The Law of Blood : : Thinking and Acting as a Nazi / / Johann Chapoutot.

The scale and the depth of Nazi brutality seem to defy understanding. What could drive people to fight, kill, and destroy with such ruthless ambition? Observers and historians have offered countless explanations since the 1930s. According to Johann Chapoutot, we need to understand better how the Naz...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Harvard University Press Complete eBook-Package 2018
VerfasserIn:
Place / Publishing House:Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2018]
©2018
Year of Publication:2018
Language:English
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource (512 p.) :; 1 table
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
Introduction --
PART I. PROCREATING --
1. Origins: Nature, Essence, Genesis --
2. Alienation: Acculturation and Denaturing --
3. Restoration: Renaissances --
PART II. FIGHTING --
4. “All Life Is Struggle” --
5. The War Within: Fighting the Volksfremde --
6. The War Outside: “Harshness Makes the Future Kind” --
PART III. REIGNING --
7. The International Order of Westphalia and Versailles: Finis Germaniae --
8. The Reich and Colonization of the European East --
9. The Millennium as Frontier --
Conclusion --
Notes --
Bibliography --
Glossary --
Index
Summary:The scale and the depth of Nazi brutality seem to defy understanding. What could drive people to fight, kill, and destroy with such ruthless ambition? Observers and historians have offered countless explanations since the 1930s. According to Johann Chapoutot, we need to understand better how the Nazis explained it themselves. We need a clearer view, in particular, of how they were steeped in and spread the idea that history gave them no choice: it was either kill or die. Chapoutot, one of France’s leading historians, spent years immersing himself in the texts and images that reflected and shaped the mental world of Nazi ideologues, and that the Nazis disseminated to the German public. The party had no official ur-text of ideology, values, and history. But a clear narrative emerges from the myriad works of intellectuals, apparatchiks, journalists, and movie-makers that Chapoutot explores. The story went like this: In the ancient world, the Nordic-German race lived in harmony with the laws of nature. But since Late Antiquity, corrupt foreign norms and values—Jewish values in particular—had alienated Germany from itself and from all that was natural. The time had come, under the Nazis, to return to the fundamental law of blood. Germany must fight, conquer, and procreate, or perish. History did not concern itself with right and wrong, only brute necessity. A remarkable work of scholarship and insight, The Law of Blood recreates the chilling ideas and outlook that would cost millions their lives.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780674985841
9783110606621
DOI:10.4159/9780674985841
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Johann Chapoutot.