The Conquest of Ruins : The Third Reich and the Fall of Rome

The Roman Empire has been a source of inspiration and a model for imitation for Western empires practically since the moment Rome fell. Yet, as Julia Hell shows in The Conquest of Ruins , what has had the strongest grip on aspiring imperial imaginations isn't that empire's glory but its fall--and the haunting monuments left in its wake. Hell examines centuries of European empire-building--from Charles V in the sixteenth century and Napoleon's campaigns of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to the atrocities of Mussolini and the Third Reich in the 1930s and '40s--and sees a similar fascination with recreating the Roman past in the contemporary image. In every case--particularly that of the Nazi regime--the ruins of Rome seem to represent a mystery to be solved: how could an empire so powerful be brought so low? Hell argues that this fascination with the ruins of greatness expresses a need on the part of would-be conquerors to find something to ward off a similar demise for their particular empire.