Reactionary Modernism

How could Germany’s conservative revolutionaries of the Weimar Republic, and later the Nazis, reject the rationalism of the Enlightenment and yet embrace modern technology? Jeffrey Herf examines this paradox in a cultural tradition evident in the writings of some major intellectuals of the Weimar right - Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger - as well as writings of German engineers both before and after the Nazi seizure of power.