George Pitt-Rivers and the Nazis

George Pitt-Rivers and the Nazis

by Bradley W. Hart
George Pitt-Rivers and the Nazis

George Pitt-Rivers and the Nazis

by Bradley W. Hart

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Overview

George Pitt-Rivers began his career as one of Britain's most promising young anthropologists, conducting research in the South Pacific and publishing articles in the country's leading academic jourbanals. With a museum in Oxford bearing his family name, Pitt-Rivers appeared to be on track for a sterling academic career that might even have matched that of his grandfather, one of the most prominent archaeologists of his day.

By the early 1930s, however, Pitt-Rivers had turbaned from his academic work to politics. Writing a series of books attacking international communism and praising the ideas of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Pitt-Rivers fell into the circles of the anti-Semitic far right. In 1937 he attended the Nuremberg Rally and personally met Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis. With the outbreak of war in 1940 Pitt-Rivers was arrested and interned by the British government on the suspicion that he might harm the war effort by publicly sharing his views, effectively ending his academic career.

This book traces the remarkable career of a man who might have been remembered as one of Britain's leading 20th century anthropologists but instead became involved in a far-right milieu that would result in his professional ruin and the relegation of most of his research to margins of scientific history. At the same time, his wider legacy would persist far beyond the academic sphere and can be found to the present day.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781472569950
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 10/22/2015
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Bradley W. Hart is Assistant Professor at California State University, Fresno, USA and a former by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, UK. His previous works include a co-edited volume entitled The Foundations of the British Conservative Party: Essays on Conservatism from Lord Salisbury to David Cameron (2013).

Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgements
2. Introduction: Britain at the fin de siecle
3. Chapter 1: A World Destroyed
4. Chapter 2: From Nietzsche to the Antipodes
5. Chapter 3: Anthropology
6. Chapter 4: Eugenics
7. Chapter 5: The Nazis
8. Chapter 6: 'Dear Cousin Clementine': Internment and the Second World War
9. Chapter 7: A World Destroyed, Again
10. Conclusion: A Life of Ironies
11. Bibliography
12. Index

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