A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism, with a nod to how “shadowy conspiracy theories” and...
Of Nazis as satanists, werewolves as saviors, and other supernatural curiosities of the Third Reich.
This isn’t a Morning of the Magicians–style treatise on Nazi occultism, with secret portals to hell in the Caucasus and professions of the theory of eternal ice, though such things figure at the margins. Instead, Kurlander (History/Stetson Univ.; Living with Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich, 2009, etc.) delivers a serious consideration of the place of supernatural belief in the larger German society. The author writes of the influence of the so-called border sciences of parapsychology and their ilk on fascism, and vice versa, and of the identification of Jews and other “undesirables” with vampires, zombies, ghouls, and kindred monsters, joining modern racism to older cultural touchstones. Kurlander traces much of that to the Romantic era, when “folklore, mythology, and neo-paganism rushed to fill an important gap in the German spiritual landscape” left by a decline in belief in the Judeo-Christian God. Though rational-minded Germans shunned belief in such things as graphology and palm-reading, it was still strong enough that a corporate executive, at the time of the Nazi rise, was dismissed because his shareholders were convinced that his handwriting bode ill. The Nazis made use of existing mythology and added elements to proclaim Hitler “a ruler of souls” and a wizard possessed of powers no other earthly ruler held. Whether Hitler believed in such things himself is arguable, but clearly there was a kind of approved occultism that the regime tolerated even while rooting out “rival esoteric doctrines” that did not cohere with the state-sanctioned forms. In later years, the Nazis even tolerated a doctrine that held that they were agents of Lucifer battling an evil Jewish god, and though the promulgator of that theory committed suicide, his books remained in print until the end of the war.
A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism, with a nod to how “shadowy conspiracy theories” and supernatural thinking continue to play out in politics today.Pub Date: July 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-300-18945-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
