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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.
When Finland gained its independence from Russia in 1917, the country had not had a military for almost two decades. The ensuing creation of a new national conscript army aroused intense but conflicting emotions among the Finns. This book examines how a modern conscript army, born out of a civil war, had to struggle through social, cultural and political minefields to find popular acceptance. Exploring the ways that images of manhood were used in the controversies, it reveals the conflicts surrounding compulsory military service in a democratic society and the compromises made as the new nation had to develop the will and skill to defend itself. Through the lens of masculinity, another pictu...
Flying and the pilot were significant metaphors of fascism's mythical modernity. Fernando Esposito traces the changing meanings of these highly charged symbols from the air show in Brescia, to the sky above the trenches of the First World War to the violent ideological clashes of the interwar period.
A heavily illustrated study of the foundations and working mechanisms of modern communities.
Germany in the 20th century endured two world wars, a failed democracy, Hitler's dictatorship, the Holocaust, and a country divided for 40 years. But it has also boasted a strong welfare state, affluence, liberalization and globalization, a successful democracy, and the longest period of peace in European history. In this award-winning volume of German history, Ulrich Herbert analyzes the trajectory of German politics and culture during a century of extremes.
From the late eighteenth century, Germans increasingly identified the fate of their nation with that of their woodlands. A variety of groups soon mobilized the 'German forest' as a national symbol, though often in ways that suited their own social, economic, and political interests. The German Forest is the first book-length history of the development and contestation of the concept of 'German' woodlands. Jeffrey K. Wilson challenges the dominant interpretation that German connections to nature were based in agrarian romanticism rather than efforts at modernization. He explores a variety of conflicts over the symbol from demands on landowners for public access to woodlands, to state attempts to integrate ethnic Slavs into German culture through forestry, and radical nationalist visions of woodlands as a model for the German 'race'. Through impressive primary and archival research, Wilson demonstrates that in addition to uniting Germans, the forest as a national symbol could also serve as a vehicle for protest and strife.
In the years leading up to the World Wars, Germany and Austria saw an unprecedented increase in the study and depiction of the criminal. Science, journalism and crime fiction were obsessed with delinquents while ignoring the social causes of crime. As criminologists measured criminals' heads and debated biological predestination, court reporters and crime writers wrote side-splitting or heart-rending stories featuring one of the most popular characters ever created--the hilarious or piteous crook. The author examines the figure of the crook and notions of "Jewish" criminality in a range of antisemitic writing, from Nazi propaganda to court reporting to forgotten classics of crime fiction.
What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be manly? How has our notion of masculinity changed over the years? In this book, noted historian George L. Mosse provides the first historical account of the masculine stereotype in modern Western culture, tracing the evolution of the idea of manliness to reveal how it came to embody physical beauty, courage, moral restraint, and a strong will. This stereotype, he finds, originated in the tumultuous changes of the eighteenth century, as Europe's dominant aristocrats grudgingly yielded to the rise of the professional, bureaucratic, and commercial middle classes. Mosse reveals how the new bourgeoisie, faced with a bewildering, rapidly industrialized world, latched onto the knightly ideal of chivalry. He also shows how the rise of universal conscription created a "soldierly man" as an ideal type. In bringing his examination up to the present, Mosse studies the key historical roles of the so-called "fairer sex" (women) and "unmanly men" (Jews and homosexuals) in defining and maintaining the male stereotype, and considers the possible erosion of that stereotype in our own time.
This edited volume explores conscription in the Napoleonic era, tracing the roots of European conscription and exploring the many methods that states used to obtain the manpower they needed to prosecute their wars. The levée-en-masse of the French Revolution has often been cited as a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’, but was it truly a ‘revolutionary’ break with past European practices of raising armies, or an intensification of the scope and scale of practices already inherent in the European military system? This international collection of scholars demonstrate that European conscription has far deeper roots than has been previously acknowledged, and that its intensification during the Napoleonic era was more an ‘evolutionary’ than ‘revolutionary’ change. This book will be of much interest to students of Military History, Strategic Studies, Strategic History and European History.
This volume locates and explores historical and contemporary sites of contested meanings of Holocaust memory across a range of geographical, geo-political, and disciplinary contexts, identifying and critically engaging with the nature and expression of these meanings within their relevant contexts, elucidating the political, social, and cultural underpinnings and consequences of these meanings, and offering interventions in the contemporary debates of Holocaust memory that suggest ways forward for the future.