Prequel

Informationen zum Autor Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Awardwinning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drift and Blowout, and the New York Times bestselling co-author of Bag Man . Maddow received a bachelor's degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula. Klappentext "Traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis. Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century"-- Leseprobe Chapter One The Glass House The reedy and excitable twenty-six-year-old recent Harvard graduate, full of anticipation, was motoring out to an open field in Potsdam, Germany, to attend a Nazi youth rally. Part of the draw for the Harvard man was the chance to see and hear, in person, Adolf Hitler, who was then still several months away from ascending to the chancellorship of Germany but already the talk of Europeans and Americans in the know. Another factor in the draw to Potsdam was the opportunity to witness up close the dazzling spectacle reliably on display at Nazi rallies. The American aesthete, who would eventually achieve his own considerable level of celebrity both at home and abroad, was keenly interested in the power of artifice. The young man had been a lonely outsider, lacerated by cruel juvenile humor for much of his life. He was frail and a stutterer and suffered from a low-grade bipolar disorder called cyclothymia. The accompanying nervous breakdowns had already slowed his progress in life. Yes, he went to Harvard, but although he entered with the class of 1927, he did not receive his bachelor of arts until three years after most of his classmates, in June 1930. Still he had gradually adopted the carriage of a man above it all, buoyed in no small part by the precepts adopted from his favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's siren song was really just one blaring note, and hard to misapprehend: The mass of men was a sorry lot whose most useful quality was the ability to conform to rules others wrote for them. But, the celebrated nineteenth-century German scholar posited, there was a small squadron of elites, of demigods, of Übermenschen (in English, roughly supermen) capable of molding the world and all its human glories because they refused to be bound by convention or morality or man-made law. The Harvard man had been raised with what he called rather an upper class feeling about things, so he not only was on the lookout for these predestined few, the rare Übermenschen, but suspected he himself would one day be counted among them. He covered any suspicions of his own inferiority, one close acquaintance theorized, by being personally aggressive. The menacing martial snap and guttural roar of that Potsdam youth rally in the fall of 1932 turned out to be something akin to a tent revival for the young American, a political awakening doubtlessly intensified by the invigorating sighthe would later tell his biographerof all those blond boys in black leather parading by. The leader of the Hitler Youth, beefy and baby-faced, introduced Hitler to a field of thirty thousand Jugend sporting matching brown uniforms, armbands with the new national emblem, and, pinned over the left breast of the lucky few who could afford it, a weighty metal badge stamped with swastika and sword. Fifty thousand onlookers in the overflowing stadium watc...

Auteur

Rachel Maddow

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"Traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis. Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century"--

Résumé
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.
 
“A ripping read—well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong, even startling.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.
 
That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.
 
At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.
 
None of it went as planned.
 
While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.
 
That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.

Échantillon de lecture
**Chapter One

The Glass House

The reedy and excitable twenty-six-year-old recent Harvard graduate, full of anticipation, was motoring out to an open field in Potsdam, Germany, to attend a Nazi youth rally. Part of the draw for the Harvard man was the chance to see and hear, in person, Adolf Hitler, who was then still several months away from ascending to the chancellorship of Germany but already the talk of Europeans and Americans in the know. Another factor in the draw to Potsdam was the opportunity to witness up close the dazzling spectacle reliably on display at Nazi rallies. The American aesthete, who would eventually achieve his own considerable level of celebrity both at home and abroad, was keenly interested in the power of artifice.

The young man had been a lonely outsider, lacerated by cruel juvenile humor for much of his life. He was frail and a stutterer and suffered from a…