Hi Hitler!
How the Nazi Past Is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture

Analyzes how the Nazi past has become increasingly normalized within western memory since the start of the new millennium.

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld (Author)

9781107073999, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 December 2014

478 pages, 46 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.93 kg

'Gavriel D. Rosenfeld's monograph Hi Hitler! offers thought-provoking insights into contemporary historiography and popular-cultural representations of the Third Reich.' John Williams, The Journal of Modern History

The Third Reich's legacy is in flux. For much of the post-war period, the Nazi era has been viewed moralistically as an exceptional period of history intrinsically different from all others. Since the turn of the millennium, however, this view has been challenged by a powerful wave of normalization. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld charts this important international trend by examining the shifting representation of the Nazi past in contemporary western intellectual and cultural life. Focusing on works of historical scholarship, popular novels, counterfactual histories, feature films, and Internet websites, he identifies notable changes in the depiction of the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the figure of Adolf Hitler himself. By exploring the origins of these works and assessing the controversies they have sparked in the United States and Europe, Hi Hitler! offers a fascinating and timely analysis of the shifting status of the Nazi past in western memory.

Introduction
1. A 'good war' no more: the new World War II revisionism
2. From history to memory and back again: debating the Holocaust's uniqueness
3. Probing the limits of speculation: counterfactualism and the Holocaust
4. Nazis that never were: new alternate histories of the Third Reich
5. Humanizing Hitler: the Führer in contemporary film
6. Between tragedy and farce: Nazism on the Internet
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Fascism & Nazism [JPFQ], Popular culture [JFCA], Social & cultural history [HBTB], 21st century history: from c 2000 - [HBLX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]