Nazism
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…
Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell and the rebirth of a nation
The purpose of Lara Feigel’s book is to describe the ‘political mission of reconciliation and restoration’ in the devastated cities…
David Cesarani's final, fascinating, wrong-headed book
David Cesarani, Research Professor of History at Royal Holloway University of London, died at the age of 58 on 25…
German refugees transformed British cultural life - but at a price
German-speaking refugees dragged British culture into the 20th century. But that didn’t go down well in Stepney or Stevenage, says William Cook
What drove Europe into two world wars?
Sir Ian Kershaw won his knight’s spurs as a historian with his much acclaimed two-volume biography of Hitler, Hubris and…
Joseph Goebbels: Hitler’s ‘little doctor’ was devoted unto death
It is ironic that this weighty biography of Hitler’s evil genius of a propaganda minister is published on the day…
Process of elimination: the horrors of Ravensbrück revealed
Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were originally set up in 1933 to terrorise Hitler’s political enemies; as war drew near,…
Game of thrones: five kings spanning five centuries launch a new series on royalty
Nigel Jones reviews the first five titles to appear in a new series on British monarchs
'I like vanished things': Anselm Kiefer on art, alchemy and his childhood
Martin Gayford talks to a surprisingly jolly Anselm Kiefer about art and metamorphosis
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…