To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33

To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33 PDF Author: MacGregor Knox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139466933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
To the Threshold of Power is the first volume of a two-part work that seeks to explain the origins and dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist dictatorships. It lays a foundation for understanding the Nazi and Fascist regimes through parallel investigations of Italian and German society, institutions, and national myths; the supreme test of the First World War; and the post-1918 struggles from which the Fascist and National Socialist movements emerged. It emphasizes two principal sources of movement: the nationalist mythology of the intellectuals and the institutional culture and agendas of the two armies, especially the Imperial German Army and its Reichswehr successor. The book's climax is the cataclysm of 1914-18 and the rise and triumph of militarily organized radical nationalist movements - Mussolini's Fasci di combattimento and Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party - dedicated to the perpetuation of the war and the overthrow of the post-1918 world order.

To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33

To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33 PDF Author: MacGregor Knox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139466933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383

Get Book

Book Description
To the Threshold of Power is the first volume of a two-part work that seeks to explain the origins and dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist dictatorships. It lays a foundation for understanding the Nazi and Fascist regimes through parallel investigations of Italian and German society, institutions, and national myths; the supreme test of the First World War; and the post-1918 struggles from which the Fascist and National Socialist movements emerged. It emphasizes two principal sources of movement: the nationalist mythology of the intellectuals and the institutional culture and agendas of the two armies, especially the Imperial German Army and its Reichswehr successor. The book's climax is the cataclysm of 1914-18 and the rise and triumph of militarily organized radical nationalist movements - Mussolini's Fasci di combattimento and Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party - dedicated to the perpetuation of the war and the overthrow of the post-1918 world order.

Stormtrooper Families

Stormtrooper Families PDF Author: Andrew Wackerfuss
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 1939594065
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Based on extensive archival work, Stormtrooper Families combines stormtrooper personnel records, Nazi Party autobiographies, published and unpublished memoirs, personal letters, court records, and police-surveillance records to paint a picture of the stormtrooper movement as an organic product of its local community, its web of interpersonal relationships, and its intensely emotional internal struggles. Extensive analysis of Nazi-era media across the political spectrum shows how the public debate over homosexuality proved just as important to political outcomes as did the actual presence of homosexuals in fascist and antifascist politics. As children in the late-imperial period, the stormtroopers witnessed the first German debates over homosexuality and political life. As young adults, they verbally and physically battled over these definitions, bringing conflicts over homosexuality and masculinity into the center of Weimar Germany's most important political debates. Stormtrooper Families chronicles the stormtroopers' personal, political, and sexual struggles to explain not only how individual gay men existed within the Nazi movement but also how the public meaning of homosexuality affected fascist and antifascist politics—a public controversy still alive today.

Duce: The Contradictions of Power

Duce: The Contradictions of Power PDF Author: Peter J. Williamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019775466X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
Eighty years after the fall of Benito Mussolini, controversy remains about what his dictatorship represented. This reflects the different sides to the Duce's leadership: while adept at nurturing and enforcing his personal political power, Mussolini's lack of insight into the requirements of governance prevented him from converting this power into influence to achieve his goals. His efforts to maintain the support of Italy's conservative elites--economic, social and political--also created tensions with his radical Fascist ambitions, diminishing the momentum behind his regime. Mussolini is frequently portrayed as a charismatic leader, but his rule was secured principally by coercion, violence and a 'spoils system'. Nonetheless, his personality cult had significant popular appeal, even if based upon a political myth. This enabled him to consolidate his position and to dominate his Fascist colleagues--but at a price of over-centralized, dysfunctional decision-making. In this book, the first comprehensive English-language study of Mussolini in nearly two decades, Peter J. Williamson brings to life the contradictions within the Duce's leadership. Using a wide range of sources, Williamson reveals how these conflicts impeded the dictator's ambitions, leaving him increasingly frustrated, all while most Italians endured the severe privations of both failure and Fascism.

The Origins of the Second World War: An International Perspective

The Origins of the Second World War: An International Perspective PDF Author: Frank McDonough
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441159185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
Many major world events have occurred since the last key anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, and these events have had a dramatic impact on the international stage: 9/11, the Iraq War, climate change and the world economic crisis. This is an opportune moment to bring together a group of major international experts who will offer a series of new interpretations of the key aspects of the origins of the Second World War. Each chapter is based on original archival research and written by scholars who are all leading experts in their fields. This is a truly international collection of articles, with wide breadth and scope, which includes contributions from historians, and also political scientists, gender theorists, and international relations experts. This is an important contribution to scholarly debate on one of the most important events of the 20th century and a subject of major interest to the general reader, historians, students and researchers, policy makers and conflict prevention experts.

Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism

Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism PDF Author: Shira Klein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108335802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
How did Italy treat Jews during World War II? Historians have shown beyond doubt that many Italians were complicit in the Holocaust, yet Italy is still known as the Axis state that helped Jews. Shira Klein uncovers how Italian Jews, though victims of Italian persecution, promoted the view that Fascist Italy was categorically good to them. She shows how the Jews' experience in the decades before World War II - during which they became fervent Italian patriots while maintaining their distinctive Jewish culture - led them later to bolster the myth of Italy's wartime innocence in the Fascist racial campaign. Italy's Jews experienced a century of dramatic changes, from emancipation in 1848, to the 1938 Racial Laws, wartime refuge in America and Palestine, and the rehabilitation of Holocaust survivors. This cultural and social history draws on a wealth of unexplored sources, including original interviews and unpublished memoirs.

All or None

All or None PDF Author: Alison Sánchez Hall
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785339818
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
At once a social history and anthropological study of the world’s oldest voluntary collective farms, All or None is a story of how landless laborers joined together in Ravenna, Italy to acquire land, sometimes by occupying private land in what they called a “strike in reverse,” and how they developed sophisticated land use plans, based not only on the goal of profit, but on the human value of providing work where none was available. It addresses the question of the viability of cooperative enterprise as a potential solution for displaced workers, and as a more humane alternative to capitalist agribusiness.

The Long Shadow

The Long Shadow PDF Author: David Reynolds
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0857206389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
In Britain we have lost touch with the Great War. Our overriding sense now is of a meaningless, futile bloodbath in the mud of Flanders -- of young men whose lives were cut off in their prime for no evident purpose. But by reducing the conflict to personal tragedies, however moving, we have lost the big picture: the history has been distilled into poetry. In TheLong Shadow, critically acclaimed author David Reynolds seeks to redress the balance by exploring the true impact of 1914-18 on the 20th century. Some of the Great War's legacies were negative and pernicious but others proved transformative in a positive sense. Exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism and re-examining the differing impacts of the War on Britain, Ireland and the United States,TheLong Shadowthrows light on the whole of the last century and demonstrates that 1914-18 is a conflict that Britain, more than any other nation, is still struggling to comprehend. Stunningly broad in its historical perspective, The Long Shadowis a magisterial and seismic re-presentation of the Great War.

Italy's Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century

Italy's Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century PDF Author: Giampiero Giacomello
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739148680
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
ItalyÆs Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century: The New Assertiveness of an Aspiring Middle Power, edited by Giampiero Giacomello and Bertjan Verbeek, shows how changes in ItalyÆs international and domestic environment since the early 1990s have affected ItalyÆs foreign policy and raised its aspiration to become, and be treated as, a middle power. The contributors theoretically engage with both rationalist and constructivist accounts of middle-power. The contributors theoretical engage with both rationalist and constructivist accounts of middle-power behavior. They reveal that the end of the Cold War, the advent of globalization, and the rise in institutionalized regional cooperation have increased ItalyÆs freedom to maneuver. At the same time, however, these changes have decreased ItalyÆs policy freedom as a result of delegation of policy competencies to the European Union and the need for cooperation in a globalized world. Domestic changes, notably the transition from the First to the Second Republic and the transformation of political leadership under Prime Minister Silivio Berlusconi, have altered the way domestic politics is played out in foreign policy. Rather than adopting the more common focus on ItalyÆs bilateral relations with other counties or regions, this collection centers on actors, issues and policy instruments in vital areas of ItalyÆs foreign policy. In addition, it discusses the search for ItalyÆs position in global affairs and emphasized the importance of leadership styles, domestic political agendas, and party rhetoric in determining ItalyÆs foreign policy. As Giacomello and VerbeekÆs volume demonstrates, consistency with such strategic prescription has always been a problematic undertaking for various Italian governments. Book jacket.

Assault on Democracy

Assault on Democracy PDF Author: Kurt Weyland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108952461
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
The interwar years saw the greatest reversal of political liberalization and democratization in modern history. Why and how did dictatorship proliferate throughout Europe and Latin America in the 1920s and 1930s? Blending perspectives from history, comparative politics, and cognitive psychology, Kurt Weyland argues that the Russian Revolution sparked powerful elite groupings that, fearing communism, aimed to suppress imitation attempts inspired by Lenin's success. Fears of Communism fueled doubts about the defensive capacity of liberal democracy, strengthened the ideological right, and prompted the rise of fascism in many countries. Yet, as fascist movements spread, their extremity and violence also sparked conservative backlash that often blocked their seizure of power. Weyland teases out the differences across countries, tracing how the resulting conflicts led to the imposition of fascist totalitarianism in Italy and Germany and the installation of conservative authoritarianism in Eastern and Southern Europe and Latin America.

Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time

Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time PDF Author: Ira Katznelson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871406608
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
“A powerful argument, swept along by Katznelson’s robust prose and the imposing scholarship that lies behind it.”—Kevin Boyle, New York Times Book Review A work that “deeply reconceptualizes the New Deal and raises countless provocative questions” (David Kennedy), Fear Itself changes the ground rules for our understanding of this pivotal era in American history. Ira Katznelson examines the New Deal through the lens of a pervasive, almost existential fear that gripped a world defined by the collapse of capitalism and the rise of competing dictatorships, as well as a fear created by the ruinous racial divisions in American society. Katznelson argues that American democracy was both saved and distorted by a Faustian collaboration that guarded racial segregation as it built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power. Fear Itself charts the creation of the modern American state and “how a belief in the common good gave way to a central government dominated by interest-group politics and obsessed with national security” (Louis Menand, The New Yorker).