The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It

by Alec Ryrie

Overview

Examining everything from popular novels to politics, an investigation of persistent fascination with Nazis—and where it might take us.
 
We live in an age where Hitler and the Nazis dominate our cultural imagination, shaping values once defined by religion. Historian Alec Ryrie explores why society remains captivated by this struggle, from history and fiction to modern myths such as Star Wars and Harry Potter. He examines the costs of our Nazi obsession and questions what will come as our anti-Nazi moral consensus frays and both the Left and Right begin to move on. With a fresh take on modern history and pop culture, The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It offers a thought-provoking look at the culture wars and our shifting political crises, challenging assumptions on both sides and asking what a new moral vision might look like.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781836390824
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	08/12/2025
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alec Ryrie is professor of the history of Christianity at Durham University and a fellow of the British Academy. His previous books include Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt. He lives in rural County Durham.

Table of Contents

Introduction


Part 1: How We Got Here
1 The Greatest Story Ever Told
2 The Age of Hitler

Part 2: Where We Are Now
3 Villains and Heroes
4 Fighting the Last War

Part 3: Where We Go Next
5 To a Progressive Secularist
6 To a Conservative Traditionalist

Conclusion: How to Win a Culture War
Acknowledgements
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A brilliant exposition of Hitler’s role as the embodiment of evil in the collective imagination of the West—and of what may happen as it starts to fade."

Tom Holland

We live amid alarming fractures in the public understanding of our identities, our collective needs, and our perils. Ryrie’s little book of contemporary history manages to be both exhilarating and comforting, based on his rare skill in bringing a historian’s cool gaze on our anxious world to assess its ills, and with due modesty to offer some remedial ways forward.

Diarmaid MacCulloch

"With his lissome prose, Ryrie is a brilliant guide in the best of the essayist tradition, who empowers us to face the formidable moral questions of our age not as victims but through critical self-examination, ethical reflection, and compassionate action. Who are we? The appeal to self-awareness is neither otherworldly nor moralizing. Rather, like the great Montaigne, Ryrie meets us in the middle of his and our lives, offering rich and humane historical reflections as wisdom in our consumerist, perpetually online, and post-truth realities. This is an extraordinary book with which you don't need to be in full agreement to emerge radically transformed into a more enlightened and charitable person in a fraught age."

Bruce Gordon

"Rapidly, provocatively, this book shakes the history of the last few decades into a new and persuasive shape, and asks the question we all need to answer: how shall we orient ourselves, how shall we understand good and evil, when the old taboos are breaking down, and the horrors of the past are losing their strength as guardrails?"

Francis Spufford