Description
Book SynopsisMuch has been written about the conditions that made possible Hitler's rise and Nazi takeover of Germany, but while telling the story of the National Socialist Party, should we not speak of Julius Caesar and Pericles? This book argues that to understand Nazi regime, we must examine its appropriation of the heroes and lessons of the ancient world.
Trade Review"Official Nazi racial doctrine inverted traditional analyses by interpreting antiquity as a product of Nordicism. Although Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Speer understood the limited archaeological evidence of early German society differently, biological determinism (the struggle between races) defined the baseline of historical change. In this light, Rome declined as it shed its Nordic blood in battle against Carthage. Alexander the Great's empire declined as it absorbed foreign elements, including Persians. Beyond Max Weinreich's
Hitler's Professors (1946), Chapoutot (Sorbonne) identifies largely
German classicists and philologists, including Hans F. K. Günther and Joseph Vogt, who coupled social Darwinistic ideas and biological racism into their interwar publications on antiquity. Consistent with Michael Wildt's
Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft (CH, Feb'13, 50-3486), the pre-war Nazi curriculum reforms, Berlin's
Olympiastadion, the German pavilion for the Paris International Exposition in 1937, the
Reichsautobahn, and Nuremberg's
Reichsparteitagsgelände united Germans with an illustrious history and physical reminders of its continuity under Nazi leadership, generally, and Adolf Hitler, specifically. Although racial scientists and academics had established the foundations of biological racism decades earlier, Nazi party officials and pedagogues (for example, Dietrich Klagges) endorsed Nordicism in new textbooks and a revised secondary curriculum. In short, the Nazis usurped Europe's classical past. Summing Up: Highly recommended."
-- D. A. Meier, Dickinson State University * CHOICE connect *
"Chapoutot brings together the cultural, ideological and historical threads between the Third Reich and the ancient past, as they were woven by Nazi thinkers . . . this is an ambitious, important book for any scholar working on Nazi ideology, precisely because of its synthetic power." * Journal of Contemporary History *
Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION PART ONE. ANNEXING ANTIQUITY 1. ORIGIN MYTHS: EX SEPTENTRIONE LUX 2. A NORDIC MEDITERRANEAN: GREECE, ROME, AND THE NORTH, BETWEEN GERMAN COUSINS 3. MENS SANA: ANTIQUITY, THE HUMANITIES, AND GERMAN YOUTH PART TWO. IMITATING ANTIQUITY 4. FROM STONE TO FLESH: THE BODY OF THE NEW ARYAN MAN BETWEEN AESTHETICS AND EUGENICS 5. THE RACIAL STATE AND TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY: PLATO AS PHILOSOPHER-KING, OR THE THIRD REICH AS SECOND SPARTA 6. FROM EMPIRE TO REICH: THE LESSONS OF ROMAN RULE AND CLASSICAL COLONIALISM PART THREE. RELIVING ANTIQUITY 7. HISTORY AS RACIAL STRUGGLE: THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST IN ANTIQUITY 8. VOLKSTOD OR RASSENSELBSTMORD: HOW CIVILIZATIONS DIE 9. THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF THE END: AESTHETICISM, NIHILISM, AND THE STAGING OF THE FINAL CATASTROPHE CONCLUSION NOTES INDEX
