Culture in Nazi Germany

What an incredible story. So many characters. So much art. Nazism was as much an aesthetic vision as a politicalIdeology. The two things were completely intertwined.

Am very impressed for this book, well written, illustrations and very lengthy, this is worth the time,money and read!

Very interesting, well balanced, readable book. It held my interest from beginning to end. The overall topic is so broad it would be easy for a book to be too superficial or myopic, but the author very successfully balances covering a broad scope with meaningful detail. The author is very influenced by Ian Kershaw and his “working toward the Führer” thesis which provides the foundation that guides and supports the book. No one interested in this terrible period of history will be disappointed with this book. Having some understanding of what was going on in Germany at the time is essential before reading this work, Richard J. Evans book “The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939” would provide this understanding. It would also be helpful to have some understanding of the culture of Weimar Germany before reading this, “Weimar Culture” by Peter Gay would be a good choice.

Professor Kater shows the extent the brutal and insane regime of Hitler and his arch-criminals has invested in order to harness the German culture in their efforts to pervert everything and each mind in Nazi Germany and ouside it. A very comprehensive volume, it discusses all the possible angles and aspects of this essential topic. The last chapter is a comparison of the fate of culture in three dictatorships; Russia, Italy and Nazi Germany. This is another gem written by a superb and first rate historian and is a "must" in everyone's library. Highly recommended.

Addresses the questions of whether High Culture, art, music and literature, changed under an authoritarian regime and how Culture was adapted as means of control and influence.Book burnings and cultural exhibitions, “The Degenerate Art” exhibition which toured Germany and “The Eternal Jew” exhibition and film, showed what to dislike. There was a failed search for a Nazi Culture with ineffective competitions in music and literature, the alternative turning back to the past. Hitler’s preference for Wagner wasn’t shared generally within the Party. Hitler and Speer may have liked monumental neo-classical architecture but the majority preferred a traditional Germanism, much of it destroyed in the bombing of the Reich’s cities.There were continuities from the Weimer Republic. Non Nazi and conservative or apolitical artists joined its fascist style chambers. Uniquely there was a Jewish Kulturbund, exploited for propaganda purposes overseas, but also a means of control, cultural separation presaging creation of ghettos.By the beginning of the War, 70% of Germans possessed radios, the highest ratio in the world. Light entertainment was provided for troops, who were supplied with radios, many taken from Jews. The army had its own radio stations. There was WunschKonzert (radio request concert) linking listeners back home with troops in the field, strikingly similar to British Forces Radio which became the BBC’s “Two-Way Family Favourites”.The book is weakest in listing artists, actors and musicians, before, during and after the Nazi period, sections which begin to bore. It is strongest in adapting political and social models of Nazi-ism, Mommsen’s of the multiple conflicting structures of the Nazi State with the Führer ruling above the chaos, Kershaw’s of “Working towards the Führer” and how this resulted in an unstoppably violent radicalisation, the idea of “inner emigrants”, who remained within Germany, awaiting better times, allowing them to claim afterwards they had been silent opponents. Nazi sequential steps towards cultural and political control are contrasted with the arbitrary violence of Stalin’s Soviet Union.The sections on Geobbel’s media manipulation were fascinating, media which both influenced and entertained. Films provided cover for propaganda for eugenics and Anti- Semitism. There were Biographical films of Frederick the Great, Bismarck and Kruger, all portraying a heroic leader, pointing towards the Hitler Myth, which Geobbels both believed and created. Kater notes that a leadership cult is a necessity for dictatorship. He contrasts Hitler, who was less and less shown in newsreels etc, maintaining his charisma by remoteness, with Stalin’s ever presence.Geobbels created the myth of heroic national sacrifice at Stalingrad, suppressing the truth that out of the 250,000 strong 6th Army, 90,000 surrendered, only 5,000 eventually returning to Germany.Before film shows newsreels were projected, taken by Army film units. Films continued to be made, “Kolberg” a film of the Prussian struggle against Napoleon was conceived in 1942, shot with a mass cast, staffed at the expense of the retreating German Army, and only ready to be shown in March 1945 when Kolberg in Pomerania had fallen to the Russians and the Nazi regime was collapsing.As ever with Culture, personal preferences and those of the writer impinge. Nazis apparently didn’t like Jazz, for which they can hardly been blamed. The sections on painting and literature interested me more than those on music, theatre or sculpture. There was a long section on Thomas Mann, but Hermann Hesse, another emigrant German Nobel prize winning author and writer of “Exilletratur”, is ignored.

This is a formidable survey of how cultural figures in Germany survived or escaped the Nazi era and the compromises and post-war cover ups they almost always made. It is comprehensive. Two drawbacks - it is written as if English were the author's second language and this grates. Secondly he is merciless in his judgements - a 25-year old journalist who writes Nazi stuff may just be being scared and prudent; he underestimates the role of fear (see R J Evans for contrast). And he is unsubtle - his two-dimensional portrait of Junger is dismissive - but fails even to be accurate let alone insightful about that brooding and tormented shape-shifter.