Hitler

by Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a British novelist, painter, essayist, and polemicist. Credited with being the founder of the only modernist movement from Britain, Vorcticism, Lewis approached politics as an aesthetic discipline. His 1931 work Hitler was written after his visit to Germany that year, and highlights the charged atmosphere and uneasy tension that permeated Berlin. Bringing his wit and humor to analyze a country on the eve of revolution, Lewis argues that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler may truly be the best option for Germans.
Branded a National Socialist sympathizer - Wyndham Lewis's reputation never recovered from the release of this book. Even later disavowals in The Hitler Cult and The Jews, Are They Human? (both in 1939) failed to restore his image. Throughout the 1930's Wyndham Lewis persisted in his advocacy of what is now termed "appeasement". During the war, he fled to the United States and Canada, all the while working to distance himself from his 1931 writings. His later work began explicitly praising a radical individualism which had been ever-present, but never before at the forefront. He returned home to England after the war, and went blind in 1951, but kept writing critiques and fiction of such quality that he had a brief renaissance of popularity before his death in 1957. Despite this, the shadow of Hitler continues to haunt the legacy of Wyndham Lewis.
Antelope Hill is proud to release Wyndham Lewis's Hitler , in print for the first time since 1972, with an original foreword by John "Borzoi" Chapman, so that the reader can judge for himself the character of this unique artist.

Genres: Germany, History, Politics

202 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

(Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a novelist, painter, essayist, polemicist and one of the truly dynamic forces of the early 20th century and a central figure in the history of modernism. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only original movement in 20th century English painting. His Vorticist paintings from 1913 are the first abstract works produced in England, and influenced the development of Suprematism in Russia. Tarr (published in 1918), initiated his career as a satirical novelist, earning the praise of his contemporaries: "the most distinguished living novelist" (T.S. Eliot), "the only English writer who can be compared to Dostoevsky" (Ezra Pound).

After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.

The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.

Reviews

[Timo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the recently published edition from Antelope Hill.

[Bobby Daugherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

A British writer explains the view of what is happening in Germany in the 1930's from the perspective of witnessing it first-hand. He also makes some interesting observations on the decline of Western values and what can be learned from Germany.

[Rowan Lock · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinatingly flawed book.

[Zoonanism · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a frank take and appraisal of the man and his movement as they were in 1933. Contingency is a term I dislike but I am tempted to use it. Never truly forgone, are alternative directions the same movement could have followed and history would have ended somewhere other than station Fukuyama.

[Krieger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, at the least, to see an outsider’s (Anglo) perspective on the rise of national socialism. Doesn’t mesh with any target audience though, his opinion is somewhat all over the place and only held with weak conviction.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting on-the-ground look at Hitler and National Socialism before his rise to power. Its publication in 1931 spares it from the emotion involved in any commentary on the man published after 1932.

[Jeremy Voss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting to read an unbiased account of an Englishman’s impression of Hitler who visited Germany in the 30’s