To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon

Rating:
Summary: Look elsewhere for a better book...
Review: Jay Baird reviews the nazi martyrs, such as Horst Wessel and Herbert Norkus, and uses them to explain how the concept of immolation and self sacrifice was so central to the Hitler era. Poets such as Gerhard Schumann are also treated, though there is little on art, sculpture and architecture. Nazi heroes themselves owed much to Germany's mythical past (the Teutonic forests and all) which was especially loved by Himmler who saw himself as a reincarnation of the medieval ruler Henry The Fowler. There is an insightful concluding chaper on the myth of death in the second world war. As the Reich crashed into ruins, Goebbels was still proudly glorifying self sacrifice in his movie epic Kolberg. In this way, nazism sought to equate noble death as the moral equivalent of victory. However, to what extent all this propaganda really influenced the man in the street would make another and equally interesting book.

Rating:
Summary: The functions of aesthetic death in the Third Reich.
Review: Jay Baird reviews the nazi martyrs, such as Horst Wessel and Herbert Norkus, and uses them to explain how the concept of immolation and self sacrifice was so central to the Hitler era. Poets such as Gerhard Schumann are also treated, though there is little on art, sculpture and architecture. Nazi heroes themselves owed much to Germany's mythical past (the Teutonic forests and all) which was especially loved by Himmler who saw himself as a reincarnation of the medieval ruler Henry The Fowler. There is an insightful concluding chaper on the myth of death in the second world war. As the Reich crashed into ruins, Goebbels was still proudly glorifying self sacrifice in his movie epic Kolberg. In this way, nazism sought to equate noble death as the moral equivalent of victory. However, to what extent all this propaganda really influenced the man in the street would make another and equally interesting book.

Rating:
Summary: Look elsewhere for a better book...
Review: The majority of this book is speculation, with little factual basis. By far one of the worst books written about the influences on Hitler, this book is also a difficult to read without falling asleep. The chapters are long and drawn out, and at times Baird seems to be writing to fill pages. Baird is simply a professor out to publish a book. Do yourself a favor--look into the other great books on Hitler, written by a European.