Representations of Nazism

Winston Churchill once said, "History is written by the victors." Or maybe he didn't. The quote is often attributed to him, despite the fact that it appears in other print sources prior to World War II and Churchill's appointment to the office of British Prime Minister. However, apocryphal it may be, the attribution of the quote to Churchill in many ways illustrates the point that he-or whoever the originator is-was trying to make. We view war through the historical lens of the victorious side, or at the very least through the lens of our current cultural ideology applied to the conflict of the past. The majority of our memoirs of World War II focus on the lives and actions of soldiers in the Allied Forces and the civilian victims of the Holocaust. Unsurprisingly, given the atrocities committed by the Axis, relatively few narratives focus on the experiences of the participants on the losing side. However, war is a complicated subject and regardless of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, these participants were human beings with very real fears, emotions and lives. Two recent graphic novels published by Dead Reckoning attempt to explore these lives and do the difficult work of humanizing them without valorizing them.

Rudolf Höss : Auschwitz parancsnoka voltam " Elfogták a világtörténelem talán legnagyobb gyilkosát " – írta szalagcímében a New York Times 1946. március 17-én. S valóban, kevés olyan ember van, akinek kezéhez közel egymillió ártatlan ember, férfiak, nők és gyermekek vére tapadt. Rudolf Höss, a náci Németország által létrehozott legnagyobb és legtöbb áldozatot követelő koncentrációs és megsemmisítő tábor parancsnokaként, nagy kötelességtudattal és munkakedvvel, szenvtelenül működtette éveken keresztül az Auschwitz és Birkenau közelében felépített táborkomplexumot. A háború után, lengyel fogságban írt önéletrajzi feljegyzései egyedülálló betekintést engednek a parancsokat kérdések nélkül végrehajtó és végrehajtató tömeggyilkos belső fejlődéstörténetébe. Végigkövethetjük az életét a kora gyermekkortól az első világháborús katonalétig, az első politikai gyilkosság és többéves börtönfogságtól a dachaui koncentrációs táborban eltöltött formatív évekig. Részletesen megismerhetjük, hogy miként emelkedik először a sachsenhauseni védőőrizetes, majd az auschwitzi koncentrációs tábor parancsnokságáig, majd egészen a Koncentrációs Táborok Felügyelőségének hivatalvezetői posztjáig. 1944 kora nyarán újra Auschwitz élén áll, hogy levezényelje a megsemmisítő tábor legnagyobb szabású megsemmisítési projektjét, a vidéki magyar zsidók legyilkolását. Az ún. magyar akció (Ungarn-Aktion) keretében 437.000 magyarországi zsidó érkezik a táborba, akik közül 300.000-345.000 – köztük 100.000 gyerek – azonnal a gázkamrákba kerül. A magyar olvasóközönség által Robert Merle 1952-ben írt fiktív önéletrajzi regénye (Mesterségem a halál) által megismert Höss most saját szavaival mondja el élettörténetét. Egy olyan emberét, akit egyáltalán nem zaklatták fel a tömeggyilkosságok. " Senkit sem öltem meg személyesen, pusztán az auschwitzi megsemmisítési program vezetője voltam " – mondta, s egyszerűen nem értette azokat a kérdéseket, amelyek arra vonatkoztak, hogy a meggyilkoltak rászolgáltak-e a kegyetlen halálra. Már a feltevést is irreálisnak tartotta: " nem érti, kérem, hogy nekünk, SS-embereknek, nem az volt a dolgunk, hogy ilyesmiről gondolkodjunk; eszünkbe se jutott soha. Emellett az, hogy mindenről a zsidók tehetnek, természetes dolognak számított ". Mint régi, fanatikus nemzetiszocialista tényként fogadta el az antiszemitizmust. " Olyan alapvető tételnek könyveltük el ezt, amiben kérdés nélkül hisz az ember; semmiféle kételyem nem volt ezzel kapcsolatban. Teljességgel meg voltam győződve arról, hogy a zsidók az ellenpólust képviselik a német néppel szemben, s előbb-utóbb bekövetkezik a végső leszámolás a nemzeti szocializmus és a világzsidóság között, még békeidőben is. E doktrínák alapján feltételeztem, hogy a többi nép előbb vagy utóbb ugyancsak meggyőződik a zsidó-veszélyről, s hozzánk hasonlóan állást foglal vele szemben ". A Martin Broszat (1926-1989) német történész által közreadott és bevezető tanulmánnyal ellátott feljegyzéseket Kádár Gábor és Vági Zoltán történészeknek a Rudolf Höss és a magyar holokauszt kapcsolatát bemutató utószava zárja. A magyar kiadás elé Gellért Ádám írt bevezető tanulmányt.

Artigo publicado no Dossiê Temático "Usos Práticos do Passado" na Revista Temporalidades: v. 9 n. 1 (2017): Edição 23.

RESUMO:A série televisiva Black Mirror, criada por Charlie Brooker, nos apresenta um futuro de distopia, onde a tecnologia avançada tomou conta da vida das pessoas, e com tons de ficção científica. A série, apesar de se passar em um espaço de tempo desconhecido, nos apresenta elementos sociais muito familiares. O episódio retratado nesse texto, Engenharia reversa (Men against fire), nos coloca questionamentos e desconfortos que o sociólogo Zygmunt Bauman há muito tempo nos alertava: de que não aprendemos nada com o Holocausto e de que a sociedade estaria em perigo até hoje, do mesmo jeito que estava em perigo em 1933. O objetivo desse artigo é fazer uma relação entre esse episódio e as teorias de Bauman e Hannah Arendt, acerca das lições do totalitarismo, dos elementos modernos que tornaram o Holocausto possível e da cegueira moral que acomete a sociedade moderna, fazendo com que não estejamos livres de outro Holocausto. Essa concepção se insere na proposta de Pierre Rosanvallon, nos usos da história para o presente e no constante diálogo entre o passado e o presente na história filosófica do político.

ABSTRACT: The science fiction television series Black Mirror, created by Charlie Brooker, presents a dystopic future in which high technology embraces and overpowers people‘s lives. The series, although set in an unknown historic period, shows very familiar social elements. The episode analyzed in this paper is entitled Men against fire and it raises some of the questions and discomforts that sociologist Zygmunt Bauman warned us about: for instance, the fact that we have learned nothing from the Holocaust, and that society is still in danger today as it was in danger in 1933. This article aims to relate Men against fire to the theories of Bauman and Hannah Arendt about the lessons of totalitarianism, the modern elements that made the Holocaust possible and the moral blindness that afflicts modern society – thus showing us that we are still in the possibility of another Holocaust. This proposal echoes the theories of Pierre Rosanvallon regarding the uses of history for the present, and the constant dialogue between past and present within the philosophical history of politics.

The German invasion of the Netherlands on the 10th of May 1940 was not only a tragedy for the Dutch people; it was also a tragedy for Dutch literature. In a few weeks time, the intellectual leaders of an entire generation would disappear. In the chaos of the battle of Rotterdam, Doeke Zijlstra, editor in chief of the publishing house Nijgh & Van Ditmar, was killed by a stray bullet. Publisher Robert Leopold, who feared German revenge for his publication of Hermann Rauschning’s critical work Hitler Speaks, shot himself. The promising Jewish writer Jacob Hiegentlich took poison and died. The young poet Tom de Bruin was accidentally shot by a nervous Dutch sentry. Hendrik Marsman, the most celebrated Dutch poet of his time, was among the few who found a place on a ship that would bring him to England. Within sight of the coast, however, they were hit by a German torpedo and he drowned. By then, two of the most prominent essayists, Edgar Du Perron and Menno ter Braak, had already died; Du Perron collapsed with a heart attack during the bombardment of an airport near his home in Bergen and ter Braak committed suicide upon the news of the Dutch surrender to the Germans. None of them ever knew about the death of the others.
What might seem as the last chapter of a Greek tragedy was only the beginning. During the occupation, at least 700 men and women of the underground press would lose their lives. The punishment for participation in the clandestine press was equivalent to that for acts of sabotage. Propaganda had been an essential element in the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and, as such, a strict control over the press in the occupied Netherlands was considered of paramount importance. Literature was given a totally new purpose in the occupied Netherlands; it became propaganda in support of the Nazification of Dutch society and the tightening of links between the “Germanic” Dutch and their German “brothers.”
Hence, Dutch authors were suddenly confronted with a tough challenge. For decades, most of them had preferred the loftiness of the ivory tower over the squabbling of daily politics. In 1937, the celebrated novelist Simon Vestdijk still wrote: “The creative artist faces war like a toddler: utterly helpless.”  Only a couple of years later, his publishing house was bombed and he himself was taken hostage. The same author, who didn’t want to have anything to do with war, had ended up in its clutches.
In fact, after the German invasion, participation in political debates was no longer an option. It had become a necessity. Even keeping quiet was now considered a political statement. In this context, a simple poem could have a huge impact.

The chapter uses the methods of psychobiography and object relations theory to conduct a single-case study of the life and loves of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003). Leni's childhood home was dominated by her father, who had to be cajoled, and sometimes outright deceived, into supporting his daughter's desire to enter a career in the performing arts. Unfortunately, Leni's success was often her worst enemy: Just as she evaded her father Albert's censorious glance, so did she avoid the barbs of German film critics by gaining Adolf Hitler as her patron until the fall of the Nazi regime in 1945. At this time, Leni lost not only her marriage and her film career, but even her sanity, if only for a short time. The chapter shows, through a Fairbairnian analysis, how Leni adapted to the disaster that was her early career by reinventing herself as a photographer of African tribes. Also, in her romantic life, she changed tacks. Compared with her late-in-life companion Horst Kettner, Leni's early romances were relatively shallow either because her counterpart was too involved in promoting her career (Harry Sokal) or too far removed from her working life (Peter Jacob).

Through a historical overview of industrial music, cultural movement emerged in the late 1970’s, this research elects some of the artists that worked with martial discourses in their lyrics, music, indumenta and graphic art, focusing on the Austrian band Nachtmahr. Founded by the former soldier Thomas Rainer, the solo project composes military metaphors in order to discuss quotidian themes related to general individuals, such as power relations, the defense of authenticity and the fight against hypocrisy. According to a phenomenological perspective, with some ethnographic observations, and an analysis of the cultural references of this music genre, we propose a reflection about the usage of totalitarian and military elements in industrial music.

Die von Carl Kraus und Hannes Obermair kuratierte Ausstellung auf Schloss Tirol zerpflückt die Mythen des deutschen und des italienischen Faschismus. Hitlers und Mussolinis Unrechtsherrschaft wurde ganz maßgeblich von Künstlern und Künstlerinnen mit Bildern und Narrativen bedient. Auch in Südtirol, in Nord- und Osttirol und im Trentino. Einige wenige stemmten sich dagegen, und ihre Werke wurden als „entartet“ verfemt.
Die systemkonforme Kunst entwarf Heldenbilder, beschwor Blut und Boden, rückte „Führer“ und „duce“ ins rechte Licht und verkitschte die „Heimat“ selbst dann noch, als von den Diktatoren die Aussiedlung der Bevölkerung beschlossen wurde.
Die Schau „Mythen der Diktaturen“ ist eine Wende für die regionale Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte. Viele ihrer Kapitel müssen neu geschrieben werden. Doch die Ausstellung öffnet auch den Blick auf aktuelle autoritäre Verführungen und deren ästhetische Strategien.

La mostra a Castel Tirolo, cuarta da Carl Kraus e Hannes Obermair, esamina accuratamente e decostruisce  i miti del fascismo italiano e tedesco. Il dominio illegittimo di Hitler e Mussolini fu ampiamente servito dagli artisti e dalle loro opere figurative e letterarie. Anche in Tirolo meridionale, settentrionale, orientale e in Trentino. Solo in pochi si opposero ad esso e le loro opere furono bandite e definite “degenerate”.
L’arte conforme al sistema produsse immagini eroiche, evocò sangue e terra, mise il Führer e il Duce nella “giusta” luce e svendette il concetto stesso di “patria” quando i dittatori decisero il reinsediamento della popolazione.
La mostra Miti delle dittature segna un punto di svolta nella storia artistica e culturale dell’intera regione. Molti dei suoi capitoli andrebbero riscritti, ma la mostra offre anche uno sguardo sulle attuali seduzioni autoritarie e sulle loro strategie estetiche.

This article seeks to explore the relationships between heritage and identity by drawing on analytical discussions of material culture and historical consciousness and focusing on an empirical case of ‘undesirable heritage’, that is, a heritage that the majority of the popula- tion would prefer not to have. The case is that of the Nazi or fascist past in Germany, with specific reference to the former Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg. By looking at some aspects of the ways in which this vast site of Nazi marching grounds and fascist buildings has been dealt with post-war, the article seeks to show both the struggle with the materiality of the site and changing forms of historical consciousness. It focuses in particular on some of the post-war dilemmas associated with the perceived agency of architecture, the sacralising and trivialising of space, the role and implications of musealisation, and the growth of a more reflective identity-health form of historical consciousness.

Online Symposium hosted on 19-20 May 2022 at University College Cork.

The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and The Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures of University College Cork (CASiLaC).

How do a city and a nation deal with a legacy of perpetrating atrocity? How are contemporary identities negotiated and shaped in the face of concrete reminders of a past that most wish they did not have? Difficult Heritage focuses on the case of Nuremberg-a city whose name is indelibly linked with Nazism-to explore these questions and their implications. Using original archival, interview and ethnographic sources, it provides not only fascinating new material and perspectives, but also more general innovative theorizing of the relationship between heritage, identity and material culture. The book looks at how Nuremberg has dealt with its Nazi past post-1945. It focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the city's architectural heritage, in particular, the former Nazi party rally grounds, on which the Nuremberg rallies were staged. The book draws on original sources, such as city council debates and interviews, to chart a lively picture of debate, action and inaction in relation to this site and significant others, in Nuremberg and elsewhere. In doing so, Difficult Heritage seeks to highlight changes over time in the ways in which the Nazi past has been dealt with in Germany, and the underlying cultural assumptions, motivations and sources of friction involved. Whilst referencing wider debates and giving examples of what was happening elsewhere in Germany and beyond, Difficult Heritage provides a rich in-depth account of this most fascinating of cases. It also engages in comparative reflection on developments underway elsewhere in order to contextualize what was happening in Nuremberg and to show similarities to and differences from the ways in which other 'difficult heritages' have been dealt with elsewhere. By doing so, the author offers an informed perspective on ways of dealing with difficult heritage, today and in the future, discussing innovative museological, educational and artistic practice.

Il romanzo a cui Silone teneva di più
presentato in una versione inedita.
I brani contro Mussolini e il fascismo
leggibili per la prima volta grazie
a un dattiloscritto conservato a Zurigo.
Un volume che ci fa uscire dalle secche
del «caso Silone» e contribuisce a un ritratto
autentico dello scrittore abruzzese

This important book explores the relationship between the Third Reich and animals -- as symbols, as myths, and as living creatures. From a review in Choice: "Rarely does a book contribute to two fields so significantly as this one. Sax, an independent scholar and consultant to various human rights organizations, has written the first book to explore thoroughly the Nazi cult of animals. In a way, this book reads like a mystery novel, as it uncovers some of the chief paradoxes of Nazi ideology. The Nazis promoted vegetarianism and passed the most progressive anti-cruelty laws the world has ever known. Yet they also developed a mystical technocracy that reduced morality to the crudest version of a biological struggle for survival...This book is a must for all collections in German history and in animal rights. It is a deep and profound reflection on the complex and perplexing ways that animals can shape human culture and politics." (S.H. Webb). This second, expanded edition includes a new essay on "Nazi Totemism."

Comment Hitler at -il pu parvenir au pouvoir ? Deux explications dominent : celle d'une conspiration des milieux de droite allemands qui auraient fait gouverner le pays par une bande de sauvages pour éloigner le spectre d'une révolution sociale ou satis-faire leurs appétits territoriaux ; celle d'une maladresse de ces mêmes milieux, qui auraient cru à tort pouvoir contrôler les nazis en ne leur donnant qu'un pouvoir limité. L'anniversaire de 2013 a été l'occasion d'un renouvellement du regard. Aussi propo-sons-nous de nouvelles approches. F. D.

This provocative and unique anthology analyzes Quentin Tarantino's controversial Inglourious Basterds in the contexts of cinema, cultural, gender, and historical studies. The film and its ideology is dissected by a range of scholars and writers who take on the director's manipulation of metacinema, Nazisploitation, ethnic stereotyping, gender roles, allohistoricism, geopolitics, philosophy, language, and memory. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/quentin-tarantinos-inglourious-basterds-9781441138217/#sthash.FQQ9artA.dpuf

The Holocaust roughly spanned from January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945, that is when Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party became the Chancellor of Germany to the time the war in Europe officially ended. The Jews, who were blamed for Germany’s ills were supposed to be subjected to total annihilation through a propaganda campaign which ultimately  led to the destruction of the Jewish community on a very large scale. Schindler’s Ark (1982) by Thomas Keneally and The Book Thief (2005) by Marcus Zusak provide a narrative account of the Holocaust which led to the deaths of two thirds of European Jews and one third of the total Jews worldwide. This paper demonstrates the horrors in the reign of Adolf Hitler and how well the two novels retrace history. It entails to rediscover the ‘truths’ which are represented through fictional accounts of the events that took place during the genocide.

Reseña, de sesgo historiográfico, de la obra "Vida y Muerte en el Tercer Reich" del historiador estadounidense Peter Fritzsche la cual aparece complementando, a modo de saludable continuación, a  la  connotada "De alemanes a nazis". El análisis se centra en los puntos nodales que se han considerado como ejes vertebradores del texto, a saber, estructura narrativa,  preguntas planteadas, recursos, metodología, disciplinas abordadas y tensiones explicativas.

This paper examines the topic of Nazism and religion in a new way, by considering the official explanations that were offered to party members and the German public in the two commentaries on the Nazi Program. Through a detailed analysis of these commentaries and the origins of the program, it is argued that the official Nazi position on religion has to be understood principally as anti-Jewish. The paper proposes a redefinition of the terms of debate to “ethnotheism” or religion defined by race, and the perceived moral or spiritual characteristics that the Nazis believed to be inherent in race.

Sadism as fascistic, masochism as postmodern - these are the sexual myths associated with modernity which this book critiques via an historical account of their discursive emergence. Sexual Myths of Modernity reconsiders the intellectual milieux in which the Viennese psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing formulated the neologisms 'Sadismus' and 'Masochismus', and presents a revised understanding of the character of Sigmund Freud's uptake of these terms. The central motif in such definitions of perversion is the binding of sex to historical teleology - the notion that perversions can be aligned to progress, civilization and barbarism. This motif thereafter haunted a wide range of intellectual attempts to account for torture, genocide and war. Sexual Myths of Modernity traces an intellectual genealogy from the work of Krafft-Ebing, to that of Freud, to that of the Frankfurt School philosophers Adorno/Horkheimer, and then to the plethora of theoretical, literary and cinematic visions of Nazism as sadomasochistic generated since the nineteen sixties. Alongside such visions is an equally teleological attempt to recuperate masochism as an ironic postmodern opposite to sadism. The vision of Nazi perpetrators as sadists, along with the account of masochism as postmodern transgression, have become some of the most problematic and widely diffused sexual myths of our time. But their embedded assumption of a relation between violence, history and perversion owe everything to nineteenth-century habits of thinking.

The debate surrounding the relation between Hitler’s interest in architectural neo-classicism and his reception of antiquity has often proceeded from the assumption of a deep nostalgia for a (deeply mythicised) classical ‘Aryan’ past and an instinctive drive to use anti-modernist art for solely propagandistic ends. Whereas some have
attempted to invert this causal relationship, the present study situates Hitler’s artistic passion within his ‘biopolitical’ vision of the new Germany, cleansed of all that was deemed degenerate (entartet) and unassimilable within the national community (gemeinschaftsunfähig). Through an analysis of the Third Reich’s vast civic building programmes, which takes into account Hitler’s personal discourse on the ancient past, we will show how both elements, that is Hitler’s ‘modernised’ neo-classicism and his view on antiquity, can be seen as essentially complementary, and integral to his political programme. We will do so by firstly presenting an overview of the most typical examples of Hitler and Nazism’s use of an idiosyncratic version of neo-classically inspired civic architecture. After this we will focus on the Führer’s ‘artistic’ persona, both in the sense of his love for the arts, especially those referring to the formal language of antiquity, as in the sense of his biopolitical conception of Nazi life as a ‘work of art in progress’. Finally,
Hitler’s vision of artistic renaissance is located within a discourse of racial renewal which embraced the past and future within a this-worldly ‘eternity’.

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers.

My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers’ political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers’ ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase.

The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers’ ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers’ relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers’ domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs.

An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers’ motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers’ political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically “super-fascist”. The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascist ideology.

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers.

My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers’ political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers’ ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase.

The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers’ ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers’ relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers’ domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs.

An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers’ motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers’ political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically “super-fascist”. The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascist ideology.

Current debates on Nazism and religion are focused around the notion that the Nazis sought to promote a kind of Christian faith called “positive Christianity”. This article challenges such perspectives. It establishes that “positive Christianity” had an existing meaning in German society before the Nazi Party was formed — dogmatic Christian faith — and demonstrates that this was the same interpretation of religious faith that Hitler appeared to advocate in Mein Kampf. The paper argues that “positive Christianity” had such a wide variety of interpretations that it cannot be considered cohesive.

После распада СССР в России возник культурный феномен, не получивший пока должного научного осмысления. Речь идет о нарастающей моде на рунические символы, которые можно увидеть на одежде, татуировках, логотипах, амулетах, в кинофильмах и телепередачах. Возродилось понятие «славянские руны», давно отвергнутое наукой. Свою лепту в формирование таких представлений вносит пресса. На основе анализа газетных публикаций показано, что российская пресса сообщает о рунах менее достоверные сведения, чем западная (англо-американская и немецкая). Российские журналисты меньше внимания уделяют нацистским коннотациям знаков рунического алфавита. Вместе с тем отличия в подаче информации о рунах в российской и западной прессе могут привести к возникновению новых межкультурных конфликтов. Ключевые слова: славянские руны, нацистская символика, неоязычество, неонацизм, руническая эмблема СС, мифы массовой культуры, скандал на фестивале в Байройте.
A new curious cultural phenomenon, which, however, has not yet received its scientific understanding, emerged in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union. This phenomenon is the growing fashion for runic symbols, which can be seen on clothes, tattoos, logos, amulets, in movies and TV shows. A concept of "Slavic runes", long ago rejected by science, has revived in Russian popular culture. A press contributes to the formation of such ideas. Based on the content analysis of press coverage of runic symbols, it is shown that the Russian press reports less reliable information about runes than the Western one. Russian journalists pay little attention to modern Nazi connotations of letters of the runic alphabet. Differences in the representation of information about runes in the Russian and Western press can lead to the emergence of new intercultural conflicts where there is none.

Chiunque abbia letto (e/o visto) The Man in the High Castle è senz'altro rimasto colpito dall'idea, dapprima sfumata e, via via, sempre più forte, di Nebenwelt, cioè, in tedesco, “mondo parallelo” (caratterizzato nello specifico dal rovesciamento del rapporto tra vincitori e vinti), ragione ed essenza esoterica del libro e, meno esoterica e più concreta, della sua efficace trasposizione, e reinterpretazione, nei quaranta episodi dell'omonima serie TV prodotta da Amazon...
in
https://issuu.com/fogli.transeunte/docs/fogli-transeunte-2020-6_b19e8b991d68ce

Une synthèse et une explication des différents arguments et controverses autour de la politique étrangère du troisième Reich.

Grâce à une grille d'interprétation originale et claire, l'auteur présente une synthèse
et une explication des différents arguments et controverses autour de la politique étrangère du Troisième Reich.

Une attention particulière est donnée à la problématique du rôle joué par Hitler
dans la politique étrangère nationale-socialiste. Démon ou dictateur faible ? Programmateur ou improvisateur ? Agent du grand capital ou incarnation d'une essence totalitaire ?

Cette étude ne se limite pas au strict cadre des analyses de la diplomatie de l'Allemagne nationale-socialiste mais elle les replace dans le contexte général des discussions qui marquent le débat autour de l'interprétation du nazisme.