Fascism Books - Page 7

The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation

Ian Kershaw

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Not for casual reading 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful.

This book is a collection of short and dense summaries of other prominent works written on Nazism. Thoroughly researched and contanining a wealth of information, Kershaw's work is a valuable introduction for any researcher or college student. However, I think the esoteric rhetoric and scholarly details makes it kind of hard to digest for the casual reader not familiar with German history.

This is NOT for beginners. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I first read Kershaw's Adolf Hitler: Hubris and Nemesis. I couldn't put it down. I then picked up Kershaw's The Hitler Myth. Also an excellent read. I then moved on to The Nazi Dictatorship and within the first 5 minutes I realized I was in over my head. I am a 38 year old lifelong student of WWII. I have been reading about WWII since I was a kid. And I have a Masters degree. Yet this book was way over my head. This book is a HEAVY read and in my opinion is probably meant for history scholars, not amateurs like me. I'm giving it 5 stars based on the aforementioned works by Kershaw and the assumption that this book is of the same quality. But I didn't read it.

Editorial Review:

This introduction to Hitler's Germany is an incisive exploration of the major themes and debates relating to Nazism.

Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics

Frederic Spotts

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Brilliant, necessary, disturbing, and unique 5 out of 5 stars.
22 of 22 people found this review helpful.

If there is any justice in the world, Spotts' book will go a long way toward eradicating from popular consciousness the facile descriptions of Hitler as not much more than a cross between a risible, Chaplin-esque, comic book character and an insane, incarnate demon.

Part of the first notion of Hitler includes the idea that he ought to be dismissed as a failed, lousy artist. As Spott points out, the truth is that Nazism, like all self-styled utopianisms, was something like a gigantic project in aesthetics using people rather than pigments or plastics, and control and murder rather than downstrokes and glazing - and Hitler was the artist behind that (very popular for some years in Germany) project; he therefore must be taken seriously as an artist in this sense (obviously a grotesque, genocidal one).

As Spotts notes, even his hatred of Jews emerges from this context: the Jews are "ruining all art" by embracing atonalism, cubism, jazz, dadaism, etc., as well as ruining all life by embracing "Bolshevism". But in his mind, there doesn't seem to be much difference there: Picasso, Marx, Alban Berg - all the same. Since, in Hitler's view, art can't be separated from culture, and culture can't be separated from the state, and the state can't be separated from life itself, the eradication of the Jews becomes, in Hitler's mind, nothing less than a matter of national survival, or, strangely, to say the same thing, the artistically appropriate choice.

Spotts does a good job of underscoring another aspect of all this by calling attention to the seeming homoeroticism in Hitler's taste, particularly as it expresses itself toward the human being: at bottom (pun intended), Hitler preferred, aesthetically, buff blond males with blue eyes, i.e., "Nordic" types. The Jews, in addition to being greedy, "Bolsheviks", destroyers of art/culture/life, etc., just...looked "wrong". And so in this sense, in Hitler's mind, ridding the proper-looking race of these improper-looking portions of it was as obviously a necessary decision as would be getting rid of a "wrong" piece of furniture cluttering up an otherwise beautiful living room. (Spotts even includes a contemporary German cartoon caricaturing the physical features of a "typical" Jew).

But what I started out to say was this. Spotts surveys how Hitler very consciously used colour, shape, rhetoric, size, proportion, angle, material, sound, light, symbol, rhythm, story, pageantry, texture, surprise, music, fire, sculpture, formation, etc., to, quite literally, achieve a truly terrifying degree of control over the minds of his subjects, even as a conversion tool over those who had resisted him. (Spotts describes how awed even American visitors were by the Nuremberg rallies.)

And page by page, one begins increasingly to get a sense of what it would have been like, to be a human being, subject to all the mental and emotional strengths and weaknesses we are, living in a country (our world, for all purposes) which only a year or two before had been totally chaotic and depressed...and then to be stirred, roused, when that world around us begins to change, prompted to feel different, pleasurable things, think different, exciting thoughts, and in the end, perform different - and ultimately - indescribably horrific actions. In every way, we are preyed upon by the mesmeric, sick genius of a man who was rejected by the art school in Vienna, and who sought his revenge for this affront by dominating human psychology through all those elements I mentioned above more totally than perhaps any other "artist" of the 20th century.

I saw a BBC documentary a couple of weeks ago, in which several elderly Germans candidly recalled with fondness Hitler's early years. What they said they missed most were the euphoric feelings they had, going to the pageants and rallies, seeing the flags, hearing the speeches and the music, those feelings of belonging, meaning, "specialness". And for the first time, reading Spotts' book, in a really disturbing way, I could imagine what that might have been like, imagine that I might have been just as susceptible to the manipulator as millions of Germans had been. For the first time, how the whole thing could have happened seemed imaginable. Scary.

Bravo to Spotts for his brilliant and disturbing book. I would love to see him now do a documentary on this, using real footage.

Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

Hitler's aim was the Aryan super-state, but it was to be expressed as much in Nazi art as in politics. Culture was not only the end, to which power should aspire, but the means of achieving it. This reassessment of Hitler's aims and motivations examines his perverse obsessions and shows how his artistry - expressed in spectacles, festivities, parades, rallies and political dramas, as well as in architecture, painting and music - destroyed any sense of individuality and linked the German people with his own drives. In a wide-ranging argument which covers topics as varied as Wagner's operas and the German Autobahn system, Spotts provides a key to the understanding of the Third Reich which has hitherto been missing in more straightforwardly political and military studies.

Target Hitler: The Plots to Kill Adolf Hitler

James P. Duffy, Vincent L. Ricci

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The infamous reign of Adolf Hitler occurred half a century ago, but how he managed to escape so many attempts on his life remains a mystery. Target Hitler addresses the subject anew and is the only book for general audiences which recounts this fascinating topic in depth. Duffy and Ricci have pulled together the known and hitherto unknown facts about the German resistance to create an absorbing tale. Although many Germans harbored deep hatred for the Nazis and risked their lives trying to topple the regime, most of these would-be assassins were forgotten or slighted in the history of that period. The authors wish to right that wrong. This eminently readable narrative concentrates on the efforts of a group of conspirators within the German army who first began to plot against Hitler in the fall of 1938, and whose story culminates in the famous July 1944 bombing. Bound together by their religious beliefs and a determination to rid their homeland of the Nazi scourge, some of these men were generals, one a field marshal. It is intriguing to think how the course of world history would have been altered had these men accomplished their mission. That fate denied such an outcome is tragic. But now, at least the bravery of those who tried to rid the world of the horror Hitler inflicted will be remembered as the heroes they are.

Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activites, and the True Story Behind the List

David Crowe

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Schindler by David Crowe 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

As background reading for my Masters thesis it is a good book. As light reading for one who might have a passing interest in Schindler, the book is protracted and discursive. The edition I read was possibly the worst edited book I have ever read! The historian Sir Ian Kershaw is introduced as Kreshaw!!...........and so the errors persist. Crowe has researched his topic well, using a vast number of sources and quoting the work of others (notably Robin O'Neill - former student of Sir Martin Gilbert - who has researched Schindler too). A particularly interesting facet of this work is the cross-referencing/comparison of Schindler's life and deeds with Spielberg's film. This was most useful and interesting and dispels many of the myths that filmgoers might accept as fact. A good book - spoilt by poor editing - revealing the man behind the myth: warts and all!

Editorial Review:

The first true exploration of the myths and realities of the controversial Holocaust figure.

Spy, businessman, bon vivant, Nazi Party member, Righteous Gentile. This was Oskar Schindler, the controversial savior of almost 12,000 Jews during the Holocaust who struggled afterwards to rebuild his life and gain international recognition for his wartime deeds. Author David Crowe examines every phase of the subject's life in this landmark biography, presenting a figure of mythic proportions that one prominent Schindler Jew described as "an extraordinary man in extraordinary times."

The Language of the Third Reich : Lti - Lingua Tertii Imperii : A Philologist's Notebook

Victor Klemperer

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An easily-read, journalistic philology of Nazi Germany 5 out of 5 stars.
45 of 48 people found this review helpful.

A professor recommended this book by Victor Klemperer to me several years ago, before his 1933-45 Tagebücher were translated into English by Martin Chalmers. At the time, my apprentice German was not equal to the work in the original language, and I read it in its French translation, ably translated by Elisabeth Guillot. I have since reread it in German, and, on publication, read this English edition. As far as I can tell, Martin Brady has done a masterful job of rendering Klemperer's informal and easily parsed style into addictably readable English. Before his career in the academy, Klemperer was a journalist, and in all of his writing, this tone prevailed.

Klemperer wrote his "LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen" in 1945 and 1946, mostly from notes he kept in the diaries that later became the wildly successful "Ich will zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten" (I Will Bear Witness). He carried on his work despite the danger, and with an impressive amount of conscious objectivity. The work is an excellent, if impressionistic, study of the modes of Nazi language and their development in popular speech and culture. I would emphasize the _impressionism_ that colors this work, because Klemperer was only able to study a limited amount of presently accessible material; most of his work is based on the editions of newspapers, leaflets, and books that fell into his hands in Dresden during the war. He was a Jew in the Third Reich, and banned from possessing books written by "Aryan" authors. As well, over the course of the war the restrictions on Jews listening to radios, reading newspapers, and even talking in public became too great for Klemperer to realize any truly comprehensive study.

I do not wish to seem like I am condemning the man with faint praise: Klemperer wrote the first postwar study of Nazi language and linked it directly with the operation of the regime. Subsequent researchers have borne out Klemperer's thesis: the euphemisms and barbarisms in the Nazi tongue exerted a considerable influence on popular culture and personal expression. It is not necessary to go back to the Forties to find this influence - it exists today in modern German. The contemporary quibbles over such words as "ausrotten" or "endlösung" mask the considerable reformation of German that occurred during the Third Reich.

Students of twentieth century history cannot ignore this book. It is a must read.

Editorial Review:

A Jewish professor of Roman studies, Victor Klemperer lived throughout the Nazi period in conditions of great deprivation and, intermittently, of deadly peril. This text is a linguistic diary kept secretly by Klemperer from 1933-45 in which he recorded the characteristic literary forms and usages of the Nazi regime and analysed the impact of Nazism of German language, life and culture.

Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism

Alexander Stille

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Living History 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Several readers have suggested that the prose in this book reminds them of Primo Levi, the great humanist scientist who has written poignantly of his own war time experiences. Like his other works, Stille makes the non-fiction read like a novel. He knows just what to stress and what to downplay - in other words, he emphasizes the most important aspects of the "story".

What is so compelling is his "umbrella" approach wherein all components and shades of Italian fascism and Judaism are reviewed. There was a huge difference between the fascism of Italy and Germany despite their apparent political solidarity. The outstanding difference was that German fascism, unlike that of Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy and Croatia was based on not only adoration of the race but specificially subjugation of the Jews. It is difficult to understand some of the decisions made but most of us have never had to face the start life and death choices these families encountered.

Stille is also an eminently fair man, one who does not condemn fascism while excusing or praising dictatorships of the Left. He views all forms of state collectivism as inherently evil and this message only increases the force of the narrative. This is yet another work that should be required reading for high school students.

Editorial Review:

A profoundly moving history of Italy’s Jews under the shadow of the Holocaust, told through the lives of five Jewish Italian families: the Ovazzas of Turin, who prospered under Mussolini and whose patriarch became a prominent fascist; the Foas of Turin, whose children included both an antifascist activist and a Fascist Party member; the Di Verolis of Rome, who struggled for survival in the ghetto; the Teglios of Genoa, one of whom worked with the Catholic church to save hundreds of Jews; and the Schonheits of Ferrara, who were sent to Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. An extraordinary montage that resurrects a forgotten and tragic era.

Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind The List

David M. Crowe

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Spy, businessman, bon vivant, Nazi Party member, Righteous Gentile. This was Oskar Schindler, the controversial man who saved eleven hundred Jews during the Holocaust but struggled afterwards to rebuild his life and gain international recognition for his wartime deeds. David Crowe examines every phase of Schindler's life in this landmark biography, presenting a savior of mythic proportions who was also an opportunist and spy who helped Nazi Germany conquer Poland. Schindler is best known for saving over a thousand Jews by putting them on the famed "Schindler's List" and then transferring them to his factory in today's Czech Republic. In reality, Schindler played only a minor role in the creation of the list through no fault of his own. Plagued by local efforts to stop the movement of Jewish workers from his factory in Kraków to his new one in Brünnlitz, and his arrest by the SS who were investigating corruption charges against the infamous Amon Göth, Schindler had little say or control over his famous "List." The tale of how the "List" was really prepared is one of the most intriguing parts of the Schindler story that Crowe tells here for the first time. Forced into exile after the war, success continually eluded Schindler and he died in very poor health in 1974. He remained a controversial figure, even in death, particularly after Emilie Schindler, his wife of forty-six years, began to criticize her husband after the appearance of Steven Spielberg's film in 1993. In Oskar Schindler, Crowe steps beyondthe mythology that has grown up around the story of Oskar Schindler and looks at the life and work of this man whom one prominent Schindler Jew described as "an extraordinary man in extraordinary times."

Codeword Barbelon - Danger in the Vatican: The Sons of Loyola and Their Plans for World Domination....

P.D. Stuart

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

All roads leads to...... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Finally a book that sheds light on the current and historical condition of this world. A well written, clear, powerful and concise delivery as to who the real power brokers are and why. The author asks plausible and powerful questions of the reader. You cannot help but ask yourself, "What if this were really true?"
If you ever needed something to help connect the dots and complete the jigsaw as to who "rules" this planet and why? This is it. A book that has it all, if you want to start your research......start here.

A very important work. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This eye-opener will keep you on the edge of your seat. The book is readable, authoritative, very well researched, and profound. The author really did his homework, presenting strong arguments supported by impeccable proof and illustrations. The author seems to interact with the reader with his eloquent style. A very important work which clears up any mystery as to what's really going on. Every thinking person needs to read this book.

Nazi Germany (Short Oxford History of Germany)

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Editorial Review:

The history of National Socialism as a movement and a regime remains one of the most compelling and intensively studied aspects of twentieth-century history, one whose significance extends far beyond Germany or even Europe. Featuring ten chapters by leading international experts, this volume presents an up-to-date and authoritative introduction to the history of Nazi Germany.
Opening with an introduction delineating the challenges this period of history has posed to historians since 1945, Nazi Germany continues on with chapters that explain how Nazism emerged as an ideology and a political movement; how Hitler and his party took power and remade the German state; and how the Nazi "national community" was organized around a radical and eventually lethal distinction between the "included" and the "excluded." Later chapters discuss the complex relationship between Nazism and Germany's religious faiths; the perverse economic rationality of the regime; the path to war laid down by Hitler's foreign policy; and the intricate and intimate intertwining of war and genocide. The volume concludes with a final chapter on the aftermath of National Socialism in postwar German history and memory.

Nazi Terror : The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans

Eric Johnson, Eric A. Johnson

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Eric Johnson’s exhaustive new history tackles the central aspect of the Nazi dictatorship - terror - head on. By focusing on the role of the individual and on the role of the society in making terror work, he is able to definitively and dramatically answer such questions as these: Who were the Gestapo officers? Were they merely banal paper shufflers, as Hannah Arendt depicted Eichmann, or were they recognizably evil? What tactics did they use? Were they motivated by an eliminationist anti-Semitism? Did the average German know about the mass murder of Jews and other undesirables while it was happening? Exactly how was Nazi terror applied in the daily lives of ordinary Jews and Germans?Johnson spent years of research in Gestapo archives in three Rhineland communities, reading and analyzing more than 1100 Gestapo and ”special court” case files. He conducted surveys and interviews with German perpetrators, Jewish victims, and ordinary Germans who experienced the Third Reich at first hand. Consequently, his book is able to settle many nagging questions about who, exactly, was responsible for what, who knew what, and when they knew it. Nazi Terror is the most fine-grained portrait we may ever have of the mechanism of terror in a dictatorship.