Overview

A world can lose its kings without gaining its freedom. When crowns fell, uniforms stepped forward; when palaces emptied, party offices filled. This book follows that unsettling exchange, showing how imperial collapse sowed the seeds of dictatorship and why nationalism in Europe fused myth with modern bureaucracy. It is about how the end of empires created administrative deserts and how new gardeners arrived with files, radios, and marching songs. You will see fascism as nostalgia, the circuitry of power reordering, and the legacy of World War II that taught states to rule by exception. Clear, comparative chapters connect twentieth-century Europe to today's vocabulary of security, rationing, and spectacle, while episodes from border towns and ministries reveal how colonial unrest boomeranged into the metropole. This book is for readers who want a usable framework, not just another chronicle. By the end, you will recognise the authoritarian playbook: watch the paperwork, not the palace. The map you gain will help you spot when administrative shortcuts become habits, when public memory becomes mandate, and when order quietly replaces freedom.

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9789347436956

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Hans Keller writes about how power reorganises itself when symbols die. Raised between garrison towns and railway hubs, he is drawn to the junction where logistics meets legitimacy. He has walked former front lines and sat in quiet archives, listening to how ordinary paperwork becomes extraordinary power. His work traces the thread that runs from dynastic ritual to party office, from parade ground to ration book. A small family story sits beneath the scholarship: a great-grandparent who left a border village twice because the border moved, not the house. That experience informs his calm, unsentimental style. Keller's mission is to give readers a usable map of imperial transition so they can recognise early the habits that make free citizens drift into ordered subjects.

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