The Dark Arts of Politics: Aesthetics and Engineering in Nazism and Fascism

THE CULT OF ART IN NAZI GERMANY. by Eric Michaud, translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 271 pp.

BUILDING FASCISM, COMMUNISM, AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY: GAETANO CIOCCA—ARCHITECT, INVENTOR, FARMER, WRITER, ENGINEER. by Jeffrey T. Schnapp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 291 pp.

Despite their obvious centrality to the history of the twentieth century, sixty years after the defeat of the Axis powers fascism and Nazism remain elusive phenomena, hard to define with any real clarity. Scholars wrangle not only over the identification of their central characteristics but also over whether the similarities between fascism and Nazism are close enough to justify considering them as parts of a single category. A growing number of studies, however, ranging from general histories such as Norman Davies's Europe: A History and Mark Mazower's Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, to more specialized works such as Zeev Sternhell's Neither Left Nor Right and Robert Paxton's fine The Anatomy of Fascism, argue the case for treating fascism and Nazism together. A mark of all of these books is their willingness to give serious attention to fascist ideologies and to the interactions between these ideologies and fascist practice and culture. This interest, in turn, makes it necessary to examine anew broader questions about the relations between fascism and the circumstances and attitudes of modern life.