Nazism
The race against Hitler to build the first nuclear bomb
The bomb was necessary to the Allies, but still horrified those responsible for its development – many of them refugees from Nazism
The self-serving delusions of the ‘Swastika Kaiser’
With the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II decided he was best off allying himself with the Nazis, and seeing what he could obtain for his family in the process
The mythic mishmash of Wagner’s Ring
Its towering themes of gods, giants, dragons and magic were not purely Germanic in origin, whatever fever-dream they later conjured in Hitler’s brain
When it comes to krautrock, it’s impossible not to mention the war
The wild and wonderful music that exploded from West Germany in the 1970s stemmed from a young generation’s determination to escape the trauma of the Nazi past
Nietzsche’s thinking seems destined to be mangled and misunderstood
Two Italian editors, determined to rescue the philosopher from Nazi associations, find their concern with philological truth derided by French postmodernists
Has Germany finally shaken off its dark past?
‘When it comes to helping others, we are the world champions’, one politician declared in 2015. But Merkel’s welcome to immigrants was pragmatic – and anti-Semitism is on the rise again
Lies and extremism
The demonisation of the state of Israel is basically an anti-Semitic mutation ‘evolving out of reach’, argues Jake Wallis Simons, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle
A doomed democracy
Despite its democratic ideals and artistic creativity, 1920s Germany lacked both the flexibility and social cohesion necessary for functional politics, says Frank McDonough
The horror unfolds
No one had prepared the Allied soldiers, as they began their invasion of the Reich early in 1945, for what…
Born again
Richard Bratby on the resurrection of wunderkind Erich Korngold’s long-neglected masterpiece
Wet wet wet
In April, ten years after opening its gallery on the beach in Hastings, the Jerwood Foundation gifted the building to…
Truth in small matters
‘I can’t cook,’ writes the historian Karina Urbach, ‘which is probably why it took me so long to realise that…
Fresh air and fanaticism
The village of Oberstdorf lies in the Bavarian Alps, geographically remote but, as this gripping book demonstrates, deeply etched by…
The Prince of Prussia’s Nazi problem
Perched on a mountain top overlooking the Swabian Alps, Hohenzollern Castle, with its picturesque towers, seems like something out of a…
Otherworldly genius
The 20th-century Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel did his level best to live in the world as his philosophical hero Gottfried…
Apostle of modernism
Clive Bell is the perennial supporting character in the biographies of the Bloomsbury group. The husband of Vanessa Bell, brother-in-law…
Less than angelic
Vicars, tea parties and village fetes were a far cry from Barbara Pym’s early enthusiasms, Philip Hensher reveals
Break of dawn
The fall of Greece’s neo-Nazi party
Beyond Bayreuth
Wagner gripped the communal mind for decades after his death. Philip Hensher examines his enduring influence
Going through the motions
Resistance stars Jesse Eisenberg and tells the true story of how mime artist Marcel Marceau helped orphaned Jewish children to…
Evil personified
The atrocities of the concentration camp at Auschwitz–Birkenau are now universally known, but it is still almost beyond belief that…
Ernst Jünger — reluctant captain of the Wehrmacht
Ernst Jünger, who died in 1998, aged 102, is now better known for his persona than his work. A deeply…
Nazi caricatures: The Order of the Day, by Éric Vuillard, reviewed
There was a time when you read French literary novels in order to cultivate a certain kind of sophisticated suspicion.…
Nietzsche’s intense friendship with Wagner forms the core of Sue Prideaux’s excellent new biography
In 1945, with the second world war won bar the shouting, Bertrand Russell polished off his brief examination of Friedrich…
Has the term ‘racist’ become devalued through overuse?
Adam Rutherford 4 January 2025 9:00 am
Quite possibly. But racism remains all too real today – even though half the British population deny it exists