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Two major and two minor German-speaking poets of the first third of the 20th century examined against broad background of intellectual history to show that their traditional apolitical posture was suffused with outspoken right right-wing bias. R.M. Rilke lavished praise on Mussolini's repressive rule; Gottfried Ben became a spokesman for the Nazis during the first year of their dictatorship; Max Kommerall, a sensitive translator and theoretician of poetry, hailed Mein Kampf for its "right and sound instincts;" and Thomas Mann described Ernest Bertram as alienated by "his enthusiastic faith in the approaching 'Third Reich'." Aim to understand not only what attracted such refined artists to fascism but even more how these tendencies affected their work. Interdisciplinary approach--literature, social and political science--with a view of literature as part of the social fabric producing it.