The substance of the book addresses a little known and widely misunderstood aspect of the Third Reich -- the Nazi deification of nature. The Nazis had a utopian view of the natural order, the Volkgemeinschaft. This led to a rejection of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and an embrace of monism. Hitler: "Man who lives in communion w/ nature necessarily finds himself in opposition to the churches." "Today, a new basis for the state has been established, whose claim is that it doese not see its foundation in Christendom" Himmler: "Man is a link in the chain of living nature just as any other organism." Man was both divine and worthless, as Man's value stems from his acquiessence to nature. National Socialism had nothing in common w/ Christian tradition, and was in fact, antagonistic towards it. This flies in the face of pop Hollywood politics, which views Christianity as necessisarily Fascism.
Two weaknesses from the book: 1.) Pois does not address the pagan connections to Nazi ideology and leaders. I can understand that Hitler and Goebbels were pragmatists and not as "religiously" driven as Himmler and Hess, however this should still have been mentioned and 2.) The Intro and Outro of the book are worthless. The Intro is basically an apology to fellow academics for analyzing the worldview of the Nazis. Worthless. The Outro is a desparate attempt by the author to compare the Nazi's Darwinistic New Age environmentalism to American conservative politics. It was a reach, and the author doesen't prove his case (mostly because it doesn't try to understand the American political spectrum, and is just feeding his prejudices). His criteria--flight from history and valorization of the natural order--fits more w/ Marxist dialectic materialism (plenty of flight from history and sanctification of its 'natural order' there) than w/ Madisonian Libertarianism.
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