Faith in 'Western values' appears to be waning fast. And the American President is less than enthusiastic about postwar traditions of Western unity. Far-right populism is on a roll across Europe. Was he simply wrong that the West was sinking, or was he ahead of the curve? After all, he warned of Asian countries seizing on Western technology, and foresaw a great future for Russia, provided it turns its face against the weakening West. So in this programme, the BBC's Media Editor Amol Rajan rediscovers this lonely scholar, pacing his Munich flat as Germany fell apart - and sets out to see what Spengler has to tell us about today. Yet in the decades that followed, Nazism led nowhere but destruction - and in its wake, a liberal version of the West came to dominate the world. Its vision of the Rome-like fall of the Occident had a huge impact - not least on the Nazis. A century ago, the historian Oswald Spengler's melancholy prophecy, The Decline of the West, captivated a Germany on the verge of calamity.
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