" Was Hitler a moral aberration or a man of his people? This topic has been hotly argued in recent years, and now Jay Gonen brings new answers to the debate using a psychohistorical perspective, contending that Hitler reflected the psyche of many Germans of his time. Like any charismatic leader, Hitler was an expert scanner of the Zeitgeist. He possessed an uncanny ability to read the masses correctly and guide them with ""new"" ideas that were merely reflections of what the people already believed. Gonen argues that Hitler's notions grew from the general fabric of German culture in the years following World War I. Basing his work in the role of ideologies in group psychology, Gonen exposes the psychological underpinnings of Nazi Germany's desire to expand its living space and exterminate Jews. Hitler responded to the nation's group fantasy of renewing a Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. He presented the utopian ideal of one large state, where the nation represented one extended family. In reality, however, he desired the triumph of automatism and totalitarian practices that would preempt family autonomy and private action. Such a regimented state would become a war machine, designed to breed infantile soldiers brainwashed for sacrifice. To achieve that aim, he unleashed barbaric forces whose utopian features were the very aspects of the state that made it most cruel.

More than half a century after the fall of the Third Reich, Nazism, its roots and its essential nature, remain a central and unresolved enigma of the twentieth century. During the period of Hitler's ascendancy, most attempts at explaining this unprecedented phenomenon were framed in "economic," often Marxist, sociological terms and concepts. Peter Viereck's Metapolitics, initially published in 1941, broke with this convention by indicting Hitler in terms of the Judaic-Christian ethical tradition and locating certain elements of the Nazi worldview in German romantic poetry, music, and social thought. Newly expanded, Metapolitics remains a key work in the cultural interpretation of Nazism and totalitarianism and in the psychological interpretation of Hitler as a Wagnerite and failed artist. The term "metapolitics," a coinage from Richard Wagner's nationalist circle, signifies an ideology resulting from five distinct strands: romanticism (embodied chiefly in the Wagnerian ethos), the pseudo-science of race, Fuehrer worship, vague economic socialism, and the alleged supernatural and unconscious force of the Volk collectivity. Together, those elements engendered an emphasis on irrationalism and hysteria and belief in a special German mission to direct the course of the world's history. Viereck analyzes nineteenth-century German thought's conflicting attitudes toward political procedures and social arrangements rooted in classical, rational, legalistic, and Christian traditions. This edition includes an appreciation by Thomas Mann and an exchange with Jacques Barzun debating Viereck's criticism of German romanticism. Viereck's essays on the case of Albert Speer, on Claus von Stauffenberg (the German officer who led the army conspiracy to assassinate Hitler), and on the poets Stefan George and Georg Heym appear here for the first time in book form.

By the 1920s in Central Europe, it had become a truism among intellectuals that natural science had "disenchanted" the world, and in particular had reduced humans to mere mechanisms, devoid of higher purpose. But could a new science of "wholeness" heal what the old science of the "machine" had wrought? Some contemporary scientists thought it could. These years saw the spread of a new, "holistic" science designed to nourish the heart as well as the head, to "reenchant" even as it explained. Critics since have linked this holism to a German irrationalism that is supposed to have paved the way to Nazism. In a penetrating analysis of this science, Anne Harrington shows that in fact the story of holism in Germany is a politically heterogeneous story with multiple endings. Its alliances with Nazism were not inevitable, but resulted from reorganizational processes that ultimately brought commitments to wholeness and race, healing and death into a common framework. Before 1933, holistic science was a uniquely authoritative voice in cultural debates on the costs of modernization. It attracted not only scientists with Nazi sympathies but also moderates and leftists, some of whom left enduring humanistic legacies. Neither a "reduction" of science to its politics, nor a vision in which the sociocultural environment is a backdrop to the "internal" work of science, this story instead emphasizes how metaphor and imagery allow science to engage "real" phenomena of the laboratory in ways that are richly generative of human meanings and porous to the social and political imperatives of the hour.

WALTER A. ROSENBLITH Footnotes to the Recent History of Neuroscience: Personal Reflections and Microstories The workshop upon which this volume is based offered me an opportunity to renew contact fairly painlessly with workers in the brain sciences, not just as a participant/observer but maybe as what might be called a teller of microstories. I had originally become curious about the brain by way of my wife's senior thesis, in which she attempted to relate electroencephalography to certain aspects of human behavior. As a then-budding physicist and communications engineer, I had barely heard about brain waves, nor had I studied physiology in a systematic way. My work on noise dealt with the effects of certain acoustical stimuli on biological structures and entire organisms. This was the period immediately after World War II when many scientists and engineers who had done applied work in the war effort were trying to find their way among the challenging new fields that were opening up. Francis Crick, among others, has described such a search taking place in the cafes of the "other" Cambridge, the one on the Cam. At that time the brain sciences, in his opinion, offered much less promise than molecular biology. However, he was sufficiently attracted by what they might eventually have to offer to keep an eye on them, and several decades later his work turned toward the brain.

Right-wing populism has been on the rise in Europe and elsewhere. Germanys foremost populist party is called Alternative for Germany (AfD). Founded in 2013 and entering Germanys federal parliament in 2017, the AfD increasingly moved towards right-wing extremism. Today, the party is Germanys most successful nationalistic party. Following the populist playbook, the AfD started off with a simple neoliberal and anti-Europe message, but soon moved towards the extreme right. By 2017 the AfDs ultra-nationalistic wing had successfully outmanoeuvred the partys moderate and neoliberal leader Frauke Petry. Written from the standpoint of openness, pluralism, liberalism and democracy, this book examines the AfDs rise to fame, its successes, and the partys ideological links dating back to German Nazism of the 1930s. The author illuminates the partys ideological and institutional links to present-day Neo-Nazis; its close associations to the right-wing street movement Pegida; the recruitment of right-wing extremists and former Neo-Nazis into its parliamentarian ranks; its xenophobic, anti-Muslim, racist and anti-Semitic ideologies; and its relationship to the neo-fascist Identity Movement. A historical overview positions the AfD within Germanys political landscape. The work engages with the make-up of AfD voters and electoral successes; the partys relationship to anti-Semitism; and its dreams of re-establishing a mythical Aryan Volksgemeinschaft. Close attention is paid to the AfDs demagogic and nationalistic leader, Bjoern Hoecke, as well as the partys admiration for the radical right of neighbouring Austria. A final chapter examines the fascist character of the AfD as measured against Umberto Ecos fourteen elements of Ur-Fascism. Three questions are posed: Will the AfD lead to the end of German democracy? Is Germany moving towards another Third Reich? Is there another Hitler in the making?

Arthur P. Mendel argues that throughout history man has worried about the Apocalypse, a phenomenon that has changed from God to reason, to history, and then to nature. He calls for a more modest and humane philosophy with regard to the Earth.'

Richard Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" has been one of the most performed operas ever since its premier in 1868, as it epitomizes themes of Germanness. This volume examines the representation of German history in the opera and the way it has functioned in history through political appropriation and staging practice. in performance.

This book shows how, during the 20th century, evils such as totalitarianism, tyranny, war, and genocide became indelibly linked to the fascist cause, and examines the enduring and popular appeal of an ideology that has counted princes, poets, and war heroes among its most fervent adherents. From the followers of Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, the Arab leader who met with Adolf Hitler in November 1942 to the murderous death squads of the Croatian Ustasha to certain members of the British Establishment, fascism's heady brew of extreme nationalism and revolutionary violence has attracted followers from across all religions, races, and classes. Now widely reviled, fascism became an immensely powerful political force in Western Europe throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. How did civilized nations like Italy, Germany, Austria, and others succumb to an ideology now regarded by the political mainstream as barbarous and beyond the pale? World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia covers all the key personalities and movements throughout the history of fascism and brings to light some of the ideology's lesser-known aspects, from Hindu extremists in India to the influential role of certain women in fascist movements. How did an ideology which was openly boastful of its belief in violence come to seduce the elites of some of the most civilized nations on earth? What can explain fascism's enduring appeal?

In Rereading German History, first published in 1997, Richard J. Evans draws together his seminal review essays on the political, economic, cultural and social history of Germany through war and reunification. This book provides a study of how and why historians – mainly German, American, British and French – have provided a series of differing and often conflicting readings of the German past. It also presents a reconsideration of German history in the light of the recent decline of the German Democratic Republic, collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. Rereading German History re-examines major controversies in modern German history, such as the debate over Germany’s ‘special path’ to modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the discussions in the 1980s on the uniqueness or otherwise of Auschwitz. Evans also analyses the arguments over the nature of German national identity. The book offers trenchant and important analytical insights into the history of Germany in the last two centuries, and is ideal reading material for students of modern history and German studies.