sexuality, memory, and morality

Dagmar Herzog:

This book was originally conceived as a study of the generation of 1968 in West Germany. Seeking to understand how Nazism and its legacies were interpreted in the 1960s, especially by the New Left student movement, I was struck by the preponderance of arguments that the Third Reich was a distinctly sexually repressive era and that to liberate sexuality was an antifascist imperative. Numerous New Leftists argued directly that sexuality and politics were causally linked; convinced that sexual repression produced racism and fascism, they proposed that sexual emancipation would further social and political justice.

From Herzog's introduction to her new book, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany. Intro too heavy? Read this A-1 review here.