The most recommended books on Nazism

Are you tired of Hollywood clichés about Nazi culture? The Princeton historian Anson Rabinbach is your man. His brilliant essays on aspects of Nazi culture as diverse as the popular novel under Nazism, the Nazi-organized leisure industry, and the fate of the humanities at German universities between 1933 and 1945, provide the sharp, well-informed analysis you never got at school. Get started with the interview the author gave to two younger colleagues (pp. 450-480); here things become personal. Of course, Rabinbach is a pro, he knows the critical literature on the topic and cites it to differentiate his argument. But more importantly, his insights and arguments force you to rethink your response to German fascism, and to question the facile opposition of democracy and Nazism portrayed in American pop culture.  

James Lee Burke’s Robichaud novels are terrific. In this book, Detective Dave Robichaud is caught up in a deadly struggle over a Nazi U-boat buried off the Louisiana coast.

Like any great protagonist, Robichaud is a guy with troubles that pre-date and persist long after any case is closed. This time it’s a sunken Nazi ship that has been the stuff of nightmares since he was a child. The story unfolds in a moody New Orleans, teeming with dark characters all pursuing their own violent ends.

Burke's language is lyrical, his dialogue dead-on. Best of all, he tells this tale with fearless imagination, his eye firmly on the presence of evil in the world.

Science collapses when scientists ignore objectivity and unbiased analysis, and Robert N. Proctor argues this effectively in this book.

I had long assumed (incorrectly) that racial doctrine during the Third Reich came directly from Hitler, but many German scientists actively espoused racial policies with supposed scientific justification. It may be hard to accept that some scientists became sympathizers overnight, no doubt for their own welfare and survival.

Proctor illustrates that pure science can be adapted for evil intent and that a self-centered agenda can result in illegitimate outcomes. 

Roaming turtles are branded with swastikas and Nazi soldiers burn synagogues to the ground in Veza Canetti’s The Tortoises, which follows Eva and her husband Andreas, who are trapped in the country without departure visas.

Informed by her experience of the time and place (Canetti wrote the novel shortly after she herself left Vienna in 1938), Canetti paints a vivid and terrible picture of life under Nazi occupation. Published posthumously many years after her death, the novel’s road to publication is a story in and of itself. 

Bart van Es tells the true story of how his grandparents were one of several families in the Netherlands who hid a young Jewish girl named Lientje during World War II.

It was extremely dangerous to do so. If found out, the Dutch family hiding her would have been arrested and sent off to one of the Nazi concentration camps. Van Es conveys a full sense of the tragedy involved when the girl’s parents give their beloved daughter to their friends as the only way to save her.

What’s unusual about this book is that Van Es tells two stories: his own journey as he tracks down Lientje in Amsterdam and her story of the terrible things she went through in hiding. Dutch “Jew hunting units” roamed the streets. Holland deported over 70% of their Jewish population to the Eastern camps.   

It is widely accepted that the French Revolution would not have occurred without the preceding Enlightenment. But what exactly was the Enlightenment? In this now classic study, Robert Darnton broadened the perspective on this question, to examine the writers, publishers, booksellers, peddlers, and smugglers responsible for the circulation of “enlightened” ideas.  Often operating illegally underground or even abroad in “Grub Street,” these producers and distributors of Enlightenment played a key role in subverting the Old Regime centered on monarchy, Church, and aristocracy, which would come crashing down in 1789.

This 1973 book got me started in this field over 50 years ago, and is still endlessly fascinating. Bleuel examines nearly every aspect of Nazi culture: male and female roles, the good wife and mother. There was even special medals (I have one) called Mutters Medal—a bronze for five children; a silver for 7; and a gold medal for 10 or more kids; divorce (actually quite common if the wife could not bear children); adultery (also quite common, as long as it produced babies); legal brothels; and of course “degeneracy” (perverted sex that did not produce Aryan blonds for the Fatherland (homosexuality, abortion, transvestism).

The movie and play Cabaret and the Roku series Berlin Babylon perfectly describe the forces of fascism trying to destroy “abnormal” sex.

Compare this book to Peter Gay’s Weimar Culture and Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin.

During my research for my book, I was fortunate to get in touch with Claus von Stauffenberg’s grandson Philipp von Schultess, who recommended the Peter Hoffmann book. 

It is a very detailed, comprehensive book on a topic that is too often omitted from schoolbooks and history books alike, the over 700,000 German civilians, politicians, clergy, military, and paramilitary who lost their lives trying to overturn the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. The Hoffmann was a starting point to the discovery of several other books about the German Resistance and a visit to the German Resistance Memorial and Museum in Berlin, where von Stauffenberg and other co-conspirators were executed.

Faye’s book has been extremely controversial, exposing him to sometimes quite nasty attacks by Heidegger apologists. But with respect to the core of what his book is about—the pro-Hitlerite seminars given by Heidegger during the years when he was most closely aligned with the Nazis—it’s an absolutely devastating account. The book is a must-read. Should be read in conjunction with Charles Bambach’s 2003 book, Heidegger’s Roots.

Resistance in Nazi Germany was overwhelmingly moral and almost always fatal, but too often attention is focused on the military resistance because they were the only people in Nazi Germany with the means to topple the Nazi regime. This tale of young students outraged by the corruption and brutality of the world around them, however, has a timelessness and a universal appeal. It is the story of youthful indignation and an example of conscience over-ruling rationality and self-interest. Hanser’s book makes this clear in prose that is sober yet lively, pulling the reader in emotionally as well as intellectually.