Like Mein Kampf, Being and Time should be studied, of course. But it should be studied for what it is: a philosophical reworking of the main themes of German reactionary thinking. -- Jim heartfield
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To gain a perspective on Heidegger, nationalism, and the expression of nationalism as reactionary thinking, it is much more informative to follow Thomas Mann.
Mann wrote a long series of essays during WWI that were supposed to sum up why it was good and proper that Germany was in the war and should win. The English translation is called, _Reflections of a Non-Political Man_ and the German title is _Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen_.
This collection was not translated into English until 1983! After reading a few pages it is pretty obvious why not. In another of those historical coincidences that leave you blinking in incredulity, the original edition hit the book stores in September 1918 the month of the German surrender. Mann and his publisher were amazed it sold out the first printing by the end of the year.
The armistice, the formation of the Weimar Republic and the absolute chaos of post-war politics plunged Mann into an identity crisis. Most of the throws of that public and private struggle can be found in print by following this collection of pro-German essays, his letters and journal entries for the period (1914-1922) and his re-worked and finished _The Magic Mountain_.
If you follow this reading trek through Mann you get to see a shaky and bizarre sort of disintegration and re-integration of beliefs and identity. It was a trek that Heidegger and others didn't take. It was what Heidegger was supposed to do and didn't. And he had all the intense encouragement he could have ever dreamed of since he was in the middle of a love affair with Hannah Arendt--their conversations, shared poems, and philosophical exchanges are echoed in Mann--as if the distinction between art and life were erased. Heidegger broke it off in the sort of burgerly professor mode you can imagine, and Arendt left to continue her graduate work under Karl Jaspers instead.
What I liked about reading about this period through Mann, was how the tittering of personal and national history opened to voids. These people knew they were living in the strange dead air that accompanies choas and every once in a while you see it.
Chuck Grimes