The new fascination with fascism: The case of nazi modernism

Journal of Contemporary History

Volumn 37, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 541-558

  Betts, Paul ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248083062     PISSN: 00220094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/00220094020370040301     Document Type: Article

References (150)

1. Recent academic assessments include Scott Spector, 'Was the Third Reich Movie-Made? Interdisciplinarity and the Reframing of Ideology', American Historical Review, 106, 2 (April 2001), 460-84;
2. Peter Jelavich, 'National Socialism, Art and Power in the 1930s', Past & Present, 164 (August 1999), 244-65;
3. Suzanne Marchand, 'Nazi Culture: Banality or Barbarism?', Journal of Modern History, 70 (March 1998), 108-18.
4. Note also the special issues on 'Fascism and Culture', Modernism/Modernity, 3, 1 (January 1996)
5. 'The Aesthetics of Fascism', Journal of Contemporary History, 31, 2 (April 1996)
6. and 'Fascism and Culture', Stanford Italian Review, 8, 1-2 (1990).
7. Dawn Ades, Tim Benton, David Elliott and Iain Boyd White, 'Selectors' Introduction' in Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators, 1930-1945 (London 1995), 17.
8. Recent titles include Erin Carlston, Thinking Fascism: Sapphic Modernism and Fascist Modernity (Stanford, CA 1998);
9. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley, CA 2001);
10. Marla Stone, The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (Princeton, NJ 1998);
11. Jean-Louis Cohen (ed.), Les Années 30: L'Architecture et les arts de l'espace entre industrie et nostalgie (Paris 1997);
12. Le Temps menaçant 1929-1939 (Paris 1997);
13. Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self (Ithaca, NY 1997);
14. Simonetta Falasca, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetic Power of Mussolini's Italy (Berkeley, CA 1997);
15. Andrew Hewitt, Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics and the Avant-Garde (Stanford, CA 1993);
16. and Richard Golsan (ed.), Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture (Hanover, NH 1992).
17. Susan Sontag, 'Fascinating Fascism', reprinted in Under the Sign of Saturn (London 1983).
18. Useful broad-based examples are Graham Bartram et al. (eds), Reconstructing the Past: Representations of the Fascist Era in Post-War European Culture (Keele 1996)
19. and Nicholas Hewitt (ed.), The Cultural of Reconstruction: European Literature, Thought and Film (New York 1989).
20. This shift of emphasis can also be seen in Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present and Future (Oxford 1996).
21. Reinhard Alter and Peter Monteath (eds), Rewriting the German Past: History and Identity in the New Germany (Atlantic Highlands, NJ 1997).
22. Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA 1988);
23. Richard Evans, In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape the Nazi Past (New York 1989);
24. and Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death (Bloomington, IN 1984).
25. Not that this was an easy road. Indeed, the heady days of 1989 soon gave way to acrimonious debates - both within and beyond Germany - about the place and significance of the German past (be it the nazi era or the GDR tout court) after Reunification. Marla Stone and Harold James (eds), When the Wall Came Down: Reactions to German Unification (New York 1992).
26. Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA 1997).
27. See, for example, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthes and Jean-Luc Nancy, Le Mythe Nazi (Edition de l'Aube 1996);
28. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge 1989);
29. Saul Friedländer (ed.), Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the 'Final Solution' (Cambridge, MA 1992)
30. and Barbara Zeliker (ed.), Visual Culture and the Holocaust (London 2001).
31. Stephanie Barron (ed.), 'Degenerate Art': The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles 1991), 22.
32. Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford 1994);
33. Peter Novick, The Holocaust and Collective Memory: The American Experience (London 2000);
34. Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: The Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London 2000).
35. Richard Bessel (ed.), Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts (Cambridge 1996);
36. Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (Madison, WI 1995).
37. Besides the French shows already noted, Wendy Kaplan (ed.), Designing Modernity: The Arts of Reform and Persuasion, 1885-1945 (New York 1995);
38. Kunst und Diktatur: Architektur, Bildhauerei und Malerei in Österreich, Deutschland, Italien und der Sowjetunion, 1922-1956 (Baden 1994);
39. Andreas Beaugrand (ed.), Totalitäre Kunst - Kunst im Totalitarianismus?: Beispiele aus dem NS-Staat und der DDR (Bielefeld 1997).
40. See, for example, 'Die Axt hat geblüht.. .' 1937: Europäische Konflikte der 30er Jahre in Erinnerung an die frühe Avantgarde (Düsseldorf 1987).
41. Ades et al., 'Selectors' Introduction', Art and Power, op. cit., 7.
42. Klaus Gallwitz, 'Preface', Art and Power, op. cit., 9.
43. Roger Cohen, 'Exhibiting the Art of History's Dustbin', New York Times, 17 August 1999, B3, B5.
44. See, too, Hanno Rautenberg, 'Kesseltreiben in Weimar: Aus Bilderstreit wird Bilderkampf: Wie eine Ausstellung der Ost-West Konflikt schürt', Die Zeit, 27 May 1999, 49-50.
45. Eric Rentscher, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and its Afterlife (Cambridge, MA 1996);
46. Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, NC 1996);
47. Peter Fritzsche, 'Nazi Modern', Modernity/Modernism (January 1996), 1-21;
48. Harold Welzer (ed.), Das Gedächtnis der Bilder: Ästhetik und Nationalsozialismus (Tübingen 1995);
49. Joachim Petsch, Kunst im Dritten Reich (Cologne 1994).
50. Glenn Cuomo (ed.), National Socialist Cultural Policy (New York 1995)
51. as well as Brandon Taylor and Winfried van der Will (eds), The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture and Film in the Third Reich (Winchester 1990).
52. George Mosse, 'Fascist Aesthetics and Society: Some Considerations', Journal of Contemporary History, 31, 2 (April 1996), 245-52.
53. Igor Golomstock, trans. Robert Chandler, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People's Republic of China (London 1990), x.
54. Eric Hobsbawm, 'Foreword', Art and Power, op. cit., 15.
55. Kunst im Dritten Reich - Dokumente der Unterwerfung (Frankfurt 1974).
56. Walter Grasskamp, 'The De-Nazification of Nazi Art: Arno Breker and Albert Speer Today' in Nazification of Art, op. cit., 231-48.
57. Peter Reichel, Der Schöne Schein des Dritten Reiches: Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus (Frankfurt 1994), 17.
58. See, for example, Nazi-Kunst ins Museum? (Göttingen 1988).
59. Alan Riding, 'Germany Picks Art of the Century: A Vast Exhibition Recalls War, Peace and the Struggle for Renewal', New York Times, 2 December 1999, B11-12.
60. Taylor and van der Will, 'Preface and Acknowledgements' in Nazification of Art, op. cit., vi.
61. Peter Adam, Art in the Third Reich (New York 1992), 305.
62. Eric Michaud, Un Arte de l'Eternité (Paris 1996).
63. Winfried Nerdinger (ed.), Bauhaus-Moderne und Nationalsozialismus (Munich 1993);
64. Sabine Weissler (ed.), Design in Deutschland, 1933-1945: Ästhetik und Organisation des Deutschen Werkbundes im 'Dritten Reich' (Giessen 1990);
65. Werner Durth, Deutsche Architekten: Biographische Verflechtungen (Frankfurt 1992);
66. and Herbert Bayer: Kunst und Design in Amerika, 1938-1985 (Berlin 1986).
67. See also the revisionist biographies by Winfried Nerdinger, Walter Gropius (Berlin 1985)
68. and Elaine Hochman, Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich (New York 1989).
69. See Petropoulos, Art as Politics, op. cit.
70. and most recently, Paul Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor and the Nazi Monumental Building Economy (London 2000).
71. Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York 1967)
72. and David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (New York 1966).
73. Detlev Peukert, Max Webers Diagnose der Moderne (Göttingen 1989)
74. See also Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler's Labor Front Leader (New York 1988). Peukert's Inside Nazi Germany can also be viewed in this light, though his conclusion very much asserts the connection between the 1940s and 1950s West Germany.
75. Detlev Peukert, trans. Richard Deveson, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life (New Haven, CT 1987), esp. 236-49.
76. Rainer Zitelmann and Michael Prinz (eds), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt 1991).
77. Note also the controversy sparked by the publication of Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust as well as Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutsche Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg 1991).
78. The debate is reproduced in Wolfgang Schneider (ed.), Vernichtungspolitik: Eine Debatte über den Zusammenhang von Sozialpolitik und Genozid im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland (Berlin 1991).
79. Influential rebuttals of the modernization thesis include Jens Alber, 'Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung', Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 41 (June 1989), 346-65
80. and Norbert Frei, 'Wie modern war der Nationalsozialismus?', Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 19 (1993), 367-87.
81. Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston, MA 1989), xvi.
82. A similar argument is made for Stalinist Russia in Boris Groys, Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin (Munich 1988).
83. See also Franco Borsi, The Monumental Era: European Architecture and Design, 1929-1939 (New York 1987).
84. For a useful discussion about the value of this model, see Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Fascist Modernities, op. cit., especially the introduction.
85. Crucial in this regard is also Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism (New York 1984).
86. Uwe Westphal, Werbung im Dritten Reich (Berlin 1989);
87. Sonja Günther, Design der Macht (Stuttgart 1992);
88. Karsten Witte, Lachende Erben, Toller Tag: Filmkomödie im Dritten Reich (Berlin 1995);
89. Edward Dimendberg, 'The Will to Motorization: Cinema, Highways and Modernity', October, 73 (Summer 1995), 91-137;
90. Klaus Winkler, Fernsehen unterm Hakenkreuz (Cologne 1994);
91. Heiko Zeutschner, Die braune Mattscheibe (Hamburg 1995);
92. Udo Pini, Leibeskult und Liebeskitsch: Erotik im Dritten Reich (Munich 1992);
93. Paul Betts, The Pathos of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design, 1945-1965 (Berkeley, CA forthcoming).
94. Josef Wulf, Die bildende Künste im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Reinbek bei Hamburg 1966)
95. and Hans Scheer, 'Gestaltung im 3. Reich' in Form, 69, 70, 71 (1975).
96. Hans-Dieter Schäfer, Das gespaltete Bewusstsein: Deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933-1945 (Berlin 1981);
97. Die Dreissiger Jahre: Schauplatz Deutschland (Munich 1977); and
98. Bertold Hinz (ed.), Die Dekoration der Gewalt (Giessen 1979).
99. Güdrun Brockhaus, Schauder und Idylle: Faschismus als Erlebnisangebot (Munich 1997).
100. Victoria De Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge 1981), 239.
101. For a key early assessment, Palmiro Togliatti, 'The Dopolavoro' in idem, Lectures on Fascism (New York 1976 [1935]), 73-87.
102. Bernd Ogan and Wolfgang Weiss (eds), Faszination und Gewalt: Zur politischen Ästhetik des Nationalsozialismus (Nürnberg 1992);
103. John Milfull (ed.), The Attractions of Fascism (New York 1990);
104. Inszenierung der Macht: Ästhetische Faszination im Faschismus (Berlin 1987); and
105. Alice Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis, MN 1987).
106. Lutz Niethammer et al., Lebensgeschichte und Sozialkultur im Ruhrgebiet 1930 bis 1960, 3 vols (Berlin 1983- )
107. and Alf Lüdtke (ed.), The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life (Princeton, NJ 1996).
108. Alf Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn: Fabrik-Alltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschimus (Hamburg 1993), esp. 318ff.
109. Dennis Doordan, 'Political Things: Design in Fascist Italy' in Designing Modernity, op. cit., 229-53
110. and Kaspar Maase, Grenzloses Vergnügen: Der Aufstieg der Massenkultur 1850-1970 (Frankfurt 1997), esp. 196-234.
111. Shelley Baranowski, 'Strength Through Joy: Tourism and National Integration in the Third Reich' in S. Baranowski and Ellen Furlough (eds), Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture and Identity in Modern Europe and North America (Ann Arbor, MI 2001), 213-36;
112. th Century Germany (Palo Alto, CA 2002);
113. Hartmut Berghoff, 'Enticement and Deprivation: The Regulation of Consumption in Pre-War Nazi Germany' in Martin Daunton and Matthew Hilton (eds), The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America (Oxford 2000), 165-84;
114. Special Issue on 'Sexuality and German Fascism', Journal of the History of Sexuality, ed. Dagmar Herzog, 11, 1-2 (January-April 2002);
115. Rudy Koshar, German Travel Cultures (Oxford 2001), esp. 115-34;
116. Alon Confino, 'Traveling as a Culture of Remembrance: Traces of National Socialism in West Germany, 1945-1960', History and Memory, 12, 2 (Fall/Winter 2000), 92-121;
117. Hasso Spode, 'Arbeiterurlaub im Dritten Reich' in Carola Sachse, TillaSiegel, Hasso Spode and Wolfgang Spohn (eds), Angst, Belohnung, Zucht und Ordnung: Herrschaftsmechanismen im Nationalsozialismus (Opladen 1982).
118. Hans Deischmann, trans. P. Constantine and P. Glassgold, Objects: A Chronicle of Subversion in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (New York 1997 [1995]).
119. Besides Jeffrey Herf's Divided Memory, op. cit.
120. see Julia Hell, Post-Fascist Fantasies (Durham, NC 1996)
121. and Martin Damus, Malerei der DDR (Reinbek bei Hamburg 1991).
122. Peter Reichel, Politik mit der Erinnerung: Gedächtnisorte im Streit um die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit (Munich 1995);
123. Heinz Bude, Bilanz der Nachfolge: Die Bundesrepublik und der Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt 1992);
124. Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit (Munich 1996).
125. See also Hanna Schissler (ed.), The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968 (Princeton, NJ 2000), 17-126.
126. Ulrich Herbert, 'Good Times, Bad Times: Memories of the Third Reich' in Richard Bessel (ed.), Life in the Third Reich (Oxford 1987), 97-110;
127. Lutz Niethammer, '"Normalisierung" im Westen: Erinnerungen in die 50er Jahre' in Gerhard Brunn (ed.), Neuland: Nordrhein-Westfalen und seine Anfänge nach 1945/1946 (Essen 1986), 175-207;
128. and most recently, Robert Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley, CA 2001).
129. For Italy, R.J. Bosworth and Patrizia Dogliani (eds), Italian Fascism: History, Memory and Representation (Basingstoke 1999)
130. and Luisa Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class (Cambridge 1987).
131. Winfried Schulze, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945 (Munich 1989);
132. Walter Pehle and Peter Sillem (eds), Wissenschaft in geteilten Deutschland (Frankfurt 1992);
133. Robert Moeller (ed.), West Germany under Construction (Ann Arbor, MI 1997).
134. Judith Ryan, Postwar German Novels and the Third Reich (Detroit 1987);
135. Volker Berghahn, 'Deutschlandbilder, 1945-1965: Angloamerikanische Historiker und moderne deutsche Geschichte' in Ernst Schulin (ed.), Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich 1989), 240-72;
136. Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge, MA 1989);
137. Eric Santner, Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory and Film in Postwar Germany (Ithaca, NY 1990).
138. James Young, The Texture of Memory (New Haven, CT 1993);
139. Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helde (Vierow 1996);
140. Harold Marcuse, Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001 (Cambridge 2001).
141. See also Klaus Neumann, Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany (Ann Arbor, MI 2000).
142. Gavriel Rosenfeld, Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments and the Legacy of the Third Reich (Berkeley, CA 2000);
143. Rudy Koshar, Germany's Transient Pasts (Chapel Hill, NC 1998);
144. Dagmar Herzog, '"Pleasure, Sex and Politics Belong Together": Post-Holocaust Memory and the Sexual Revolution in West Germany', Critical Inquiry, 24 (Winter 1998), 393-444;
145. Jonathan Wiesen, 'Public Relations as a Site of Memory: The Case of West German Industry and National Socialism' in Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche (eds), The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture (Urbana, IL 2002);
146. Paul Betts, 'The Nierentisch Nemesis: Organic Design as West German Pop Culture', German History, 19, 2 (Spring 2001), 185-217;
147. Confino, 'Traveling as a Culture of Remembrance', op. cit.
148. Omer Bartov, Murder in our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing and Mass Death (New York 1996), 10.
149. Michael Geyer, 'The Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany' in Joan Copjec (ed.), Radical Evil (London 1996), 169-70.
150. Some of his most important essays have been republished in George Mosse, The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism (New York 1999).