Vita Nova (meaning New Life in Latin) was a Swiss publishing house at 36 Fluhmattstrasse in Lucerne, Switzerland, that was established in January 1934 and co-founded by Rudolf Roessler along with the Catholic bookseller Josef Stocker and the financier Henriette Racine. It was run by the journalist and theater critic Rudolf Roessler.
Beginnings
Stocker had been encouraged to help co-found the publishing firm by the Jesuit theologian Otto Karrer.
Books published
Vita Nova was an anti-Nazi publishing house that primarily published German writers living in exile. It published some fifty brochures and books critical of both Nazism and Stalinism; writers often based their arguments on Christian values. Nicolas Berdyaev published a German translation of The Worth of Christianity and the Unworthiness of Christians with Vita Nova in 1936. The small firm also published books that were critical of Francoist Spain.
The decisive factor was whether the acquirer had to dominate the territory by force and the associated effort, or whether he could retain enough partisans in the occupied country. The German Reich lacked this throughout, especially in relation to Poland and the Soviet Union. From the outset, these campaigns were designed to be a war of annihilation between two races and two world views. Winning over partisans was neither possible nor intended.