Metapolitics: from Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler (Expanded ed.)

This work, first published in 1941, indicts Hitler in terms of the Judaic-Christian ethical tradition and locating certain elements of the Nazi worldview in German romantic poetry, music, and social thought.

This work remains a cultural interpretation of Nazism and totalitarianism and in the psychological interpretation of Hitler as a Wagnerite and failed artist.

The term ""metapolitics"", a coinage from Richard Wagner's nationalist circle, signifies an ideology resulting from five distinct strands - romanticism (embodied chiefly in the Wagnerian ethos), the pseudo-science of race, Fuehrer worship, vague economic socialism, and the alleged supernatural and unconscious force of the ""volk"" collectivity.

Together, those elements engendered an emphasis on irrationalism and hysteria and belief in a special German mission to direct the course of the world's history.

It analyzes 19th century German thought's conflicting attitudes toward political procedures and social arrangements rooted in classical, rational, legalistic, and Christian traditions.