1933 The Shockwave: The Year Hitler Declared War on Germany’s Artists and Intellectuals

1933 saw a wholesale assault on all civilized norms by a ruthless fascist dictator. This book explores the effect of Hitler’s draconian laws on many of the Nazi’s top targets.–men and women of the caliber of Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht who found themselves on assassination lists, their houses ransacked and then confiscated. These men and women were literally forced to go on the run. How they survived, how their approach to their work and their philosophies changed during this violent upturning of accepted norms governing civil society is the subject of this book.Following the ascendancy of so many right wing regimes across the world it is time to look at 1933 anew. Why were so many of the warnings these highly articulate men and women ignored? What message did they want to leave behind for posterity. To what extent did their life and work transform the way we currently respond to attacks on human rights? 1933 is only 90 years away from our present –these authors make the realities of that year even closer to that of our own.