David B. Dennis shows how, based on belief that the Third Reich represented the culmination of Western civilization, culture became a key propaganda tool in the regime’s program of national renewal and its campaign against political, national and racial enemies. Focusing on the daily output of the Völkischer Beobachter, the party’s official organ and the most widely circulating German newspaper of the day, he reveals how activists twisted history, biography and aesthetics to fit Nazism’s authoritarian, militaristic and anti-Semitic world views. Ranging from National Socialist coverage of Germans such as Luther, Dürer, Goethe, Beethoven, Wagner and Nietzsche to ‘great men of the Nordic West’ such as Socrates, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Dennis reveals the true extent of the regime’s ambitious attempt to reshape the “German mind.”
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Praise for Inhumanities by Jeffrey Herf
“Dennis’s distinctive contribution is to reveal in great detail how the Nazis understood and misunderstood, used and misused, selectively read and then appropriated bits and pieces of the Western tradition. Inhumanities again reminds us that the Nazi regime attacked what … Continue reading
Praise for Inhumanities by Celia Applegate
“This is an ambitious and important book that conveys the immensely depressing conclusion that even intellectual and cultural figures of great creativity and imagination (Dante, Bach, Beethoven) are dangerously malleable in the hands of their interpreters. Scholars, students, and the … Continue reading
Praise for Inhumanities by Glenn Watkins
‘David Dennis’s long awaited study of the metamorphosis of Nazi Kultur during World War II has arrived like a block-buster. The role that the regime gradually tailored for the finest artists and thinkers to serve a proposed new world order has … Continue reading
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- Analysis, Constellations, Nightmarish Romanticism Comments Off on Analysis, Constellations, Nightmarish Romanticism
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- Mention, with Jost Hermand’s Culture in Dark Times, in German History Journal Comments Off on Mention, with Jost Hermand’s Culture in Dark Times, in German History Journal
- Mention in The Historical Journal Comments Off on Mention in The Historical Journal
- Mention on Politicus.com Comments Off on Mention on Politicus.com
- Review in The Journal of Modern History Comments Off on Review in The Journal of Modern History
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- Review in Central European History Comments Off on Review in Central European History