Aurel Kolnai's The War against the West remains one of the most insightful analyses of Nazi thought ever written. In this edited collection published 80 years after the original book, a team of distinguished scholars reassess this classic text and also consider its continued relevance to contemporary politics.

Wolfgang Bialas, self-employed lecturer and translator, editor of Aurel Kolnai, Der Krieg gegen den Westen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) and author of Moralische Ordnungen des Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014).

Aurel Kolnai's The War against the West remains one of the most insightful analyses of Nazi thought ever written. First published in 1938 it was a revelation for many readers. Quite different in tone and approach from most other analyses of Nazism available in English, it was remarkable for the thoroughness with which it discussed the writings of Nazi thinkers and for the seriousness with which it took their views. In this edited collection published eighty years after the original book, a team of distinguished scholars reassess this classic text and also consider its continued relevance to contemporary politics. They address issues such as the comparison of Nazism and communism, anti-Semitism, British and American perceptions of the Reich before the war and the Nazi legal theory of Carl Schmitt. This book is a vital source for historians of Nazism and Fascism.

1. Introduction - Wolfgang Bialas

Part I - Topics addressed in Kolnai's The War against the West

2. Aurel Kolnai's comparison of Nazism and Communism in the context of the contemporary comparison of dictatorships - Uwe Backes

3. Nazism, Christianity and the development of political religion theory in Kolnai's War against the West - Richard Steigmann-Gall

4. Aurel Kolnai's reflections on anti-Semitism in contemporary context - Micha Brumlik

Part II - Comparing Kolnai with contemporary attempts of coming to terms with Nazism

5. Aurel Kolnai's The War against the West and British attempts to understand Nazism before the war - Dan Stone

6. Aurel Kolnai's The War Against the West and the American debate on Nazism - Michaela Hoenicke Moore

7. Aurel Kolnai and Franz Neumann: Normative critique and structural analysis of National Socialism - Rolf Zimmermann

Part III - Kolnai's work and the reception of The War against the West

8. Aurel Kolnai's The War against the West contextualized - Lee Congdon

9. Kolnai's The War against the West from a present-day scholarly perspective on Nazism - Wolfgang Bialas

10. Nazi seual politics: Aurel Kolnai on the threat of re-primitivism - Graham McAleer

Part IV - Kolnai's political and moral philosophy

11. Kolnai's War against Carl Schmitt's War: The war of wars - Zoltán Balázs

12. The viability of Kolnai's moral phenomenology: moral awareness and anti-Utopianism - Chris Bessemans

13. Kolnai's War against the West revisited in light of his anti-Utopianism and his concrete conservativism - Andrew S. Cunningham