Thanks for your excellent annotations John. On Germany, there are two cheap paperbacks, both by scholars, that are essentially compilations of primary sources: Joachim Remak's "The Nazi Years: a Documentary History"- kind of old (1969), and Robert Moeller's "The Nazi State and German Society: a Brief History with Documents." (2010). Sometimes it's good to go to the documents.
Also on Germany, there is a fascinating scholarly study by Klaus Theweleit (trans. from U. Minn 1987) that is THE classic on the relationship between male fascism and women in interwar Germany: "Male Fantasies" (Männerphantasien).
Kind of perpendicular to your focus here, but Naipaul's essay on Péronism is fantastic, for a Latin American spin on the whole thing, through the lens of colonialialism.
Good choices from an enormous number of works (resembles Borges' "Library of Babel").
Also a good idea to caution readers regarding Arendt. History was not her specialty and I wouldn't rely on her for reliability about the facts of the Dreyfus Case, for example.
I would recommend adding an older study still well worth looking into: Eugen Weber's "Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France".
Thanks for putting this list together. Have you read Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, by Tim Redman? Brief but useful account of Pound as a “socialism of fools” guy who followed the producerist path to Mussolini fandom. He ended WWII convinced the Saló Republic was going to be the left-fascist utopia of his dreams. Spoiler alert…
John, this is indeed a thorough and scholarly reading list for understanding fascism, especially prior to WW2.
But to get a picture of how fascism could actually manifest itself in America, I would like to recommend “It Can’t Happen Here" by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis.
This 1935 novel follows a “populist” leader who uses all the tools in the demagogue’s toolbox - scapegoating Jews, inflaming resentment and inciting violence, exploiting hyper-nationalism, attacking democratic institutions - on his ascent to the White House. Lewis’s prophetic novel depicted the fragility of America’s democracy, and illustrated in graphic detail how easily - with the right circumstances and players - democracy could devolve into a violent, un-democratic fascist regime. As Timothy Snyder wrote (in On Tyranny), "any election can be the last."
Lewis's book was based largely on his wife Dorothy Thompson’s years as a pioneering female journalist covering fascism in Europe. She interviewed Hitler after his rise to political power (under the banner “Make Germany Great Again”) but was then banished for criticizing Hitler, “a crime in the reigning cult in Germany,” she wrote, “which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people.”
While not an academic work of scholarly research, Lewis’s book was a prophetic realization of how fragile and vulnerable America’s democratic institutions were (and still are) to the appeal of fascist movements. Though written over 85 years ago, “It Can’t Happen Here" is a timely warning and an unnerving prophecy of the very same political conditions unfolding today in America, and in other parts of the world.
A meaty list for sure. Not a theory or structural analysis of fascism, but Modris Eksteins’ “Rites of Spring” is a rewarding read on some more elusive constitutive features of the fascist universe - the flat-out strangeness, the dislocations, the moral collapse, the fantastical projections, the violent fracturing of normal institutional and cognitive processes by which individuals engage with reality, the “Blake Mastersization” of the preening public-facing personality. As I recall, Eksteins is pretty good at trying to wrestle with these things as they emerged out of the slaughter of the trenches and the interwar period.
I'd put in a word for Ian Kershaw's "The Nazi Dictatorship". Despite the generic title, its more a meta-historical work, covering the debates, difficulties and controversies in the historiography (interpretation) of Nazism and Fascism. Hence it includes an overview of a wide political range of historians conflicting interpretations of the period.
Thanks for your excellent annotations John. On Germany, there are two cheap paperbacks, both by scholars, that are essentially compilations of primary sources: Joachim Remak's "The Nazi Years: a Documentary History"- kind of old (1969), and Robert Moeller's "The Nazi State and German Society: a Brief History with Documents." (2010). Sometimes it's good to go to the documents.
Also on Germany, there is a fascinating scholarly study by Klaus Theweleit (trans. from U. Minn 1987) that is THE classic on the relationship between male fascism and women in interwar Germany: "Male Fantasies" (Männerphantasien).
Yeah read Male Fantasies years ago and need to revisit it
Kind of perpendicular to your focus here, but Naipaul's essay on Péronism is fantastic, for a Latin American spin on the whole thing, through the lens of colonialialism.
Good choices from an enormous number of works (resembles Borges' "Library of Babel").
Also a good idea to caution readers regarding Arendt. History was not her specialty and I wouldn't rely on her for reliability about the facts of the Dreyfus Case, for example.
I would recommend adding an older study still well worth looking into: Eugen Weber's "Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France".
Excellent list, many of these I have not read and will be seeking out. To this I'd add R.G. Swing's criminally underrated "Forerunners of American Fascism" from 1935. https://www.patreon.com/posts/trumpism-and-r-g-67296884?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=postshare
Neumann’s Behemoth?
should read that
Great list though.
Thanks for putting this list together. Have you read Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, by Tim Redman? Brief but useful account of Pound as a “socialism of fools” guy who followed the producerist path to Mussolini fandom. He ended WWII convinced the Saló Republic was going to be the left-fascist utopia of his dreams. Spoiler alert…
i havent
John, this is indeed a thorough and scholarly reading list for understanding fascism, especially prior to WW2.
But to get a picture of how fascism could actually manifest itself in America, I would like to recommend “It Can’t Happen Here" by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis.
This 1935 novel follows a “populist” leader who uses all the tools in the demagogue’s toolbox - scapegoating Jews, inflaming resentment and inciting violence, exploiting hyper-nationalism, attacking democratic institutions - on his ascent to the White House. Lewis’s prophetic novel depicted the fragility of America’s democracy, and illustrated in graphic detail how easily - with the right circumstances and players - democracy could devolve into a violent, un-democratic fascist regime. As Timothy Snyder wrote (in On Tyranny), "any election can be the last."
Lewis's book was based largely on his wife Dorothy Thompson’s years as a pioneering female journalist covering fascism in Europe. She interviewed Hitler after his rise to political power (under the banner “Make Germany Great Again”) but was then banished for criticizing Hitler, “a crime in the reigning cult in Germany,” she wrote, “which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people.”
While not an academic work of scholarly research, Lewis’s book was a prophetic realization of how fragile and vulnerable America’s democratic institutions were (and still are) to the appeal of fascist movements. Though written over 85 years ago, “It Can’t Happen Here" is a timely warning and an unnerving prophecy of the very same political conditions unfolding today in America, and in other parts of the world.
Great List! I would also recommend Claudia Koonz’s ‘The Nazi Conscience’.
A meaty list for sure. Not a theory or structural analysis of fascism, but Modris Eksteins’ “Rites of Spring” is a rewarding read on some more elusive constitutive features of the fascist universe - the flat-out strangeness, the dislocations, the moral collapse, the fantastical projections, the violent fracturing of normal institutional and cognitive processes by which individuals engage with reality, the “Blake Mastersization” of the preening public-facing personality. As I recall, Eksteins is pretty good at trying to wrestle with these things as they emerged out of the slaughter of the trenches and the interwar period.
I'd put in a word for Ian Kershaw's "The Nazi Dictatorship". Despite the generic title, its more a meta-historical work, covering the debates, difficulties and controversies in the historiography (interpretation) of Nazism and Fascism. Hence it includes an overview of a wide political range of historians conflicting interpretations of the period.
While you are recommending books: do you have any suggestions for a good single-volume history of Third Republic France?
short answer is no, but I will make a Third Republic list soon