Nazism
Has Germany finally shaken off its dark past?
‘When it comes to helping others, we are the world champions’, one politician declared in 2015. But Merkel’s welcome to immigrants was pragmatic – and anti-Semitism is on the rise again
Is Israelophobia the latest form of anti-Semitism?
The demonisation of the state of Israel is basically an anti-Semitic mutation ‘evolving out of reach’, argues Jake Wallis Simons, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle
A doomed democracy
Despite its democratic ideals and artistic creativity, 1920s Germany lacked both the flexibility and social cohesion necessary for functional politics, says Frank McDonough
The unimaginable horrors confronting the Allies in 1945
No one had prepared the Allied soldiers, as they began their invasion of the Reich early in 1945, for what…
The opera that wouldn’t die
Richard Bratby on the resurrection of wunderkind Erich Korngold’s long-neglected masterpiece
Nobody paints the sea like Emile Nolde
In April, ten years after opening its gallery on the beach in Hastings, the Jerwood Foundation gifted the building to…
The history of Nazism in small objects
‘I can’t cook,’ writes the historian Karina Urbach, ‘which is probably why it took me so long to realise that…
Fresh air and fascism in the Bavarian Alps
The village of Oberstdorf lies in the Bavarian Alps, geographically remote but, as this gripping book demonstrates, deeply etched by…
The Prince of Prussia's Nazi problem
Perched on a mountain top overlooking the Swabian Alps, Hohenzollern Castle, with its picturesque towers, seems like something out of a…
Waiting for Gödel is over: the reclusive genius emerges from the shadows
The 20th-century Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel did his level best to live in the world as his philosophical hero Gottfried…
Apostle of modernism: Clive Bell’s reputation repaired
Clive Bell is the perennial supporting character in the biographies of the Bloomsbury group. The husband of Vanessa Bell, brother-in-law…
An unsuitable attachment to Nazism: Barbara Pym in the 1930s
Vicars, tea parties and village fetes were a far cry from Barbara Pym’s early enthusiasms, Philip Hensher reveals
The fall of Golden Dawn
The fall of Greece’s neo-Nazi party
Hitler’s admiration has severely damaged Wagner’s reputation
Wagner gripped the communal mind for decades after his death. Philip Hensher examines his enduring influence
A true story that never feels true: Resistance reviewed
Resistance stars Jesse Eisenberg and tells the true story of how mime artist Marcel Marceau helped orphaned Jewish children to…
How did the infamous Josef Mengele escape punishment?
The atrocities of the concentration camp at Auschwitz–Birkenau are now universally known, but it is still almost beyond belief that…
Ernst Jünger — reluctant captain of the Wehrmacht
Ernst Jünger, who died in 1998, aged 102, is now better known for his persona than his work. A deeply…
Nazi caricatures: The Order of the Day, by Éric Vuillard, reviewed
There was a time when you read French literary novels in order to cultivate a certain kind of sophisticated suspicion.…
Nietzsche’s intense friendship with Wagner forms the core of Sue Prideaux’s excellent new biography
In 1945, with the second world war won bar the shouting, Bertrand Russell polished off his brief examination of Friedrich…
Making Nietzsche New
Had you been down at Naumburg barracks early in March 1867, you might have seen a figure take a running…
Close encounters on the starship Enterprise
For a show with a self-proclaimed ‘five-year mission’, Star Trek hasn’t done badly. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon train to the stars’…
David Astor: the saintly, tormented man who remade the Observer
Before embarking on this book, Jeremy Lewis was told by his friend Diana Athill that his subject, the newspaper editor…
Why are children in Guernsey extolling Islam to their parents?
I have never been to the island of Guernsey. This is a large world and we have a finite amount…
Was Klaus Mann all Thomas Mann's fault?
Thomas Mann, despite strong homosexual emotions, had six children. The two eldest, Erika and Klaus, born in 1905 and 1906…
Nietzsche's school jeremiad sounds oddly familiar
Toby Young 5 March 2016 9:00 am
When Friedrich Nietzsche was offered a professorship in classical philology at the university of Basel in 1869 he was so…