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Official Nazi racial doctrine inverted traditional analyses by interpreting antiquity as a product of Nordicism. Although Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Speer understood the limited archaeological evidence of early German society differently, biological determinism (the struggle between races) defined the baseline of historical change. In this light, Rome declined as it shed its Nordic blood in battle against Carthage. Alexander the Great's empire declined as it absorbed foreign elements, including Persians. Beyond Max Weinreich's Hitler's Professors (1946), Chapoutot (Sorbonne) identifies largely German classicists and philologists, including Hans F. K. Gunther and Joseph Vogt, who coupled social Darwinistic ideas and biological racism into their interwar publications on antiquity. Consistent with Michael Wildt's Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft (CH, Feb'13, 50-3486), the pre-war Nazi curriculum reforms, Berlin's Olympiastadion, the German pavilion for the Paris International Exposition in 1937, the Reichsautobahn, and Nuremberg's Reichsparteitagsgelande united Germans with an illustrious history and physical reminders of its continuity under Nazi leadership, generally, and Adolf Hitler, specifically. Although racial scientists and academics had established the foundations of biological racism decades earlier, Nazi party officials and pedagogues (for example, Dietrich Klagges) endorsed Nordicism in new textbooks and a revised secondary curriculum. In short, the Nazis usurped Europe's classical past. Summing Up: Highly recommended. -- D. A. Meier, Dickinson State University * CHOICE connect *

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Johann Chapoutot is Professor at the Sorbonne, where he teaches contemporary history.

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