The Nazi cult of fitness was thus tied to an apocalyptic goal of racial warfare, but it could draw on a broad existing culture of physical awareness, health, natural living, and nudism that had been prevalent since the nineteenth century, not only in Germany but also in Britain and other, particularly northern European, countries. The interwar culture of the body was by no means fascist per se. Frequently, though not necessarily, the rediscovery of the human body as a part of nature rather than of society went hand in hand with a degree of social nonconformism.
