The Scientific Origins of National Socialism

Rating:
Summary: Mandatory reading
Review: Short review -- get this book. It's only 180 pages or so, but it's an excellent reference book on your shelf the next time some numbskull lazily hurls around the "Nazi" label against any political ideology he or she opposes. Very well documented and researched.

This book describes the origins of National Socialist thought (the "Volk" movement), and its connections to Darwinism, evolution, and nature worship. The author does an excellent job at the connecting the dots between Ernst Haeckel's evolutionary Monism and Hitler's philosophy. This should be read by all, because the evil ideology of National Socialism is irresponsibly misrepresented in pop culture as a capitalistic, Christian enterprise, when nothing could be further from the truth. An excellent companion to "Nazi Economics" by Barkai, another good myth-buster.

It's kind of scary how little people know about the intellectual origins of Nazism, how it's glossed over by professors and "intellectuals" who find that the skeletal backbone of National Socialism hits a little too close to home.