Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 510
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-7425-6797-9 • Hardback • August 2019 • $137.00 • (£105.00)
978-1-5381-5833-3 • Paperback • November 2021 • $50.00 • (£38.00)
978-0-7425-6799-3 • eBook • August 2019 • $47.50 • (£37.00)
Joshua Hagen is dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
Robert C. Ostergren is professor emeritus in the Department of Geography at University of Wisconsin–Madison.
List of Tables and Figures
Preface
1 Statism, Totalitarianism, and National Socialism
2 Things to Take Your Breath Away: The Führer Cities
3 A Nazi Civic Spirit: Reordering Cities and Towns
4 From Chaos to Order and Back Again: Home, Hearth, and Family Life
5 Mind, Body, and Heart: Turning Germans into Nazis
6 The Machinery of Conquest: The Military-Industrial Complex
7 Working toward Genocide: Camps of Confinement, Enslavement, and Death
Epilogue: The Building and Breaking of Nazi Germany
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
Th is book will be a useful reference guide for teachers and students, and given the extensive bibliography and footnotes, a departure point for further research. While Nazism had its singular aspects, comprehensive syntheses like Building Nazi Germany are effective at showing important continuities and discontinuities through time and space.
— Historical Geography
There is a substantial scholarly literature concerning architecture in the Third Reich, but Hagen and Ostergren break new ground. While dealing—as other scholars have—with the relationship between the construction of public buildings and Nazi aesthetics, Hagen and Ostergren go a step further by placing their study in a broad context. They approach their subject from the point of view of geographers, seeking to understand the relationship among aesthetics, ideology, utility, and urban planning during the Third Reich. Of particular interest is the chapter on the construction of concentration camps. In their epilogue, "The Building and Breaking of Nazi Germany," the authors provide a brief but valuable analysis of the destruction of Germany’s urban landscape during the final days of WW II; there is also interesting discussion of the use of Nazi buildings during the postwar period. These are subjects usually ignored by other scholars. The numerous illustrations enhance the utility of this book. Building Nazi Germany makes an important contribution to understanding of National Socialism.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
— Choice Reviews
An indispensable work for anyone interested in urban planning and architecture under National Socialism. Erudite, captivating, and filled with fascinating photos and maps, the book leaves the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted and often contradictory imprint of Nazi ideology on the built landscape of Germany.— Guntram H. Herb, Middlebury College
Nazi Germany may be best remembered for the unparalleled, global destruction wrought by its toxic racism and war machinery. But, as Hagen and Ostergren demonstrate in this fascinating book, the regime’s totalitarian ideology extended to the built world, too. Their valuable research shows the stunning and frightening extent of the Nazi regime’s architectural megalomania.— Steven Hoelscher, University of Texas at Austin