Full name: Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich

Author: Jeffrey Herf Year: 1984 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Politics Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780521338332 0521338336

In a unique application of critical theory to the study of the role of ideology in politics, Jeffrey Herf explores the paradox inherent in the German fascists' rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment while fully embracing modern technology. He documents evidence of a cultural tradition he calls 'reactionary modernism' found in the writings of German engineers and of the major intellectuals of the. Weimar right: Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger. The book shows how German nationalism and later National Socialism created what Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, called the 'steel-like romanticism of the twentieth century'. By associating technology with the Germans, rather than the Jews, with beautiful form rather than the formlessness of the market, and with a strong state rather than a predominance of economic values and institutions, these right-wing intellectuals reconciled Germany's strength with its romantic soul and national identity. Similar books: Rising Tide by John M. Barry The German Dictatorship by Karl Dietrich Bracher Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen Modern Times by Paul Johnson Reconstruction by Eric Foner The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood The Making of the English Working Class by E. P. Thompson How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky Race And Culture by Thomas Sowell A History of the Modern Middle East by William L. Cleveland The Arabs by Eugene Rogan Ain't My America by Bill Kauffman The Age of Federalism by Stanley Elkins The Rise of American Democracy by Sean Wilentz A History of the American People by Paul Johnson Poor People's Movements by Frances Fox Piven The Mind of the South by W. J. Cash Killing Hope by William Blum The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter