Hitler's War Poets
Subtitle: Literature and Politics in the Third Reich
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: December 17, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780521876896
Subjects: European history: from c 1900 -; Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Inter-war period, 1918-1939; Second World War, 1939-1945; History; German; History: World; Germany; History / Europe / General; Europe - Germany; 20th century; German poetry; History and criticism; National socialism and literature; Themes, motives
Description: "Jay W. Baird comes to grips with a theme that has been generally avoided by more than two generations of scholars and literary critics. He argues that German literature did not end with the advent of Hitler in 1933 only to be reborn after the fall of the Third Reich in 1945. Baird demonstrates how poets and writers responded enthusiastically to Hitler's summons to artists to create a cultural revolution commensurate with the political radicalism of the new state, thereby affirming the centrality of renewed German culture." "Hitler's War Poets focuses on the lives and the works of six leading conservative, anticommunist, yet revolutionary authors who articulated the dream of World War I veterans to form a socially just national community. Tradition was redrawn by Rudolf G. Binding, while Josef Magnus Wehner dramatized the link from Flanders Fields and Verdun to the Third Reich. Hans Zoberlein exalted anti-Semitism, the Free Corps, and Nazi violence, providing the counterpoint to Edwin Erich Dwinger, who launched an unrelenting assault against "Jewish-Bolshevism." The torch was passed to Eberhard Wolfgang Moller, the leading bard of the revolutionary young generation. But it was Kurt Eggers, a tank commander in the Fifth SS Panzer Division "Viking," who delighted Hitler as he appeared as a prophet bearing the testament of Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Taken together, these authors offered the regime significant support. More importantly, theirs was a tragic legacy because they provided aesthetic accompaniment to Nazi barbarism and ultimately to the Holocaust."--Jacket.