Politics of Death

The Cult of Nazi Martyrs, 1920-1939
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-41367-9
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 236 Seiten, Format (B × H): 233 mm x 156 mm, Gewicht: 368 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Second World War History

To disentangle the National Socialists’ path to power in Germany, one must attend to the discursive strategies and liturgical practices employed by its emocrats, or manipulators of emotions. The apotheosis of martyrdom in the National Socialist propaganda template is far from being a marginal element in the movement’s history. Owing to its mobilising and unifying potential in constructing a community of memory, the glorification of Nazi martyrdom constituted a fundamental pillar of the movement’s communicative and propaganda strategy, stressed to the point of paroxysm.

The propaganda and lies that ground the construction of the martyr as a prefiguration of the "new man" are the core ideas that form the backbone of this book. The Nazis’ politics of death was a carefully managed element of National Socialism from its very inception. The martyrs, and their blood sacrificed on the altar of the fatherland, were an invaluable propaganda weapon.

There were three pillars of the Nazi martyrdom frame: sublimation of death, posthumous sugar-coating and "tamed" death. Once the Nazi movement had taken control of German state apparatus, the mechanisms for disseminating the exemplary martyr in society may have changed, but not the specifics of the propaganda strategy itself.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Casquete, Jesus

Casquete, Jesús

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Besondere Kriege und Kampagnen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Totalitarianism and the new man 2. “A healthy fist and love for the fatherland in the heart”: Nazi stormtroopers 3. The Nazi Martyrdom Frame 4. Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Jesús Casquete is Professor of History of Political Thought at the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and fellow at the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) in Berlin. His fields of research include social movements, political violence and twentieth-century German history.