Includes bibliographical references and index.

Paradoxes of "fascist modernism" -- Two modes of modernism -- Archaeology of modernism -- Primordialist definition of modernism -- Social modernism in peace and war 1880-1918 -- Rise of political modernism 1848-1945 -- Birth of fascism from modernism -- Fascist regime as a modernist state -- Nazism as a revitalization movement -- Modernism of Nazi culture -- Third Reich's biopolitical modernism -- Casting off.

"It has been widely assumed that fascism was anti-modern, the sworn enemy of genuine culture: thus the Third Reich barbarically destroyed modernism, while fascism cynically harnessed the creativity of the artistic avant-garde and technocratic elite to reactionary ends. In contrast, Roger Griffin's Modernism and Fascism convincingly portrays fascism as a 'total' form of modernism in its own right. Like a modernist painting itself, this ambitious book transforms our understanding of the art, technology, social ethos, and politics of the first half of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.