Charlie Bertsch / 23 Mar 2023
All About the Heimat
Music as Politics in 1980s Germany
Teenagers were milling about. Bright colours shot off the portable mirror ball. The DJ stepped up to his console to cue the first track.(...)
Nazis
John Foster / 24 Feb 2023
The Biggest Failure Ever
R. T. Howard’s Spying on the Reich
From the vantage point of the early 21st century, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the interwar period was a preamble to catastrophe.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 28 Sep 2022
The Work of Remembrance
Germany, Year Zero, Today
It’s hard to watch Roberto Rossellini’s 1948 film Germany, Year Zero to its conclusion. The mood is relentlessly bleak and the landscape bleaker still.(...)
John Foster / 24 Jun 2022
The Snake in Lion Drag
Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes, by Tariq Ali
Since his student days in the Oxford Union in the 1960s, Tariq Ali has been a blunt teller of truths, not unduly concerned with the feelings of those who think otherwise.(...)
![Old problem, new graffiti. Via Padova, Milano. [Joel Schalit]](https://thebattleground.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Old-problem-new-graffiti.-Via-Padova-Milano-1024x683.jpg)
John Foster / 13 May 2022
Know It When We See It
George Mosse on Fascism
One of the great ironies of today's politics is that when it comes to fascism, it’s often difficult to know what one is talking about.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 27 Apr 2022
The Dark Side of Alternative
Tucson’s Whole Enchilada Benefit
When it happened, I’d finally decided to move forward through the crowd, loosely grouped in front of the outdoor stage at Tucson’s iconic Hotel Congress. Beloved local band Sidewinders, the penultimate act at this Whole Enchilada benefit show, was already playing their third number. But I still hadn’t committed myself to the experience.(...)
Joel Schalit / 03 Nov 2021
State and Antisemitism in Germany
The Problem With Police
The rhetoric is increasingly hollow. If only it weren’t that way.(...)
Joel Schalit / 11 Oct 2021
Civil Rights, Not Ethnicity
Germany’s Racism Crisis
It was a transparent failure. Irmgard Furchner, a 96-year-old ex-secretary at the Stutthof concentration camp, had disappeared the day her trial was to begin, having been accused of complicity in the deaths of over 10,000 Jews.(...)
Wieland Hoban / 08 Feb 2021
The Invisible Roma
Germany’s Other Holocaust Victims
Sometimes, apparently trivial expressions of bigotry can take on surprising importance.(...)
John Foster / 26 Jun 2020
Always Fighting Fascism
Theodor Adorno’s Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism
No experience marked the life and work of Theodor Adorno so deeply as the confrontation with National Socialism. (...)