Nazi Modern
摘要
Nazi Modern Peter Fritzsche (bio) Soon, the twentieth century will be put into a museum. Its curators will face many difficult tasks: how to arrange its galleries and exhibits, and where to put the horror of Nazism? In one scenario, the museum might be dominated by a long corridor, a spatial counterpart to a time line, with the central gallery culminating in a triumphant display of democratic political systems, market-oriented economies, and thoroughly global communications, a display whose artifacts might include the "Good War," the Internet, and the Kronos Quartet. Approaching these objects through the central gallery, one would pass a series of other corridors diverging to the left and the right, corridors housing shrill political manifestos, uniformed youth brigades, and pale-colored ration cards, all recalling the once confident enemies of liberalism: the communists, the fascists, the Nazis, and other political "utopians." The central gallery would serve as a reliable moral compass, celebrating the righteousness of the West (France, the United States, and Great Britain), drawing attention to the once wayward East (Germany and Russia). The defining event of the century would be World War II, one that put in proper place and perspective the entire century. National Socialism, in particular, would provide a frightening, anachronistic contrast to the political liberty and social emancipation that Europe has achieved in the last decades. Yet such a marvelous museum might well be too perfect. Outside, the furies of nationalism, the prospect of wholesale ecological degradation, and persistent economic fears would continue to assault the certainties on display inside. [End Page 1] Alternatively, to acknowledge the indeterminate aspects of our own fin de siècle, the gallery could be laid out less strictly, less confidently. Instead of a central gallery with diverging corridors to regulate the flow of impressions, the building would house a shifting configuration of clus