Our Nazis: Representations Of Fascism In Contemporary Literature And Film

225 Pages·2013·1.741 MB·English

by  Petra Rau

RAU_PPC_Layout 1 27/02/2013 20:49 Page 1
Edinburgh Critical Studies in War and Culture
‘This energetically written book makes an important and timely contribution
to current debates on the legacy of the Second World War.’
Victoria Stewart, University of Leicester
A valuable critical analysis of the resurgence of representations
of Nazism in contemporary literature and film O
U
In the post-war imaginary of the West, ‘the Nazis’ became a cultural trope that served
as a justification for defending democracy through military intervention. But in films R
and in fiction, ‘the Nazis’ were also camped up, laughed at, eroticised and demonised as

evil monsters. In fact, the representational rules of engagement with historical fascism n
have always been remarkably uncertain. Why has the fascination with fascism
a
re-emerged once more after the Cold War? What is its cultural function now, in a global
era of commemoration? How can any representation avoid the impasse of either z
re-evoking fascism’s original seduction or merely recycling previous fictional and
i
cinematic clichés? This original study examines a range of genres and topics: alternative s
history (Robert Harris’s Fatherland and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds), the
noir thrillers of Philip Kerr, perpetration (Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones) and
resistance (Justin Cartwright’s The Song Before It Is Sungand Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie). OUR
Crucially, it asks how contemporary culture has instrumentalised the Nazi trope for its
own agendas. How have ‘the Nazis’ become ‘our Nazis’, and what are the risks and
P
responsibilities of such appropriations? e
t NAZIS
r
a
Petra Rau is Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of East Anglia.
R
She is the author of English Modernism, National Identity and the Germans, 1890–1950
a
(2009) and has published on Freudian poetics, literature about the Second World War u
and travel writing. REPRESENTATIONS OF FASCISM
IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE AND FILM
Cover images: Uncle Rudi© Gerhard Richter, 2012.
Cover design: www.hayesdesign.co.uk
ISBN 978-0-7486-6864-9
Petra Rau
www.euppublishing.com
Our Nazis

Our Nazis
Representations of Fascism in Contemporary
Literature and Film
Petra Rau
© Petra Rau, 2013
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 10.5/13 pt Sabon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 6864 9 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 6865 6 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 6866 3 (epub)
The right of Petra Rau
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Sources of Illustrations viii
Series Editors’ Preface ix
Introduction: ‘Having Your Nazi Cake and Eating it’ 1
1 Nazi Noir: Hardboiled Masculinity and Fascist Sensibility
from Ambler and Greene to Philip Kerr 43
2 The Fascist Corpus in the Age of Holocaust Remembrance:
Robert Harris’s Fatherland and Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs 70
3 ‘Fascism’ as Excess and Abjection: Jonathan Littell’s The
Kindly Ones 93
4 The Good German: The Stauffenberg Plot and its Discontents 125
5 ‘Operation Kino’: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds
as Meta-cinematic Farce 158
Coda 190
Bibliography 195
Index 211
Acknowledgements
This book has been in slumber for a long time and took shape under the
encouragement of Gill Plain and Kate McLoughlin. I am very grateful
for their support, advice and belief in the project. The research network
War and Representation, which they also organise, has been an excellent
platform to try out ideas.
Over the years many colleagues have contributed actively or unwit-
tingly to this project. They have revealed to me secret caches of war
films hidden from unsuspecting partners in attic rooms; embarked on
impromptu undercover missions to retrieve DVDs from bargain baskets
in supermarkets they don’t normally frequent; whispered to me book
titles that I shouldn’t be seen reading on public transport. The number
of website addresses and YouTube videos I was sent by well-meaning
individuals cannot be counted. To this silent interest group that has
sworn me to confidentiality, I say a big ‘thank you’: your secrets are
in the vault. Notwithstanding these collective efforts, any omission of
significant material is entirely my own fault.
I am also very grateful to those colleagues and friends I can name
because they have nothing to do (they think!) with dodgy DVDs or
books advocating dubious politics but have read drafts, recommended
scholarly material or dragged me to dark places: Christine Berberich,
Danny Cohen, Bran Nicol, Deborah Shaw, Victoria Stewart and Glyn
White.
I would like to thank the Centre for Studies in Literature at the
University of Portsmouth for generous financial support for this project,
and all friends and former colleagues there for their patience and encour-
agement. A much shorter version of Chapter 2 was previously published
in my edited collection Conflict, Nationhood and Corporeality: Bodies-
at-War (Palgrave, 2010).
As always, I must thank Cath, Pip and Otto for enduring with me
countless hours of enforced labour under ‘fascism’. The next book, I
Acknowledgements vii
promise, will be very sanguine and hopefully not involve any swastikas.
I dedicate Our Nazis to my Aunt Uschi, with gratitude for our Silesian
adventure: I have a hunch this is where it all started.
Sources of Illustrations
Figures 4.1 and 4.2 from The Young Lions (1958), dir. Edward Dmytryk
(DVD: Warner Bros, 2004)
Figure 4.3 from I Confess (1953), dir. Alfred Hitchcock (DVD:
Twentieth Century Fox, 2005)
Figure 4.4 Tom Batchell, illustration for The New Yorker, 5 January
2009, used by permission of the artist
Figures 4.5 and 4.6 from Valkyrie (2008), dir. Bryan Singer (DVD:
Twentieth Century Fox, 2009)
Figures 5.1 and 5.7 to 5.11 from Inglourious Basterds (2009), dir.
Quentin Tarantino (DVD: Universal Studios, 2009)
Figures 5.2 and 5.3 from Schtonk! (1993), dir. Helmut Dietl (DVD:
Eurovideo, n.d.)
Figures 5.4 and 5.6 from The Producers (1968), dir. Mel Brooks (DVD:
Momentum Pictures, 2004)
Figure 5.5 Members of the Hitler Youth parade in the formation of a
swastika in honour of the Unknown Soldier, Germany, 27 August
1933, used by permission of The Associated Press
Series Editors’ Preface
This series of monographs is designed to showcase innovative new
scholarship in the literary and filmic representation of war. The series
embraces Anglophone literature and film of all genres, with studies
adopting a range of critical approaches including transhistorical
and inter-cultural analysis. ‘War’ in this context is understood to
mean armed conflict of the industrialised age (that is, from the late
eighteenth century onwards), including not only conventional war
between sovereign states but also revolution, insurrection, civil war,
guerrilla warfare, cold war and genocide (including the Holocaust).
The series is concerned with the multiple, often conflicting, significa-
tions that surround the act and event of armed combat, and volumes
will also consider the causes, consequences and aftermath of wars;
pro- and anti-war literature and film; memorialisation, trauma and
testimony. The premise of the series is that new critical perspectives
need to be developed in order better to understand war representa-
tion. Rather than simply analysing war texts, or even situating those
texts in their contemporary cultural contexts, Edinburgh Critical
Studies in War and Culture will identify the conceptual categories
and forms by which war has been mediated in literature and film,
and illuminate the cultural influences that produce them. Wars
shape bodies, minds and literary forms; they mediate the possibili-
ties of expression and create discourses of repression; they construct
ambivalent subjectivities such as the enemy and the veteran; they
invade and distort popular genres from crime fiction to fantasy; they
leave tangible scars on the landscape and generate the production of
memorials both concrete and imagined. This series explores the role
of literature and film in mediating such events, and in articulating the
contradictions of ‘war’ and ‘culture’.
Kate McLoughlin and Gill Plain