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The years immediately preceding World War II in Italy were full of social changes, the phenomenal growth of Fascism and the confusing death of old ideas, values and classes. New dangers and challenges burgeoned until it seemed as if the frantic energy of a masquerade ball prevailed with everyone wearing fancy uniforms and dreaming of conquest. In neighboring Germany, the ranting and rampaging birth of Nazi ideas was followed by Hitlers lightning-strike invasions of European neighbors. These strikes were aimed to gain land and power, change old ideas, entrench and strengthen pure Aryan racially-grounded Nazi values, as well as destroy anything or anyone not compatible with the goals of the glorious Third Reich. Aware that artworks embody ideals and educate people through their symbolic power, the Nazis engaged in a multi-faceted program dedicated to destroy all artworks inconsistent with their views, and to substitute only art and architecture that idealized Aryan purity and Nazidom. To that end, they developed organizations and programs, built museums, filled them with carefully vetted art, outlawed all avant garde and non-Aryan artists, and proceeded to loot desirable artworks from occupied countries. They then stored or displayed their loot in their palaces or museums as fodder for propaganda and self-aggrandizement. Hitler, Goring and many other high-ranking Nazi leaders were deeply involved with these efforts, as well as the rewriting of history to conform to their putative glory through adopted symbols. Meanwhile, when the war continued to drag its bloody traces over occupied countries, Italians discovered just how terrifying it was to be a Nazi ally. Fascism faded as battles and air strikes continued, and victories faltered for the Axis. Italians suffered from a lack of life-supporting supplies or shelter, many youths and old men were conscripted into German work camps, hungry and homeless refugees swarmed into the cities and partisans gathered in the hills ready to become guerilla warriors against the Nazis. Slowly at first and hedged about with lies, information about Nazi art thefts in other countries seeped into the consciousness of concerned Italians. As they became increasingly worried about reports of forced sales and actual looting of Italys artistic heritage, a small band of dedicated Italians, self-named the Salvatores, made a pact to engage in a series of dangerous acts and subterfuges in order to hide Italian artworks in ricoveri and save them from German theft. Because Florence was a center of much Renaissance art and architecture, and because it did not have a Vatican in which to store artworks safely, the Salvatores struggled on independently with their clandestine rescue efforts to inventory and hide artworks. The little band comprised an odd group: wealthy Duke di Bergolini, his adoptive son Ortolani, a castrato opera singer, Ortolanis Benedictine brother, two young women of talent, two Tuscan museum officials who were art historians, a few helpful Italians and even two German officials who became virtual double-agents. Against difficult odds and in the face death threats or potential seizure and torture, they struggled and continued to inventory and shelter artworks, to track their trails when stolen, and to prevail until peace returned. By August of 1944, after Mussolini was dethroned and German-backed neo-Fascism was only a Nazi puppet government, it was apparent to everyone but the most rabid Nazis that Germany had lost the war. Even then, SS Officers and contingents from Gorings brigades loaded art from discovered ricoveri into trucks and drove them to northern Italy, which was under complete German control and occupation. The storage locations for the looted art were kept secret from the Italians until the war ended. As the Allies approached the great city of Florence, the withdrawing Nazis mined and destroyed some of the most precious medieval and renaissance buildings and bridges
A book of surpassing importance that should be required reading for leaders and policymakers throughout the world For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book—the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times—is among his most important achievements. Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.
A political biography of Darre, appointed National Peasant Leader and Minister of Food and Agriculture in 1933. Argues that his ecological ideas are still worthy of attention despite his racism. Although he believed in eugenics and Nordic racism, he did not emphasize their antisemitic aspect until after joining the Nazi Party in 1930, when he began to speak of the Jews as leaders of the capitalist urban threat to rural Germany and of an international Jewish conspiracy. He opposed anti-Jewish boycotts and delayed the Aryanization of Jewish land until 1940, not wanting his land reform program to be controlled by Nazi antisemitism. Although he was excluded from policy decisions after 1939, and dismissed in 1942, Darre was tried as a war criminal in 1949 and found guilty of participation in the Aryanization program and of expropriation of Polish and Jewish farmlands during the resettlement of ethnic Germans.
For thirty years Benedict Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new bookandmdash;the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient timesandmdash;is among his most important achievements. Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.
Winner of the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research 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.
London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend – until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris.
Available for the first time in English, a memoir of a member of the World War II Brandenburg German special forces unit. The Brandenburgers were Hitler’s Special Forces, a band of mainly foreign German nationals who used disguise and fluency in other languages to complete daring missions into enemy territory. Overshadowed by stories of their Allied equivalents, their history has largely been ignored, making this memoir all the more extraordinary. First published in German in 1984, de Giampietro's highly-personal and eloquent memoir is a vivid account of his experiences. He delves into the reality of life in the unit from everyday concerns and politics to training and involvement in Brandenburg missions. He details the often foolhardy missions undertaken under the command of Theodor von Hippel, including the June 1941 seizure of the Duna bridges in Dunaburg and the attempted capture of the bridge at Bataisk where half of his unit was killed. Given the very perilous nature of their missions, very few of these specially-trained soldiers survived World War II. Much knowledge of the unit has been lost forever, making this is a unique insight into a slice of German wartime history. Widely regarded as the predecessor of today’s special forces units, this fascinating account brings to life the Brandenburger Division and its part in history in vivid and compelling detail.
A revised and updated edition of one of the most successful 'Critical Introductions' textbooks New features include marginal notes and colour photos New innovative structure, based on feed-back from teachers, focusing on how modern art has been understood rather than a straight chronological account of movements
This book examines the psychology involved in handling, and responding to, materials in artistic practice, such as oils, charcoal, brushes, canvas, earth, and sand. Artists often work with intuitive, tactile sensations and rhythms that connect them to these materials. Rhythm connects the brain and body to the world, and the world of abstract art. The book features new readings of artworks by Matisse, Pollock, Dubuffet, Tápies, Benglis, Len Lye, Star Gossage, Shannon Novak, Simon Ingram, Lee Mingwei, L. N. Tallur and many others. Such art challenges centuries of philosophical and aesthetic order that has elevated the substance of mind over the substance of matter. This is a multidisciplinary study of different metastable patterns and rhythms: in art, the body, and the brain. This focus on the propagation of rhythm across domains represents a fresh art historical approach and provides important opportunities for art and science to cooperate.