Presents convincing evidence that it was Hitler's political strategies and arguments, which built his unprecedented support among the German people.

Leo Strauss's connection with Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt suggests a troubling proximity to National Socialism but a serious critique of Strauss must begin with F. H. Jacobi. While writing his dissertation on this apparently Christian opponent of the Enlightenment, Strauss discovered the tactical principles that would characterize his lifework: writing between the lines, a faith-based critique of rationalism, the deliberate secularization of religious language for irreligious purposes, and an "all or nothing" antagonism to middling solutions. Especially the latter is distinctive of his Zionist writings in the 1920s where Strauss engaged in an ongoing polemic against Cultural Zionism, attacking it first from an orthodox, and then from an atheist's perspective. In his last Zionist article (1929), Strauss mentions "the Machiavellian Zionism of a Nordau that would not fear to use the traditional hope for a Messiah as dynamite." By the time of his "change of orientation," National Socialism was being led by a nihilistic "Messiah" while Strauss had already radicalized Schmitt's "political theology" and Heidegger's deconstruction of the ontological Tradition. Central to Strauss's advance beyond the smartest Nazis is his "Second Cave" in which he claimed modern thought is imprisoned: only by escaping Revelation can we recover "natural ignorance." By using pseudo-Platonic imagery to illustrate what anti-Semites called "Jewification," Strauss attempted to annihilate the common ground, celebrated by Hermann Cohen, between Judaism and Platonism. Unlike those who attacked Plato for devaluing nature at the expense of the transcendent Idea, the émigré Strauss effectively employed a new "Plato" who was no more a Platonist than Nietzsche or Heidegger had been. Central to Strauss's "Platonic political philosophy" is the mysterious protagonist of Plato's Laws whom Strauss accurately recognized as the kind of Socrates whose fear of death would have caused him to flee the hemlock. Any reader who recognizes the unbridgeable gap between the real Socrates and Plato’s Athenian Stranger will understand why “the German Stranger” is the principal theoretician of an atheistic re-enactment of religion, of which genus National Socialism is an ultra-modern species.

Seeing German film during the Third Reich as a powerful and sinister tool for both indoctrination and escapist pacification, analyses the pictorial and spoken language to identify the psychological techniques used in the various genres, including news reels, documentaries, features, and cultural films. Two chapters focus on the role of flags, and another explains the rise of Hitler. Not illustrated. No subject index. First published as Und die Fahne fuhrt uns in die Ewigkeit in 1988 by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag in Frankfurt am Main. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An examination of the narrative strategies employed in the most dangerous book of the twentieth century and a reflection on totalitarian literature. Hitler's Mein Kampf was banned in Germany for almost seventy years, kept from being reprinted by the accidental copyright holder, the Bavarian Ministry of Finance. In December 2015, the first German edition of Mein Kampf since 1946 appeared, with Hitler's text surrounded by scholarly commentary apparently meant to act as a kind of cordon sanitaire. And yet the dominant critical assessment (in Germany and elsewhere) of the most dangerous book of the twentieth century is that it is boring, unoriginal, jargon-laden, badly written, embarrassingly rabid, and altogether ludicrous. (Even in the 1920s, the consensus was that the author of such a book had no future in politics.) How did the unreadable Mein Kampf manage to become so historically significant? In this book, German literary scholar Albrecht Koschorke attempts to explain the power of Hitler's book by examining its narrative strategies. Koschorke argues that Mein Kampf cannot be reduced to an ideological message directed to all readers. By examining the text and the signals that it sends, he shows that we can discover for whom Hitler strikes his propagandistic poses and who is excluded. Koschorke parses the borrowings from the right-wing press, the autobiographical details concocted to make political points, the attack on the Social Democrats that bleeds into an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, the contempt for science, and the conscious attempt to trigger outrage. A close reading of National Socialism's definitive text, Koschorke concludes, can shed light on the dynamics of fanaticism. This lesson of Mein Kampf still needs to be learned.

Since the postwar period a truthful and transparent approach to National Socialist ideology has always remained elusive. The most common approach is to pass off National Socialism as a movement without ideological substance, which merely reacted to events, took advantage of political upheavals and, in some mysterious way, hypnotised the masses with the hysterical rhapsody of anti-Semitism. Thus National Socialism has been stereotyped as a creed as baseless as it was incoherent. This book seeks to shed light on the principles and philosophy of National Socialism, and what it meant to the millions of Europeans who gave their lives to its ideals and creed. Contrary to popular opinion, Hitler's and the National Socialist 'Worldview' was not based on 'anti-Semitism' - the Jewish question was at best a minor irritant to the Third Reich - it had nothing to do with 'mysticism' or the 'occult', and it certainly did not promote the idea that the people of Germany were a 'Master Race'. The National Socialist Worldview was based on far deeper and timeless principles which existed long before the creation of the Third Reich, and which will remain long after mankind has ceased to exist. Seventy years of lies and simplifications must be left behind in order to understand the principles that underpinned National Socialist ideology. This book is an invitation to those adventurous and nonconformist spirits who dare to examine pages censured by official historiography. Uncovering the ideological foundations of National Socialism, with a free spirit and an open mind, will be an enlightening and rewarding adventure.