During the twenties and thirties, Kolnai, who converted to Catholicism under the influence of
G.K. Chesterton, read extensively in the
German language fascist and national socialist literature. The book compiles and critiques the anti-
Enlightenment works of national socialist writers themselves. Kolnai's study was the first comprehensive survey in English of German national socialist ideology as a counter-revolution against what German thinkers saw as the
materialistic, rootless civilizations dominated by comfort-addicted, money-and-security-centered, liberal
bourgeois and rootless
cosmopolitan Jews; the antithesis of the
heroic model of more vital civilizations, prepared to risk their lives, to die for ostensibly "higher" ideals. Kolnai argues that national socialist ideology is not only alien to the West, but profoundly disturbing and dangerous. Kolnai described the German national socialists' war against the West as, in essence, a war of
paganism against
Christian civilization. In citations from
Hitler,
Goebbels, and others, Kolnai sought to expose what he saw as "the obsessive German national socialist effort to replace Christianity with a crude and barbaric form of pagan religion, to twist the
cross of Christ into a
swastika." ==Contents==