Steel romanticism

An examination of the intellectual roots of the european hecatomb

Abstract

Multiple and intricate were the causes that produced something as aberrant as National Socialism. In this paper we will only address certain questions that have to do with the philosophical and cultural roots of Nazism. We will observe that, although it is true that irrational philosophies also arose in other nations of Europe, it was in Germany that they developed with greater force and intensity. We will consider, as the main hypothesis, that a thorough understanding of certain historical events –especially if they are as thunderous and dismal as Nazism– requires an exploration of their immediate and remote intellectual genealogies.