A01=Lawrence Birken
Author_Lawrence Birken
Category=JPFQ
Category=NHD
Category=NHWL
Category=NHWR7
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
World History
Product details
- ISBN 9780275950651
- Weight: 907g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 23 May 1995
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Birken challenges the conventional wisdom that Hitlerism was a revolt against Western values. Utilizing Adolph Hitler's major writings, speeches, and recorded conversations, this path-breaking study in intellectual history delineates the relationship of Nazism to other European ideologies, both past and present. National Socialism, Birken maintains, was nothing less than an attempt to create a metaphysical foundation for the German nation-state after both the Frankfurt Assembly and the Bismarckian pseudo-Reich had failed to do so. In this context, Hitler can be seen as the last great exponent of the Enlightenment tradition that glorified fraternity. However, by grounding German nationalism in race, Hitler sent his country on a path toward destruction in the Second World War. Birken closes with the warning that our current failure to provide a post-modern substitute for nationalism invites the reassertion of the Enlightenment obsessions of nation and race. Speculative and far-reaching, this book will stimulate the current debate over nationalism and will be of interest to students of politics and the social sciences as well as German history buffs.
LAWRENCE BIRKEN is Assistant Professor of History at Ball State University. He is the author of Consuming Desire: Sexual Science and the Emergence of a Culture of Abundance, 1871-1914.
