To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon Paperback – October 22, 1992

This book is well written and is an easy and good read. It seems to actually be two books in one though. The first part of the book is indeed about Nazi "heros" who were killed early on in the Nazi Movement in Germany such as Horst Wessel the Ur-Skinhead (I think he is who Elton John's song about Saturday night is alright for fighting is written about) and the sixteen "immortals" who were gunned down during the abortive attempt to overthrow the Government of Bravaria in 1923.Each chapter contains an account of a different subject, however, after a few chapters, the book suddenly changes content and tone. The middle and final chapters are no longer about Nazi's who died but goes over to talking about Nazi aesthetics, poetry, and propaganda. Indeed, there are pages and pages of Nazi poetry about death and mother's loss until you start getting weepy-eyed for the fallen German SS soldiers. It snaps me back to reality though when I realize these SS soldiers that Baird's presentation of poetry are getting me weepy about would have gladly and happily killed me as an untermench had they come across me in their conquests.All in all a very good book. Baird's emotional portrayal of the Nazi cult's embracement of death in all their arts (with pages and pages of tear-jerking Nazi poetry) will make you reconsider and think. And that's the best thing a book like this can do, break you down, make you consider once again: Was this period of history really that bad? Were we right in resisting the "noble" and "mother loving" Nazis? Did they have a point sending their einsatzgreuppen against the Jews and Slavs and everyone else they didn't like? Some say its dangerous to think those thoughts. I personally do not because I always come down on the side that the Nazis were pure EVIL if for no other reason that I personally would have been the first they shot or threw in their ovens had they come across me.

Jay Baird reviews the nazi martyrs, such as Horst Wessel and Herbert Norkus, and uses them to explain how the concept of immolation and self sacrifice was so central to the Hitler era. Poets such as Gerhard Schumann are also treated, though there is little on art, sculpture and architecture. Nazi heroes themselves owed much to Germany's mythical past (the Teutonic forests and all) which was especially loved by Himmler who saw himself as a reincarnation of the medieval ruler Henry The Fowler. There is an insightful concluding chaper on the myth of death in the second world war. As the Reich crashed into ruins, Goebbels was still proudly glorifying self sacrifice in his movie epic Kolberg. In this way, nazism sought to equate noble death as the moral equivalent of victory. However, to what extent all this propaganda really influenced the man in the street would make another and equally interesting book.

One of the best books ever written on the ideology that generated Nazi warfare, and the Holocaust. The Nazis are thought of as a group of people that wished to conquer the world. What Baird shows is that the deeper desire was the wish to DIE FOR GERMANY: to submit to the sacred object. One became a "hero" by giving one's life for the nation. The Nazis weren't supermen, rather perhaps the greatest masochists of all time.

This book is an intellectual treatise and is intended for the serious researcher with a mature approach to the subject. It's not a fun action book by any means, but will enhance understanding of the roots of Nazi fanaticism.

pretty good book. author said something about "ovens at Auschwitz" or some other platitude and that's when obvious he doesn't really understand

Good information. A bit too personnel.

Hate anything about Nazis... Avoid this book

Absolutely brilliant!! This is not about German Heroes as propaganda, but the story behind... How Göbbels and "Friends" built the story!!