Table of Contents
1. Sex and the Third Reich
2. The Fragility of Heterosexuality
3. Desperately Seeking Normality
4. The Morality of Pleasure
5. The Romance of Socialism
6. Antifascist Bodies

"[A] brilliant, deeply researched and beautifully written book... Sex after Fascism is one of the best books of the past twenty years on the history of sexuality, and certainly the best book on this particular subject." - Thomas Laqueur, BookForum

"It is hard to imagine a more brilliant, original, and passionate reading of German discourses of sex and fascism, from the 1930s to the present, than this work offers. As scholars dig deeper, they may revise some of Herzog's conclusions. But they will have come to the task in large part because Herzog has so profoundly challenged our thinking on the history of sexuality, Nazism, and its aftermath." - Elizabeth Heineman, Journal of Modern History

"This is a conceptually 'big,' enormously ambitious, and stimulating book, one that tackles head-on a whole range of complex, interesting, and important questions and offers a wealth of convincing and exciting insights. Herzog's discussion of the sexual politics... is superb. All in all, whether historians agree or disagree with particular aspects of Herzog's account, the book is a bold contribution, one that will be fruitful not only because it offers readers important and original insights, but also because it will generate important questions." - Edward Ross Dickinson, Central European History

"Dagmar Herzog's approach is so new and so fresh that it will long serve as a standard for writing the history of sexuality in modern Germany. Basing her account on previously neglected source material from newspapers, advice manuals, church statements, public pronouncements and interviews, she writes with authority and with an enviable grasp of how politics and sex were entwined in the Nazi era and its aftermath. Possessing an amazing ability to cover many different themes and contexts at the same time, she brings her subject into focus with great verve and efficacy." - Anson Rabinbach, Princeton University

"In this powerful, persuasive, and richly documented work, Dagmar Herzog rewrites not only the history of sexuality but also the history of politics and religion in twentieth-century Germany. She offers a fascinating analysis of the emancipatory as well as the repressive elements in sexual discourse under the Third Reich and shows how Nazi ideology continued to shape sexual politics in Germany during the post-war period, even reaching into some of the progressive currents of the Sexual Revolution in the 1960s. Of the many surprises afforded by this widely suggestive and compulsively readable book, perhaps the most disturbing is that we are still living, whether we know it or not, 'after fascism.'" - David Halperin, University of Michigan

"Dagmar Herzog's source-rich and solidly researched analysis surprises and challenges; it convinces over and over again through an unpretentious presentation of forgotten facts and connections. With nuance and yet also with clarity, the American historian shows how human beings who talk about sex are always also talking about other things entirely--and thereby revealing much about themselves." - Urs Rauber, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

"Forcefully argued and elegantly written... Herzog's passionate insistence on the centrality of sexuality as an explanatory category and on the uncomfortably tight link between pleasure and evil provides fresh and bold insight into two of modern German history's most confounding questions: how National Socialism established and maintained its 'extraordinary appeal' and, conversely, how postwar Germans managed to morph so quickly into peaceful stability." - Atina Grossmann, American Historical Review

"An always provocative and fascinating account of 20th-century German social, political, and cultural history." - Jane Slaughter, Labour/Le Travail

"Sex after Fascism is an original contribution... Dagmar Herzog analyzes shifting attitudes towards two seemingly separate strands of cultural expression: sexual morality and discourse on memory... Fascinating and stimulating reading." - Bjorn Krondorfer, German Studies Review

"This study is highly original, deeply researched, and lucidly written, providing pioneering work on the history of sexuality in twentieth-century Germany and challenging and reshaping the extensive scholarship on memory and the Holocaust." - Mary Nolan, The Historian

"Dagmar Herzog's book makes a well founded case that what has become our conventional wisdom about sexuality in Nazi Germany needs to be revised. This is a pioneering work in contemporary history." - Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland

"In this superb study, Dagmar Herzog expertly demonstrates that when people talk about sex, they are always talking about much, much more. A major achievement, this book forces us all to think differently about the history of Germany in the twentieth century and illustrates how an historical account that focuses on sexuality can illuminate key aspects of National Socialism, a Germany divided between East and West, and the politics of reunification in the 1990s." - Robert Moeller, University of California, Irvine

"This book is a provocative analysis of the relationship between sexuality and politics in Germany. It debunks popular myths about the Third Reich and the generational revolt and, in the process, draws a sharp contrast between actual changes in behavior and what is remembered." - onrad H. Jarausch, University of North Carolina

"Herzog's book succeeds elegantly as both a scholarly history of sexual morality in Germany and an examination of the way this history is so often distorted in the present day." - Publishers Weekly

"Dagmar Herzog's study is a magisterial account... Well researched, solidly reasoned, and drawing on a great wealth of resources ranging from low-brow magazines to highly theoretical treatises, it will establish itself as a standard reference work for the study of German civilization and its (post-)modern (dis-)contents." - Frederick A. Lubich, Monatshefte

"Sex in Crisis is a brilliant analysis of the ways in which our bedrooms have been invaded by the anxiety-mongers of Big Pharma and the moralists of the Christian Right. Dagmar Herzog's account of America's New Sexual Revolution is crisply written, often disturbing, and utterly persuasive." - Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of Election, Little Children, and The Abstinence Teacher

"To appreciate the heady brew of contradictions bubbling in the evangelical right's secular campaign about sex - including its successful use of therapeutic language, double messages on chastity and salvation, and pro-sex view of marriage - Herzog's sharp-eyed critical study, packed with jaw-dropping evidence, is a must read." - Nancy F. Cott, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University

"The religious right is celebrating sex to stroke its conservative message...Herzog's intriguing and deeply researched thesis is that evangelicals, over the last couple of decades, have beaten liberals at their own game by adapting liberal rhetoric for conservative ends." - Louis Bayard, Salon

"It's wishful thinking to imagine that the Religious Right is in retreat on all fronts in America and Dagmar Herzog fearlessly reveals how at the nexus of sex and politics, evangelical conservatives still control the agenda. How did this happen and why are progressive leaders silent on sex in America? With eye-popping research and reporting, Dagmar Herzog offers answers and, more important, issues a transformative challenge to all Americans. Sex in Crisis is a remarkable, necessary book." - David Brock, New York Times bestselling author of Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

"This is a book by an anguished Christian looking at what some aspects of her faith have wrought...Herzog does a brilliant job in putting together an ugly and complex picture of 'the new sexual revolution' of the Christian Right and especially of its impact in the public sphere...At the core of Sex in Crisis is a debate about what kind of a world Americans want to live in." - Thomas Laqueur, Times Literary Supplement

"While extreme evangelicals have been poring over Christian porn for married straights, they've waged one hell of a war on sex for the rest of us...Herzog, who grew up with strict parents in the pre-lib South, lays out an interesting case, tracking the Right's targets from inter-racial dating to abortion to LGBTQ life. At every stage, they plugged into pre-existing angst about gender and desire and being good - not to mention good enough - and with the latter, they hit the jackpot...The toll is very real - consider the homicidal impact of the Bush regime's anti-condom campaign. And the hypocrisy is rank: while they damn sex for the rest of us, Christian sex manuals - and "Christian" vibrators and ticklers - proliferate. This stuff will raise eyebrows - at least." - Laura Flanders, GritTV

"The religious right has repackaged its anti-sex messages in a secular wrapping to suit the changing cultural and social world over the last decades, but inside the box is the same old message, sexual abstinence and sexual ignorance for all, except in marriage. What is new is that if the sex you are having is not heterosexual, marital and serving God's purposes it is the source of mental and physical illness in addition to being sinful. Dagmar Herzog has carefully documented the ways in which the religious right has through distortion and falsehood taken over the language of sexual health and played upon the sexual fears of the American public and its politicians to invalidate all other forms of sexuality. This is an important book about the way in which the sexual conversation in the United States has been shanghaied to advance the religious and secular agendas of the far right." - John Gagnon, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, The State University at Stony Brook, coauthor of Sexual Conduct and The Social Organization of Sexuality

"If you care to protect your sexual freedom, read this brilliant, bold, breathtaking, and blood-boiling book." - Penthouse

"Historian Dagmar Herzog exposes precisely how the religious right has co-opted popular discourse on Viagra, Internet porn, female orgasm, adultery, HIV and STDs to revise its abstinence-only, anti-abortion, homophobic, sexist and racist proclamations on sex and sexuality into a sizzling and seductive self-help package worthy of Sex and the City...Sex in Crisis is a must-read." - Jennifer Cognard-Black, Ms. Magazine

"This book is a disturbing, important and eloquent examination of one faith-cum-political movement's powerful - and pernicious - influence over human rights at home and abroad." - Publishers Weekly

"Astonishing and unforgettable, this book is one of a kind. Its explorations into the taboo territory of sex and war span the 20th century, from Anatolia to Ethiopia, Auschwitz, Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and points between and beyond. These chapters are as remarkable for the deep particularity they exhibit in each case as for the powerful and urgently universal nature of the viciousness, pain, exhilaration, and desire they reveal. Dagmar Herzog has assembled a compelling, indeed indisputable, case for the inseparability of war and sex, in all their manifestations."
- Doris L. Bergen, University of Toronto, Canada

"This history of sexuality risks a great deal. It confronts the issue of sexual violence - against women, against men, and against children. It also takes on desire and love or, in any case, consensual relationships in times of war. The book succeeds and may serve as a model for further explorations because it is based on remarkably thorough research and on prudence as well as good judgment in making sense of sexuality in times of war."
- Michael Geyer, University of Chicago, USA

"Scholars and instructors from a broad range of disciplines will be grateful for this pathbreaking collection of essays that analyze the complex intersections of sexuality and war from the Armenian genocide to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. By focusing not only on sexual violence but also on desire and the consensual sexuality made possible by the dislocation and anonymity of war, the authors of this important book also provide an important history of both female and male sexuality during Europe's bloody century."
- Maria Höhn, Vassar College, USA

"This wonderful book makes a powerful contribution to the history of Europe in the 20th century. With their complex and comparative treatment of war, these collected essays carefully historicize the meanings and modalities of sexualized violence and sexual desire. Together they brilliantly demonstrate the intimate and integral ties between the history of sexuality and the history of European war."
- Judith Surkis, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, USA