In discussions of National Socialism one question occurs with particular frequency - How was it possible in the country of poets and thinkers for people educated in the humanities to follow a ?house painter? like Hitler?. This book aims to show that it was just these educated middle classes, whose own identity was formed by a cultural chauvinism (with the centres of identification of ?artistry? and ?creativeness?), who had been prepared for an ideology along the lines of National Socialism long before Hitler. One of the most important pioneers of this mind-set was Houston Stewart Chamberlain.