The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It
Alec Ryrie. Reaktion, $24 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-83639-082-4
Religious historian Ryrie (Unbelievers) makes a provocative yet incompletely persuasive argument about the negative impact of Adolf Hitler’s centrality in modern discourse. Ryrie posits that the story told of WWII as a grand unifying crusade against the ultimate evil, symbolized by Hitler and his genocidal Nazi ideology, was used in the postwar West as a substitute for a fading Christianity. “The Second World War is our Trojan War. It is our Paradise Lost,” he writes, describing how Nazis and Nazi allegories came to be used in pop culture as an all-purpose symbol for badness, whether for dramatic (Harry Potter) or comedic (Seinfeld) purposes. Ryrie goes on to make a persuasive case that the “negative” value system of the “anti-Nazi era” (i.e., being anti-genocidal) created an ethical vacuum in the postwar world—“It is becoming plainer that the anti-Nazi story cannot do all the work we are asking of it,” he writes, pointing to developments ranging from a reemerging far right to cancel culture—and that a positive morality is needed to bolster society. However, the narrative feels on thinner ground when Ryrie tries to imagine that positive morality, delivering an upbeat yet muzzy message about an “ethical synthesis” between old and new values. Presented in a light yet not unserious tone, this well-paced investigation of what underpins modern morality is worth grappling with. (Aug.)
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Reviewed on: 07/18/2025
Genre: Nonfiction