Peter Staudenmaier – författare

Julius Evola and the Radical Right examines the ideas and influence of Italian thinker Julius Evola (1898–1974), an increasingly popular author within the far right and the esoteric milieu alike.An iconic figure for successive generations of the radical right, Evola is both revered and reviled, but his past remains contested. Those seeking information about him are confronted with a fractured and contentious legacy. Drawing on the archival record and texts that Evola left behind, this book reconstructs his intellectual trajectory and examines his activities in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, and in the neo-fascist movement after 1945. It demonstrates that Evola and his circle were not as marginal as sometimes portrayed and cooperated more closely with Fascist and Nazi officials than previously recognized. The book dispels many of the myths surrounding Evola and his “spiritual racism” while tracing Evola’s enduring influence after his death, showing how his ideas continue to inspire contemporary political movements.This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Fascism, Nazism, antisemitism, and the Holocaust.

Julius Evola and the Radical Right examines the ideas and influence of Italian thinker Julius Evola (1898–1974), an increasingly popular author within the far right and the esoteric milieu alike.An iconic figure for successive generations of the radical right, Evola is both revered and reviled, but his past remains contested. Those seeking information about him are confronted with a fractured and contentious legacy. Drawing on the archival record and texts that Evola left behind, this book reconstructs his intellectual trajectory and examines his activities in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, and in the neo-fascist movement after 1945. It demonstrates that Evola and his circle were not as marginal as sometimes portrayed and cooperated more closely with Fascist and Nazi officials than previously recognized. The book dispels many of the myths surrounding Evola and his “spiritual racism” while tracing Evola’s enduring influence after his death, showing how his ideas continue to inspire contemporary political movements.This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Fascism, Nazism, antisemitism, and the Holocaust.

For some Germans, Nazism represented an ecological outlook and a return to a simpler, healthier, more natural way of life founded on environmental harmony. That image fundamentally conflicts with the astonishing destructiveness of the Nazi military machine and its legacy of concentration camps, dictatorship, and mass murder. This study argues that these two facets of Nazism, the ecological and the imperial, were integrally intertwined. Peter Staudenmaier uses new archival evidence to examine this contested history, ranging from early organic farming movements to landscape protection advocates. In doing so, Staudenmaier reveals a remarkable range of practical endeavors in Nazi Germany that were shaped by ecological ideals coupled with potent racial myths. The Politics of Nature in Nazi Germany challenges previous scholarly frameworks, bringing together environmental history and the history of Nazism in new and revealing ways.