Gavriel D. RosenfeldCambridge University Press, 3/14/2019EAN 9781108497497, ISBN10: 1108497497Hardcover, 408 pages, 23.5 x 15.8 x 2.7 cmLanguage: EnglishEver since the collapse of the Third Reich, anxieties have persisted about Nazism's revival in the form of a Fourth Reich. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld reveals, for the first time, these postwar nightmares of a future that never happened and explains what they tell us about Western political, intellectual, and cultural life. He shows how postwar German history might have been very different without the fear of the Fourth Reich as a mobilizing idea to combat the right-wing forces that genuinely threatened the country's democratic order. He then explores the universalization of the Fourth Reich by left-wing radicals in the 1960s, its transformation into a source of pop culture entertainment in the 1970s, and its embrace by authoritarian populists and neo-Nazis seeking to attack the European Union since the year 2000. This is a timely analysis of a concept that is increasingly relevant in an era of surging right-wing politics.Introduction1. Between fantasy and nightmareinventing the Fourth Reich in the Third Reich2. From werewolves to democratsthe Fourth Reich under Allied occupation3. The Fourth Reich turns rightrenazifying Germany in the 1950s4. From Germany to the United Statesuniversalizing the Fourth Reich in the turbulent 1960s5. Hitler in Argentinafictionalizing the Fourth Reich in the long 1970s6. Re-Germanizing the Fourth Reichfrom reunification to the Reich Citizens' MovementConclusion.
