Die Fahne Hoch - Three Biographies of Horst Wessel

Antelope Hill Publishing

Summary

Contains:

	Horst Wessel: Life and Death, by Erwin Reitmann
	SA Sturmführer Horst Wessel: A Portrait of a Life of Sacrifice, by Fritz Daum
	Horst Wessel: Through Storm and Struggle to Immortality, by Max Kullak

Horst Ludwig Georg Erich Wessel, born in Bielefeld in 1907, was the most celebrated martyr of the National Socialist movement. As a Sturmführer in the brown-shirted Sturmabteilung (SA), Horst Wessel led his men in Berlin, where the Communist paramilitary Red Front Fighters’ League did their best to disrupt the activities of the new German Nationalists. In response to his capable leadership, which threatened the Communist stranglehold on much of the city, the Red Front put out a hit on the young SA-Man. His resulting death at the hands of a cowardly Communist assassin—a pimp and petty criminal named Albrecht Höhler—became a rallying cry for his comrades all across Germany (Höhler would later be executed by the SA following the seizure of power in 1933).
 
The namesake of this book—“Die Fahne Hoch,” or “Raise the Flag”—is a song written by Horst Wessel as a fighting song for the SA. After his martyrdom, it was adopted as the official anthem of the NSDAP and later as the national anthem of the Third Reich itself, as the Horst-Wessel-Lied. The three biographies in this collection are not so much dry factual recitations as they are passionate eulogies for a young man who laid down his life for his country, driven by idealism and a fanatical love for his people. Horst Wessel’s stature as an icon of the Third Reich achieved such heights that the legend of his life and death crosses into the territory of founding mythology for National Socialist Germany.
 
Horst Wessel served as an example to the youth of a defeated and desperate nation, a shining illustration of the value of courage and devotion, and proof that noble deeds often far outlive one’s own life and even the original circumstances in which they were made. Antelope Hill is proud to bring these short biographies together in one collection, Die Fahne Hoch, newly translated for the English reader.

Available since: 10/11/2022.

Other books that might interest you

Strength in Numbers - How Polls...

G. Elliott Morris

Public opinion polling is the ultimate democratic process; it gives every person an equal voice in letting elected leaders know what they need and want. But in the eyes of the public, polls today are tarnished. Recent election forecasts have routinely missed the mark and media coverage of polls has focused solely on predicting winners and losers.In Strength in Numbers, data journalist G. Elliott Morris argues that the larger purpose of political polls is to improve democracy, not just predict elections. Whether used by interest groups, the press, or politicians, polling serves as a pipeline from the governed to the government, giving citizens influence they would otherwise lack. No one who believes in democracy can afford to give up on polls; they should commit, instead, to understanding them better.Morris takes listeners from the first semblance of data-gathering in the ancient world through to the development of modern-day scientific polling. He explains how the internet and "big data" have solved many challenges in polling—and created others. He covers the rise of polling aggregation and methods of election forecasting, reveals how data can be distorted and misrepresented, and demystifies the uncertainty of polling. Acknowledging where polls have gone wrong in the past, Morris charts a path for the industry's future.

Show book

Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts -...

Jeremy L. Wallace

A unique analysis of the numbers that came to define Chinese politics and how this quantification evolved over time.For decades, a few numbers came to define Chinese politics—until those numbers did not count what mattered and what they counted did not measure up. Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts argues that the Chinese government adopted a system of limited, quantified vision in order to survive the disasters unleashed by Mao Zedong's ideological leadership. Jeremy Wallace explains how that system worked and analyzes how the problems that accumulated in its blind spots led Xi Jinping to take drastic action. Xi's neopolitical turn—aggressive anti-corruption campaigns, reassertion of party authority, and personalization of power—is an attempt fix the problems of the prior system, as well as a hedge against an inability to do so. The book argues that while of course dictators stay in power through coercion and cooptation, they also do so by convincing their populations and themselves of their right to rule. Quantification is one tool in this persuasive arsenal, but it comes with its own perils.

Show book

When Love is a Lie -...

Zari Ballard

“There is no better book on fascism’s complex and vexed relationship with truth.”––Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and ThemIn this short companion to his book From Fascism to Populism in History, world-renowned historian Federico Finchelstein explains why fascists regarded simple and often hateful lies as truth, and why so many of their followers believed the falsehoods. Throughout the history of the twentieth century, many supporters of fascist ideologies regarded political lies as truth incarnated in their leader. From Hitler to Mussolini, fascist leaders capitalized on lies as the base of their power and popular sovereignty.This history continues in the present, when lies again seem to increasingly replace empirical truth. Now that actual news is presented as “fake news” and false news becomes government policy, A Brief History of Fascist Lies urges us to remember that the current talk of “post-truth” has a long political and intellectual lineage that we cannot ignore.

Show book

The Decline of American Power

Immanuel Wallerstein

The internationally renowned theorist contends that the sun is setting on the American empire in this “lucid, informed, and insightful” account (The New York Times). The United States currently finds itself [a] superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody follows and few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot control. The United States in decline? Its admirers and detractors alike claim the opposite: America is now in a position of unprecedented global supremacy. But in fact, Immanuel Wallerstein argues, a more nuanced evaluation of recent history reveals that America has been fading as a global power since the end of the Vietnam War, and its response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 looks certain to hasten that decline. In this provocative collection, the visionary originator of world-systems analysis and the most innovative social scientist of his generation turns a practiced analytical eye to the turbulent beginnings of the twenty-first century. Touching on globalization, Islam, racism, democracy, intellectuals, and the state of the left wing, Wallerstein upends conventional wisdom to produce a clear-eyed—and troubling—assessment of the crumbling international order. “[Wallerstein’s thought] provides a new framework for the subject of European history . . . it is compelling, a new explanation, a new classification, indeed a revolutionary one, of received knowledge and current thought.” —Fernand Braudel

Show book

The Black Boom

Jason L Riley

Economic inequality continues to be one of the most hotly debated topics in America, but there has been relatively little discussion of the fact that black-white gaps in joblessness, income, poverty, and other measures were shrinking prior to the pandemic. Why was it happening, and why did this phenomenon go unacknowledged by so much of the media?In The Black Boom, Jason L. Riley—acclaimed Wall Street Journal columnist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute—digs into the data and concludes that the economic lives of black people improved significantly under policies put into place during the Trump administration.Less inequality is something that everyone wants, but disapproval of Trump's personality and methods too often skewed the media's appraisal of effective policies advocated by his administration. If we want to make real progress in improving the lives of low-income minorities, says Riley, we must look beyond our partisan differences at what works and keep doing it. Unfortunately, many press outlets were unable or unwilling to do that.

Show book

Stronger - Adapting America's...

Ryan Hass

An examination of the US–China relationship that charts a new path for America focusing on its existing advantages.Ryan Hass charts a path forward in America's relationship and rivalry with China rooted in the relative advantages America already possesses. Hass argues that while competition will remain the defining trait of the relationship, both countries will continue to be impacted—for good or ill—by their capacity to coordinate on common challenges that neither can solve on its own, such as pandemic disease, global economic recession, climate change, and nuclear nonproliferation. Hass makes the case that the United States will have greater success in outpacing China economically and outshining it in questions of governance if it focuses more on improving its own condition at home than on trying to impede Chinese initiatives. He argues that the task at hand is not to stand in China's way and turn a rising power into an enemy in the process but to renew America's advantages in its competition with China.

Show book