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The first book to present an analysis of Arab response to fascism and Nazism from the perspectives of both individual countries and the Arab world at large, this collection problematizes and ultimately deconstructs the established narratives that assume most Arabs supported fascism and Nazism leading up to and during World War II. Using new source materials taken largely from Arab memoirs, archives, and print media, the articles reexamine Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Iraqi responses in the 1930s and throughout the war.

While acknowledging the individuals, forces, and organizations that did support and collaborate with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism focuses on the many other Arab voices that identified with Britain and France and with the Allied cause during the war. The authors argue that many groups within Arab societies—elites and non-elites, governing forces, and civilians—rejected Nazism and fascism as totalitarian, racist, and, most important, as new, more oppressive forms of European imperialism. The essays in this volume argue that, in contrast to prevailing beliefs that Arabs were de facto supporters of Italy and Germany—since “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”—mainstream Arab forces and currents opposed the Axis powers and supported the Allies during the war. They played a significant role in the battles for control over the Middle East.

Ever since the Salvation Army, a British Protestant social welfare organization, arrived in Germany in 1886, it has navigated overlapping national and international identities. After existing on the margins of the German religious landscape while solidifying its role as a social service provider, the Salvation Army proactively shaped its public profile during the Nazi rise to power. Accepted into the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (ethnonational community) and made an auxiliary member of the National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV), the organization continued limited operations throughout the Nazi period before returning to its international affiliations in the immediate postwar period, thereby bypassing denazification and rehabilitating its reputation.

In this groundbreaking reevaluation, Rebecca Carter-Chand argues that the Salvation Army was able to emphasize different aspects of its identity to bolster and repair its reputation as needed in varied political contexts, highlighting the variability of Nazi practices of inclusion and exclusion. In that way, the organization was similar to other Christian groups in Germany. Counter to common hypotheses that minority religious groups are more likely to show empathy to other minorities, dynamics within Nazi Germany reveal that many religious minorities sought acceptance from the state in an effort to secure self-preservation.

In the wake of the First World War, many Germans saw the future of their nation as contingent on a vision of municipal progress. In this well-researched study, Anthony McElligott uses local politics as an analytical tool to decipher the bigger picture of the fate of the Weimar Republic.Focusing on the industrial city of Altona, McElligott locates his discussion of the contradictions of the Weimar "local state" along two axes—first, persistent financial, policy, and political conflict between the central and the local state; and, second, the conflicts within the Weimar local state between the displaced and resentful middle classes and the newly enfranchised working class.The Social Democrats used their considerable political influence at the local level to pursue progressive social policies. However, these local experiments in "practical socialism" alienated middle- and lower-middle-class voters without guaranteeing the support of all workers, since dwindling financial resources made it impossible to extend the benefits of the new social programs to many of the unskilled and poorer sections of the working class. Ultimately, the translation of the democratic republican vision into active policy provoked the conservative push for reassertion of central authority in the state.McElligott probes beneath the level of formal party conflicts to reconstruct the "politics of everyday life" at the street level. This study will be of wide interest to historians and political scientists.

In the wake of the First World War, many Germans saw the future of their nation as contingent on a vision of municipal progress. In this well-researched study, Anthony McElligott uses an analysis of local politics to decipher the fate of the Weimar Republic. Focusing on the industrial city of Altona, McElligott locates his discussion of the contradictions of the Weimar "local state" along two axes--first, persistent financial, policy, and political conflict between the central and the local state and, second, the conflicts within the Weimar local state between the displaced and resentful middle/lower-middle class and the newly enfranchised working class. Social Democrats used their considerable political influence at the level of local government to pursue progressive social policies, local experiments in "practical socialism." Socialist programs, however, alienated middle and lower middle-class voters without guaranteeing the support of all workers, since the dwindling financial resources of local governments made it impossible to extend the benefits of the new social programs to many of the unskilled and poorer sections of the working class. Ultimately, the translation of the democratic republican vision into active policy provoked the conservative push for a reassertion of central authority in the state. McElligott probes beneath the level of formal, local party conflicts to reconstruct the "politics of everyday life" at the street level. This study will be of wide interest to historians and political scientists. Anthony McElligott is Lecturer in Modern History, University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

Originally published in a French translation in 1987, this controversial work has received a tumultuous reception throughout Europe and continues to be the object of intense debate. In this first English edition, Victor Farias tracks the career of Martin Heidegger—one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century philosophy—and documents his intimate involvement with Nazism for much of his professional life.Although scholars have long known about Heidegger’s early commitment to National Socialism, it was generally thought that he became disenchanted with Hitler well before the outbreak of World War II. After more than a decade of solitary study in a variety of archives, Farias presents a carefully constructed case in which he reveals Heidegger’s initial adherence to Hitler’s Nazism and his subsequent development of a more personal version of National Socialism. Heidegger’s devotion to those themes was always at the center of his mature thought, appears to have preceded his election as rector of the University of Freiburg, and was sustained to the end of his life. Farias examines with great care and persistence the charge that Heidegger, who died in 1976, was a life-long anti-Semite. He notes that the philosopher praised Hitler to his colleagues and refused, even after the war, to criticize Nazi atrocities and genocide, or to recant his earlier Nazism.While Heidegger previously had appeared at worst naive by his acceptance of the Third Reich, Farias’ evidence shows him to be the only major philosopher who freely embraced Nazism—the undisputed example of absolute evil in modern times. This damage to the official myth about Heidegger’s involvement raises questions about the relationship between politics and philosophy, about the presumed link between philosophy and virtue, and about what we may understand by the betrayal of reason in our time.Heidegger and Nazism transforms the setting in which Heidegger’s standing will henceforth be assessed. From his earliest intellectual and emotional influences to the last posthumously published interview with Der Spiegel, Heidegger’s connection to National Socialism is shown to be a matter of conviction rather than necessary compromise as apologists still contend. Farias shows the reasonableness of linking the ideology and the philosophy and suggests where to probe to draw out detailed connections The book forces us to ponder the question of whether certain philosophical strategies and doctrines—particularly associated with Heidegger’s existential hermeneutics and the effect of his themes on the development of deconstruction—are not merely indefensible but peculiarly hospitable to the kind of "principled" falsification that fascists require. Providing the context for a close re-reading of Heidegger, this significant and historic work challenges the philosophical community to assess the full import of Heidegger’s life on his influential conception of philosophy and his resolution of particular philosophical problems.

My Father’s War is simultaneously a history of the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II and a son’s sincere attempt to understand the silences, motivations, and experiences of an estranged father. In this carefully researched book, combining family memoir and historical retelling, Bjørn Westlie uncovers his father’s actions as a volunteer soldier for the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the infamous Schutzstaffel (SS), in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Balancing his role as both son and critical investigator, Westlie unflinchingly interrogates his father’s fascist convictions, which speak to the appeal Hitler’s ideology held for a small, disgraced segment of Norway’s mid-century population. A story of collaboration, tragedy, and treason, My Father’s War reveals the little-known history of Norway's frontkjempere (front fighters), the atrocities the Waffen-SS committed against Ukrainian Jews, and the complex legacies of ethnonationalism in Norway. 

With an insightful introduction from translator Dean Krouk, My Father’s War is a contemporary classic of war literature. Committed to genuine understanding without falling into undue sympathizing, this sober and reflective book presents an eye-opening, moving, intense, and necessary account of the allure of fascism in a world at war—and its personal costs.