The Politics of Sacrifice: Hermann Broch's Critique of Fascism in Die Verzauberung

This article is the first detailed discussion of the politics that determines the pseudo‐religion which characterizes the mass leader that Hermann Broch describes in Die Verzauberung . I shall analyze Broch's assessment of fascist politics as the politics of sacrifice. So far critics have neglected the fact that, like Ratti, the narrator of the novel sacrifices a woman (Barbara). I shall show that Broch's critique of both science and politics as sacrifice has to do with his understanding of Judaism as a religious and political way of life in which the idealisation of the sacrificial is tabooed.