ABSTRACT
As its subtitle, The Spanish Inquisition and Nazi Germany Face to Face, suggests, this book is conceived as an exercise in comparative analysis. Though existing parallels between sixteenth-century Spain and Nazi Germany have been identified on previous occasions, Stallaert’s study aims to systematically investigate these parallels and to identify a conceptual language common to both. According to the author, the Spanish Inquisition and Nazi Germany shared an obsessive view of social cohesion based on the elimination of an ethnically diverse Other. The fact that the Jews were victims in both cases is significant, as is the case that while Nazi Germany was defeated and its ideology universally condemned, the Spanish Inquisition was considered a success and its product and legacy, casticismo — the purity of the Castilian heritage, including the separation of races — has never been thoroughly questioned.
