars.
31 of 80 people found this review helpful.

Americans find fascism confusing for one simple reason. Historians who choose to write about it are often motivated by a desire, not to elucidate, but to obscure. What they are most keen to obscure is the undeniable fact that fascism was a thoroughly socialist movement. It's amazing the lengths of self-contradiction some will go to, in order to maintain, in the teeth of a mountain of evidence, that, for example, the National Socialist German Workers' Party wasn't a socialist party. Werner Sombart, down the memory hole of history, does not appear at all in the index of this 600 page tome. Neither does Marx, Proudhon, or LasSalle. Lyndon LaRouche (?), however, does makes it into a book on the period 1914-1945. Go figure. If you want the skinny on fascism, see George Watson's "Lost Literature of Socialism." Fascism bitterly opposed the "bourgeois" ideology of capitalism: i.e., individualism, free trade, private property, free enterprise, limited government, and classical laissez-faire liberalism. Moreover, "the whole of National Socialism," as Hitler would freely admit (at least in private) was based on Marx. He explained in Mein Kampf: "As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement." As even social-democrat Sidney Hook has admitted, "Anti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism." (Commentary, Sept. 1978) Listen to Proudhon, socialist founding father and mentor of Marx: "The Jew is the enemy of the human race. One must send this race back to Asia or exterminate it...By fire or fusion or by expulsion, the Jew must disappear... What the people of the Middle Ages hated by instinct I hate upon reflection, and irrevocably. ...The hatred of the Jew, as that of the English, must be an article of our political faith." (1847, Carnets)
Remember that the most central, fundamental, and essential tenet of socialism is that moneylenders ("capitalists") are evil economic "parasites." "Vampires," "bloodsuckers," Marx called them. The Devil of the socialist catechism is the "bourgeoisie." Indeed, Marx had another word which he used as an equivalent term for "bourgeoisie,"----"Jews." And in place of the word "capitalism," we find the early Marx using the word 'Judentum,' i.e., "Jewry." As early as 1843----a hundred years before the Holocaust----Marx published one of his first and most sensational newspaper articles, a vituperative anti-Semitic temper tantrum "On the Jewish Question," makes Hitler's own tirades look mild. Its thesis is that "mankind will never be emancipated until it is emancipated from Jews and Jewry." It concludes: "The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Jewry." Period. End of essay. Understand that this popular piece was written and published five years before the Communist Manifesto (1848) and long before Das Kapital attempted to rationalize this as an economic theory in the 1860s. Rather than that Marx's dubious economic theory of exploitation accidentally drove him to anti-Semitism, it appears things must be more the other way around: that Marx's anti-Semitism drove him to cook up the dubious economic theory. "If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-Semites," Hitler explained during a party speech in Munich, August 1920, "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?" Note also that even the idea that Germany should wage a "world war" against Russia and the "barbaric" Slavs, and that the Slavs should be annihilated during this German "world storm," was an idea proposed by none other than Fredrich Engels, writing with Marx's approval in Marx's newspaper, in 1849. Both genocide, and of coercive state eugenics generally, were socialist ideas. Likewise, it was socialist Bernard Shaw who suggested, in 1933, that chemists should invent a new gas to be used to liquidate the bourgeoisie. "I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit." Hitler explained, "I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun."

Editorial Review:

This highly acclaimed book, now in paperback, was first published in hardcover in December 1996. Payne has written the first full history of fascism in Europe and elsewhere between the World Wars. His history encompasses all the major fascist

Fascism (Oxford Readers)

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Fascism is a political ideology which has been identified with totalitarianism, state terror, fanaticism, orchestrated violence, and blind obedience. Fascism was directly associated with the Second World War, the most devastating annihilation of human lives in the history of mankind which left more than 40 million dead around the globe and introduced notions of inhumanity the extent of which was heretofore unknown. The mere term stirs up visions of atrocities and wanton cruelty even today, fifty years after the end of the "Last European War". Yet once again fascism is in the ascendant, suggesting that it is time for us to renew our understanding of its ideas, ideals, and iniquities.

This anthology tries to show why fascism holds such strong appeal to many people. With a wide selection of texts written by fascist thinkers and propagandists as well as prominent anti-fascist criticism from both inside and outside Europe, before and after the Second World War, this collection offers a chilling portrait of the most feared political doctrine in modern history. Some of the topics covered in this volume include fascism in Germany and Italy, pre-1922 precursors of fascism, theories of fascism, the abortive fascist movements in the period 1922-1945, anti-fascist movements and reaction, Marxist criticism of fascist ideology, and post-war fascism. With contributions from writers as diverse as Benito Mussolini and Primo Levi, Joseph Goebbels and George Orwell, Martin Heidegger and Max Horkheimer, this insightful book evokes the pernicious effects of fascist ideology.

The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943

Inge Scholl

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

It gives me hope 5 out of 5 stars.
31 of 31 people found this review helpful.

For those unfamiliar with the story of The White Rose, it is a testament to the power and courage of those who are willing to stand up for freedom and independence in a world gone mad. Once again I find this book paticularly compelling today, for obvious reasons. The pamphlets the White Rose students distributed (that they subsequently paid the ultimate price for) are reprinted in their entirety in the book. They are well written, beautiful in spirit, and as compelling today as they were then.

The story is told with honor and reverence by the sister of Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, siblings and two of the students in Germany who brainstormed the pamphlets and were executed swiftly and denounced publicly for their trouble. In spite of that, or because of it, their efforts caused a ripple of resistance in the German republic that caused its fair share of trouble for the Nazi regime.

Calling for a policy of passive resistance -- the ability for each one, individually, to sabotage any efforts of the fascist regime in power -- was a brilliant move on their part. No fundraising, no unending meetings, no need for mailing lists or computer databases. Sabotage rallies, sabotage in all areas of science and scolarship which further the continuation of the war, sabotage in all branches of the arts, and a refusal to give a penny to any government organized charity...such was the call of these noble individuals who had no great army, but who understood the power of the individual.

I only learned of the White Rose within the past couple of years myself. Everyone should learn and understand what they did and why. It gives me hope.

Editorial Review:

A unique study of the WW2 culture of Germany.

The Forger: An Extraordinary Story of Survival in Wartime Berlin

Cioma Schonhaus

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

The Forger 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 11 people found this review helpful.

I was VERY disappointed in this book. One has to read half of the book before finding any information on his experience as a forger of documents. There is too much information on his female conquests, one of whom was a German officer's wife. Those exploits added nothing to the story, were unnecessary and detracted from the main theme. It's a shame he had to use half of the book for this sort of thing before getting to the main gist.

Editorial Review:

The amazing account--soon to be a film--of Cioma Schönhaus, the Jewish Schindler who evaded the Nazis and forged life-saving documents in wartime Berlin.

In Nazi Germany, 20-year-old graphic artist Cioma Schönhaus found a unique outlet for his talent: he forged documents for people fleeing the Reich, ultimately helping to save hundreds of lives. Yet, even as the Gestapo posted his photo in public, he lived a daringly adventurous life, replete with fine restaurants and beautiful women, all the while managing to elude the Nazis.

Breathtakingly bold, Schönhaus talked his way out of an arrest, defended Jewish diners being harassed by the police, and ultimately fled Germany by bicycling to Switzerland.

Schönhaus's story--his courageous exploits that saved so many, as many others around him were deported, one by one, to the concentration camps--is an astonishing tale of wartime heroism and survival.

Panzer Divisions: The Eastern Front 1941-43 (Battle Orders)

Pier Battistelli

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

On June 22, 1941 when Germany attacked the Soviet Union, her Panzer divisions were to play a major role in this titanic struggle. At its peak, 19 out of the 21 existing Panzer Divisions were deployed against the Soviets. Although overwhelmed by Soviet numbers, the superior skill and capability of the German Panzer divisions meant that in three months the Germans, with the Panzers as their spearhead had advanced deep into Soviet territory, inflicting terrible losses on the Soviets. However, after these initial successes the German offensive began to falter, culminating in the disastrous defeat at Kursk.

In this book, the organizational history of the Panzer divisions is covered, from the early successes of 1941 through to the dramatic re-organization of the Panzer Divisions and the introduction of revised Blitzkrieg tactics as the war began to turn and the Panzer divisions experienced their first taste of defeat. Pier Paolo Battistellii examines the impact of the introduction of the Panther tank shortly before the final failure at Kursk, and goes on to explain the evolution of German armored doctrine, tactics and the command system, providing a detailed overview of the major combat actions of the Panzer Divisions on the Eastern Front.