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Culture in Nazi Germany
A fresh and insightful history of how the German arts-and-letters scene was transformed under the Nazis.
Culture was integral to the smooth running of the Third Reich. In the years preceding WWII, a wide variety of artistic forms were used to instill a Nazi ideology in the German people and to manipulate the public perception of Hitler's enemies. During the war, the arts were closely tied to the propaganda machine that promoted the cause of Germany's military campaigns.
Michael H. Kater's engaging and deeply researched account of artistic culture within Nazi Germany considers how the German arts-and-letters scene was transformed when the Nazis came to power. With a broad purview that ranges widely across music, literature, film, theater, the press, and visual arts, Kater details the struggle between creative autonomy and political control as he looks at what became of German artists and their work both during and subsequent to Nazi rule.
Culture was integral to the smooth running of the Third Reich. In the years preceding WWII, a wide variety of artistic forms were used to instill a Nazi ideology in the German people and to manipulate the public perception of Hitler's enemies. During the war, the arts were closely tied to the propaganda machine that promoted the cause of Germany's military campaigns.
Michael H. Kater's engaging and deeply researched account of artistic culture within Nazi Germany considers how the German arts-and-letters scene was transformed when the Nazis came to power. With a broad purview that ranges widely across music, literature, film, theater, the press, and visual arts, Kater details the struggle between creative autonomy and political control as he looks at what became of German artists and their work both during and subsequent to Nazi rule.
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First published May 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 6, 2019
It was my longtime interest in social realism and heroic realism in Germany and Soviet Russia between the wars that brought me to this book, and although its focus was much more on the history than the painting, sculpture and architecture, it didn’t wholly disappoint. There was much of interest in its pages and it kept me reading, and in that I have positive feelings towards it. One misgiving I have, however, is that although it never says it directly, it gives the impression that Nazis in Germany, and the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, represented a time, unlike other periods in history, when politics got involved in art. One might look back to medieval paintings when kings were presented with authority, or when merchants paid handsomely to be placed in religious art works. One might also look the case of abstract expressionism after the second world war, especially to Jackson Pollock, Rockefeller, and the CIA. The above , however, is such a small misgiving and shouldn't put anyone off reading it.
May 16, 2023
Having wrapped up this work, I come away with the sense that a better name would be "The Purge," in that the purge of modernist and "Jewish" currents from Nazi Germany, and the organizational fight to control those processes, is what Kater is mostly writing about. As for Nazi culture creation, there is really not much to say, apart from writing checks to the artistic second-raters left after this purge.
Besides that, Kater does write sympathetically (mostly) about those artists caught up in the maelstrom, and their attempts to survive. Kater basically ends by considering the continuities that made it past "Zero Hour," into post-1945 Germany, and how just because Hitler's vision was slapped down, it doesn't mean that his victims could pick up and begin anew in Germany. One suspects that, in a twisted irony, that those who had not been present in the homeland to experience the whirlwind were not wanted as witnesses to the failures of German society, as the silent complicity to try and forget the immediate past draped itself over Adenauer's Germany. Remembrance and coming to terms would have to wait until another decade.
On the whole I thought this was a worthwhile book, but as a magisterial final statement (Kater is in his mid-eighties), I thought it fell a bit short. At points I got the impression that Kater himself is tired of writing about the Third Reich. Kater's conclusion trying to draw comparisons between how the great totalitarian states managed culture mostly came off as a throwaway effort.
Besides that, Kater does write sympathetically (mostly) about those artists caught up in the maelstrom, and their attempts to survive. Kater basically ends by considering the continuities that made it past "Zero Hour," into post-1945 Germany, and how just because Hitler's vision was slapped down, it doesn't mean that his victims could pick up and begin anew in Germany. One suspects that, in a twisted irony, that those who had not been present in the homeland to experience the whirlwind were not wanted as witnesses to the failures of German society, as the silent complicity to try and forget the immediate past draped itself over Adenauer's Germany. Remembrance and coming to terms would have to wait until another decade.
On the whole I thought this was a worthwhile book, but as a magisterial final statement (Kater is in his mid-eighties), I thought it fell a bit short. At points I got the impression that Kater himself is tired of writing about the Third Reich. Kater's conclusion trying to draw comparisons between how the great totalitarian states managed culture mostly came off as a throwaway effort.
April 17, 2019
NetGalley has provided this reviewer with an advance copy for review.
Michael H. Kater's history of culture before, during, and after the Third Reich is neither overly academic or limited to popular culture. I found myself reading, not skimming, Kater's book about those who suffered at the hands of Nazi culture czars.
The first thing the Nazis set out to do is destroy Modernism in all of its manifestations—atonal music, Expressionism in film, the Bauhaus in architecture, and more. The Nazis didn't believe in art for art's sake, but as political propaganda. When they attacked Modernism they were striking at the Weimar Republic and all their enemies on the left.
In 1928 Nazi Alfred Rosenberg created the Kampfbund fur deutsche Kultur (the Militant League for German Culture) as a political tool to identify and eliminate non-Aryan elements in German society.
After the Nazis took power in 1933, communist actor Hans Otto was one of their first victims—beaten, thrown out of a window of the SA/SS headquarters building, and killed.
For the Nazis, the enemy was asphalt culture—urban life.
In November 1938 (when the Kristallnacht pogroms occurred) Leni Riefenstahl was in Hollywood, trying to convince American movie makers that German film was a legitimate part of world cinema. Few Americans wanted to have anything to do with her.
Another Nazi attempt at fooling the world was the creation of the Jewish Culture League. By 1933 around 8000 Jewish artists had been expelled from their positions in the arts. The Nazis used the Jewish Culture League to defuse social unrest and as propaganda overseas.
When the Third Reich began, Propaganda Minister Goebbels didn't use movies as lessons in Nazi ideology, the way some Soviet art had been immediately after the Revolution in 1917.
But a trilogy of German films—Jud Suss, The Rothschilds, and The Eternal Jew—were propaganda aimed at preparing the German people for the Final Solution.
In Jud Suss, Kristina Soderbaum played a role in which she became typecast—a pure Aryan maiden who drowned after being ruined by a Jew. Soderbaum became known as the Reich Water Corpse.
After Goebbels spoke for the Fuhrer by announcing total war at a rally broadcast by radio all over Germany the Allies responded by destroying dozens of German cities and tens of thousands of Germans in 1944.
The regime kept movie exhibition going as much as possible and audiences kept going for entertainment, if it's possible to use that word under the circumstances. Like movies all over the world, they were escape. Germany just had more to escape from than many countries.
In the film Ohm Kruger the international movie star Emil Jannings tried to convince Germans that the British invented concentration camps—a fact which was irrelevant if true.
Kater shows us Ernst Junger, who became a renown European literary figure after the war, described by historian Saul Friedlander as a connoisseur of violence. Junger was one of the many fence-sitters who did more than just try to survive, one of those who would have, you suspect, spoken differently about the nature of the regime if the war had ended otherwise.
Thomas Mann represents German culture abroad. Mann, like others, was not welcome back in the new Germany that took decades to come to terms with the Third Reich.
Michael H. Kater's history of culture before, during, and after the Third Reich is neither overly academic or limited to popular culture. I found myself reading, not skimming, Kater's book about those who suffered at the hands of Nazi culture czars.
The first thing the Nazis set out to do is destroy Modernism in all of its manifestations—atonal music, Expressionism in film, the Bauhaus in architecture, and more. The Nazis didn't believe in art for art's sake, but as political propaganda. When they attacked Modernism they were striking at the Weimar Republic and all their enemies on the left.
In 1928 Nazi Alfred Rosenberg created the Kampfbund fur deutsche Kultur (the Militant League for German Culture) as a political tool to identify and eliminate non-Aryan elements in German society.
After the Nazis took power in 1933, communist actor Hans Otto was one of their first victims—beaten, thrown out of a window of the SA/SS headquarters building, and killed.
For the Nazis, the enemy was asphalt culture—urban life.
In November 1938 (when the Kristallnacht pogroms occurred) Leni Riefenstahl was in Hollywood, trying to convince American movie makers that German film was a legitimate part of world cinema. Few Americans wanted to have anything to do with her.
Another Nazi attempt at fooling the world was the creation of the Jewish Culture League. By 1933 around 8000 Jewish artists had been expelled from their positions in the arts. The Nazis used the Jewish Culture League to defuse social unrest and as propaganda overseas.
When the Third Reich began, Propaganda Minister Goebbels didn't use movies as lessons in Nazi ideology, the way some Soviet art had been immediately after the Revolution in 1917.
But a trilogy of German films—Jud Suss, The Rothschilds, and The Eternal Jew—were propaganda aimed at preparing the German people for the Final Solution.
In Jud Suss, Kristina Soderbaum played a role in which she became typecast—a pure Aryan maiden who drowned after being ruined by a Jew. Soderbaum became known as the Reich Water Corpse.
After Goebbels spoke for the Fuhrer by announcing total war at a rally broadcast by radio all over Germany the Allies responded by destroying dozens of German cities and tens of thousands of Germans in 1944.
The regime kept movie exhibition going as much as possible and audiences kept going for entertainment, if it's possible to use that word under the circumstances. Like movies all over the world, they were escape. Germany just had more to escape from than many countries.
In the film Ohm Kruger the international movie star Emil Jannings tried to convince Germans that the British invented concentration camps—a fact which was irrelevant if true.
Kater shows us Ernst Junger, who became a renown European literary figure after the war, described by historian Saul Friedlander as a connoisseur of violence. Junger was one of the many fence-sitters who did more than just try to survive, one of those who would have, you suspect, spoken differently about the nature of the regime if the war had ended otherwise.
Thomas Mann represents German culture abroad. Mann, like others, was not welcome back in the new Germany that took decades to come to terms with the Third Reich.
December 30, 2019
This was an interesting book, but I found its writing style overly dry and arduous; lacking a coherent narrative and structure. Although the book is divided into a half-dozen or so chapters, the writing consists mostly of the author machine-gunning dozens of names at the reader; some famous, and others that will be obscure to most everyone except people who study ww2-era German history.
In this respect, the book was ultimately a failure in communication, IMHO. It is full of individual stories and anecdotes, but lacking cohesion to tie them all together in a coherent manner for the reader.
I found the reading very hard to follow and found my attention wandering more often than not. This could be a personal thing; I don't tend to absorb information very well when it is presented without accompanying context.
I would not recommend this book to others.
2.5 stars, rounded up to 3.
In this respect, the book was ultimately a failure in communication, IMHO. It is full of individual stories and anecdotes, but lacking cohesion to tie them all together in a coherent manner for the reader.
I found the reading very hard to follow and found my attention wandering more often than not. This could be a personal thing; I don't tend to absorb information very well when it is presented without accompanying context.
I would not recommend this book to others.
2.5 stars, rounded up to 3.
July 31, 2020
Excellent, comprehensive study of the subject, going far beyond what for observers of the era will be familiar material (from Jud Suss to 'Entartete Kunst').
Its particular strengths are its reach across cultural forms from classical music through to 'light' radio and its strong, post-hoc biographical details, revealing the often fabricated claims of 'inner emigration' that allowed countless compromised actors, writers and functionaries to dupe denazification tribunals.
The section on emigre culture (and the absence of a particular coherence) is also very good, coming as it does with close emphasis on Thomas Mann's travails and on the cold-shouldering given to returning emigrants. It's also very strong on the fragmented, rivalling cultural fiefdoms (from Goering's hold on Prussia and Berlin, to Ley / KdF and Goebbels); the natural tendency and the historiography sometimes leads one to assume that Nazi culture was a highly effective sergeant. In fact, it was confused, leaden and in many areas the public sidestepped it and went clamouring for low-brow tat and feel-good tunes.
My own favourite medium, literature, gets a good examination - a field that has always been obscured by the easier fame of assorted Nazi cinema highlights (Kolberg, Triumph of the Will, etc).
Rest assured, besides the technical aspects of Leni Riefenstahl's one or two pieces, and Orff's Carmina Burana, it's a pile of schlock and a failure, and a reminder that totalitarian culture is almost inevitably always regressive, backward-looking, prudish, clunking shite. When you kill or chase out all of the talent and put a cap on the influences and inspiration that help create good art, all you're left with is artefacts in the attic and second rate knock-offs.
Excellent study - with lots of further reading to pursue and names to hunt down on Wikipedia. The greatest shock is, again, how many pliant artists and actors went on to prosper in the Bundesrepublik. It's easy to forget that a properly self-critical, more purged Germany only really started emerging in the sixties. By the time historians were able to give us a full examination of the actual records of people like Veit Harlan and Riefenstahl, most of the fuckers were dead.
Its particular strengths are its reach across cultural forms from classical music through to 'light' radio and its strong, post-hoc biographical details, revealing the often fabricated claims of 'inner emigration' that allowed countless compromised actors, writers and functionaries to dupe denazification tribunals.
The section on emigre culture (and the absence of a particular coherence) is also very good, coming as it does with close emphasis on Thomas Mann's travails and on the cold-shouldering given to returning emigrants. It's also very strong on the fragmented, rivalling cultural fiefdoms (from Goering's hold on Prussia and Berlin, to Ley / KdF and Goebbels); the natural tendency and the historiography sometimes leads one to assume that Nazi culture was a highly effective sergeant. In fact, it was confused, leaden and in many areas the public sidestepped it and went clamouring for low-brow tat and feel-good tunes.
My own favourite medium, literature, gets a good examination - a field that has always been obscured by the easier fame of assorted Nazi cinema highlights (Kolberg, Triumph of the Will, etc).
Rest assured, besides the technical aspects of Leni Riefenstahl's one or two pieces, and Orff's Carmina Burana, it's a pile of schlock and a failure, and a reminder that totalitarian culture is almost inevitably always regressive, backward-looking, prudish, clunking shite. When you kill or chase out all of the talent and put a cap on the influences and inspiration that help create good art, all you're left with is artefacts in the attic and second rate knock-offs.
Excellent study - with lots of further reading to pursue and names to hunt down on Wikipedia. The greatest shock is, again, how many pliant artists and actors went on to prosper in the Bundesrepublik. It's easy to forget that a properly self-critical, more purged Germany only really started emerging in the sixties. By the time historians were able to give us a full examination of the actual records of people like Veit Harlan and Riefenstahl, most of the fuckers were dead.
October 8, 2024
Three stars because most of the book is just a survey of Nazi culture-makers, with comparatively little to differentiate them - mostly of interest to specialists. Kater focuses on cultural figures rather than cultural works, which I think is the wrong way to make cultural history accessible to a broad audience.
The last chapters, however, were more interesting. Kater ably compares and contrasts culture in fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Stalin's Russia. He concludes that totalitarian regimes always stifle culture, despite some cultural products (Reifenstahl's films, Shostakovich's music) that are lastingly valuable. That was interesting and convincing.
Overall I found this book less interesting than the other cultural history I've read recently, Orlando Figes's "Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia." To be fair, though, Figes has the whole Russian canon to work with while Kater largely restricts himself to the dreary products of Goebbels's Culture Ministry
Like many German writers, one of Kater's main concerns is with the Federal Republic (West Germany) and its half-hearted de-Nazification. He points to several prominent cultural figures in the Reich who went on to succeed in the FRG through lying about their level of fealty to the Fuehrer. This is of interest to German people and their ongoing struggle to exorcise the demons of the past, but it is of less interest to American readers who, in picking up a book like this, are primarily interested in the foibles of culture created under totalitarianism. Kater delivers the latter, but it seems that he believes his work on the former is most important.
The last chapters, however, were more interesting. Kater ably compares and contrasts culture in fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Stalin's Russia. He concludes that totalitarian regimes always stifle culture, despite some cultural products (Reifenstahl's films, Shostakovich's music) that are lastingly valuable. That was interesting and convincing.
Overall I found this book less interesting than the other cultural history I've read recently, Orlando Figes's "Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia." To be fair, though, Figes has the whole Russian canon to work with while Kater largely restricts himself to the dreary products of Goebbels's Culture Ministry
Like many German writers, one of Kater's main concerns is with the Federal Republic (West Germany) and its half-hearted de-Nazification. He points to several prominent cultural figures in the Reich who went on to succeed in the FRG through lying about their level of fealty to the Fuehrer. This is of interest to German people and their ongoing struggle to exorcise the demons of the past, but it is of less interest to American readers who, in picking up a book like this, are primarily interested in the foibles of culture created under totalitarianism. Kater delivers the latter, but it seems that he believes his work on the former is most important.
June 23, 2019
This was a very informative book on how the Nazi Regime tried to control the minds of people through culture, New art made during the Weimar Era was bad and old art was good. Jewish art was bad except for Jews and after Kristallnacht, non-existent, Hitler even arranged a travelling art show to showcase bad art called a "degenerate art" show. Books and movies were written to show pure Aryan love and the countryside as the ideal. Whether this was real or not. Hitler went with the idyllic.
It was interesting to note as the war continued and losing seemed a real possibility, that Goebbels added light music and jazz back into the playlists. The soldiers were already listening to this music on BBC broadcasts and people were upset by the depravities of war. Movie houses were destroyed by allied bombs and there were few musicians left due the amount of men needed at the front and women in munitions work. Radio entertainment was the only outlet as people scrunching for food do no read a whole lot.
While there was much culture created by the Nazis, much of it has not been translated into English. The literature and movies of the Weimar Republic for the most part has been and that is the true test of a lasting culture.
It was interesting to note as the war continued and losing seemed a real possibility, that Goebbels added light music and jazz back into the playlists. The soldiers were already listening to this music on BBC broadcasts and people were upset by the depravities of war. Movie houses were destroyed by allied bombs and there were few musicians left due the amount of men needed at the front and women in munitions work. Radio entertainment was the only outlet as people scrunching for food do no read a whole lot.
While there was much culture created by the Nazis, much of it has not been translated into English. The literature and movies of the Weimar Republic for the most part has been and that is the true test of a lasting culture.
May 1, 2019
An incredible read, well told that does not get dull or bogged down. The music and art that was taken. All the pretty things, all the enjoyable things. Such a horrific and sad time.
September 16, 2025
This work interrogates the extent to which High Culture—encompassing art, music, and literature—was transformed under authoritarian rule, and how culture itself was conscripted into a machinery of influence and control.
Cultural policy under the Nazi regime oscillated between destruction and reinvention. Public spectacles such as book burnings and ideologically charged exhibitions—most infamously Degenerate Art and The Eternal Jew—functioned as both cultural denunciation and didactic theatre, signaling what was to be abhorred. Despite various attempts, the regime’s quest to forge a distinct “Nazi culture” proved largely fruitless. Efforts to canonize Nazi-approved literature and music through state-sponsored competitions failed to take root. Instead, the regime often looked backwards, romanticizing an idealized German past. Hitler’s personal admiration for Wagner and Speer’s affinity for monumental neoclassicism were not widely echoed within the broader Party, where cultural tastes skewed more toward a sentimental, folkloric Germanism—much of which was obliterated by the Allied bombing campaigns.
Continuities with the Weimar era were striking. Conservative and politically indifferent artists often joined the regime's corporatized cultural chambers, adopting its fascist aesthetic without necessarily embracing its ideology. Unique within the Third Reich’s racialized cultural landscape was the existence of the Jüdischer Kulturbund—a state-sanctioned Jewish cultural league. Though exploited for propaganda abroad, it simultaneously served as an instrument of segregation and control, foreshadowing the isolation and eventual annihilation of European Jewry.
By the outbreak of war, radio ownership in Germany had reached a staggering 70%—the highest per capita in the world—transforming the medium into an unprecedented tool of mass influence. Troops were supplied with radios, many expropriated from Jewish households. The military even operated its own broadcasting services. Programmes like Wunschkonzert für das Wehrmacht, a sentimental request show linking the home front to the front lines, eerily paralleled the BBC's later Two-Way Family Favourites. Entertainment, often innocuous in form, was interwoven with propaganda in both subtle and overt ways.
The book’s most compelling analysis lies not in its cataloguing of artists, actors, and composers—a task which grows tedious in places—but in its deployment of political and sociological frameworks to explain Nazism's cultural trajectory. The application of Hans Mommsen’s theory of polycratic chaos—of competing institutions beneath the Führer’s unifying figurehead—and Ian Kershaw’s concept of “working towards the Führer” offers a nuanced lens through which to view the cultural radicalisation of the regime. It introduces the notion of the innere Emigration—those who remained in Germany, emotionally and intellectually distant from Nazism, awaiting its demise while maintaining their silence, later claiming retrospective opposition.
The treatment of Joseph Goebbels’ role in orchestrating media manipulation is particularly incisive. Through radio and film, Goebbels both entertained and indoctrinated. Cinema became a vehicle for disseminating eugenic ideologies and anti-Semitic tropes. Biopics of historical figures such as Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Paul Kruger extolled the virtues of strong, visionary leadership, all feeding into the construction of the “Hitler Myth”—a fiction Goebbels not only propagated but deeply believed in. Kater insightfully notes that the cult of leadership is indispensable to totalitarianism, contrasting Hitler’s increasing public absence—carefully curated to preserve his mystique—with Stalin’s omnipresence.
A particularly evocative example of myth-making is Goebbels’ fabrication of noble self-sacrifice at Stalingrad. While in truth 90,000 soldiers of the 6th Army surrendered—of whom a mere 5,000 returned to Germany—this catastrophe was recast as an epic of martyrdom.
Even as the war drew to a close, the regime clung to its cultural delusions. Before film screenings, newsreels produced by army film units reinforced the Nazi narrative. The production of Kolberg—a lavish historical epic celebrating resistance against Napoleon—was greenlit in 1942 and only completed in March 1945. Filmed with vast resources diverted from the crumbling war effort, it premiered just as Kolberg itself fell to Soviet forces and the Reich collapsed.
As with all cultural histories, personal taste inevitably shades interpretation. The Nazis’ disdain for jazz may be one of their more comprehensible aversions. The author’s focus on painting and literature proves more engaging than sections devoted to music, theatre, or sculpture.
Cultural policy under the Nazi regime oscillated between destruction and reinvention. Public spectacles such as book burnings and ideologically charged exhibitions—most infamously Degenerate Art and The Eternal Jew—functioned as both cultural denunciation and didactic theatre, signaling what was to be abhorred. Despite various attempts, the regime’s quest to forge a distinct “Nazi culture” proved largely fruitless. Efforts to canonize Nazi-approved literature and music through state-sponsored competitions failed to take root. Instead, the regime often looked backwards, romanticizing an idealized German past. Hitler’s personal admiration for Wagner and Speer’s affinity for monumental neoclassicism were not widely echoed within the broader Party, where cultural tastes skewed more toward a sentimental, folkloric Germanism—much of which was obliterated by the Allied bombing campaigns.
Continuities with the Weimar era were striking. Conservative and politically indifferent artists often joined the regime's corporatized cultural chambers, adopting its fascist aesthetic without necessarily embracing its ideology. Unique within the Third Reich’s racialized cultural landscape was the existence of the Jüdischer Kulturbund—a state-sanctioned Jewish cultural league. Though exploited for propaganda abroad, it simultaneously served as an instrument of segregation and control, foreshadowing the isolation and eventual annihilation of European Jewry.
By the outbreak of war, radio ownership in Germany had reached a staggering 70%—the highest per capita in the world—transforming the medium into an unprecedented tool of mass influence. Troops were supplied with radios, many expropriated from Jewish households. The military even operated its own broadcasting services. Programmes like Wunschkonzert für das Wehrmacht, a sentimental request show linking the home front to the front lines, eerily paralleled the BBC's later Two-Way Family Favourites. Entertainment, often innocuous in form, was interwoven with propaganda in both subtle and overt ways.
The book’s most compelling analysis lies not in its cataloguing of artists, actors, and composers—a task which grows tedious in places—but in its deployment of political and sociological frameworks to explain Nazism's cultural trajectory. The application of Hans Mommsen’s theory of polycratic chaos—of competing institutions beneath the Führer’s unifying figurehead—and Ian Kershaw’s concept of “working towards the Führer” offers a nuanced lens through which to view the cultural radicalisation of the regime. It introduces the notion of the innere Emigration—those who remained in Germany, emotionally and intellectually distant from Nazism, awaiting its demise while maintaining their silence, later claiming retrospective opposition.
The treatment of Joseph Goebbels’ role in orchestrating media manipulation is particularly incisive. Through radio and film, Goebbels both entertained and indoctrinated. Cinema became a vehicle for disseminating eugenic ideologies and anti-Semitic tropes. Biopics of historical figures such as Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Paul Kruger extolled the virtues of strong, visionary leadership, all feeding into the construction of the “Hitler Myth”—a fiction Goebbels not only propagated but deeply believed in. Kater insightfully notes that the cult of leadership is indispensable to totalitarianism, contrasting Hitler’s increasing public absence—carefully curated to preserve his mystique—with Stalin’s omnipresence.
A particularly evocative example of myth-making is Goebbels’ fabrication of noble self-sacrifice at Stalingrad. While in truth 90,000 soldiers of the 6th Army surrendered—of whom a mere 5,000 returned to Germany—this catastrophe was recast as an epic of martyrdom.
Even as the war drew to a close, the regime clung to its cultural delusions. Before film screenings, newsreels produced by army film units reinforced the Nazi narrative. The production of Kolberg—a lavish historical epic celebrating resistance against Napoleon—was greenlit in 1942 and only completed in March 1945. Filmed with vast resources diverted from the crumbling war effort, it premiered just as Kolberg itself fell to Soviet forces and the Reich collapsed.
As with all cultural histories, personal taste inevitably shades interpretation. The Nazis’ disdain for jazz may be one of their more comprehensible aversions. The author’s focus on painting and literature proves more engaging than sections devoted to music, theatre, or sculpture.
July 27, 2024
I did not enjoy this audiobook. It's very academic and very dry. Frankly very dull and forgettable. Don't read this to learn about Nazi Germany or any in-depth topic. But still I do admire how much work was put into this book and how much information is found here.
Main issue is that the book focuses on single voices like actors, writers, singers. It becomes overly dull to hear about 100 different writers you don't care about and will never read. Instead of focusing on the Nazi culture and how the national socialist regime was structured we focus on lonely voices and it's hard to figure out how they actually made up the Nazi culture overall. They actually did not. They just adapted to it to not break any laws. But they rarely wrote direct propaganda and when they did it was not good art. Even the people who supported Hitler who kept writing soon would write something he hated. Even proper Nazis would think and think and at some point say something not quite right and get punished. So it was easier just not to think. If you were a creative voice you were in danger.
Frankly, the book mainly tries to tell us that the Nazi regime decimated culture. Books, movies, music, paintings. Everything was just stuck in place for years just as we see today in other socialist regimes like North Korea, Cuba, and China. Hitler mainly just ruined art to not have alternative thinking. He didn't care too much about creating Nazi art. Of course it was a giant industry, but because it was extremely dull no one really cared much for it. Rather it seems like the stringent laws just made people obey the culture set out. Many did care for the culture, but it became a nationalistic point of pride that lay outside any piece of art or movie even though movies did support this feeling of pride. They were still forgettable as art pieces as the creators didn't much care about such work. So it seems like one just counted on people to tell the same story again and again and then hope no one else told any alternative story. Or even a bigger Nazi story. Any other story was bad.
Hence the topic itself makes the book more dull as you figure out how extremely boring Nazi Germany was. I would have gone insane living in such a culture free place. But then again you can move to Cuba or North Korea and experience this type of culture stuck in time where creating new art is frowned upon. Just remake the same movie plot and write the same book. That's something that the regime can fully support. I am kinda let down. Movies like Indiana Jones make the Nazi culture into this bigger than life show. But maybe it wasn't?
Main issue is that the book focuses on single voices like actors, writers, singers. It becomes overly dull to hear about 100 different writers you don't care about and will never read. Instead of focusing on the Nazi culture and how the national socialist regime was structured we focus on lonely voices and it's hard to figure out how they actually made up the Nazi culture overall. They actually did not. They just adapted to it to not break any laws. But they rarely wrote direct propaganda and when they did it was not good art. Even the people who supported Hitler who kept writing soon would write something he hated. Even proper Nazis would think and think and at some point say something not quite right and get punished. So it was easier just not to think. If you were a creative voice you were in danger.
Frankly, the book mainly tries to tell us that the Nazi regime decimated culture. Books, movies, music, paintings. Everything was just stuck in place for years just as we see today in other socialist regimes like North Korea, Cuba, and China. Hitler mainly just ruined art to not have alternative thinking. He didn't care too much about creating Nazi art. Of course it was a giant industry, but because it was extremely dull no one really cared much for it. Rather it seems like the stringent laws just made people obey the culture set out. Many did care for the culture, but it became a nationalistic point of pride that lay outside any piece of art or movie even though movies did support this feeling of pride. They were still forgettable as art pieces as the creators didn't much care about such work. So it seems like one just counted on people to tell the same story again and again and then hope no one else told any alternative story. Or even a bigger Nazi story. Any other story was bad.
Hence the topic itself makes the book more dull as you figure out how extremely boring Nazi Germany was. I would have gone insane living in such a culture free place. But then again you can move to Cuba or North Korea and experience this type of culture stuck in time where creating new art is frowned upon. Just remake the same movie plot and write the same book. That's something that the regime can fully support. I am kinda let down. Movies like Indiana Jones make the Nazi culture into this bigger than life show. But maybe it wasn't?
November 6, 2025
Any fans of "Behind the Bastards" podcast? This book is right up Robert Evans' alley, and I would not be surprised if he has a copy. I certainly read it in his voice, as our esteemed author has *opinions*.
Referring to Borman as a "vulgar bigamist"? Wow! Or "The music writer Joseph Muller-Blattau, however, who had collaborated heavily with the SS 'Ahnererbe' and had held a chair in the core Nazi university of Strassburg, resorted to a different tactic, as he had lines and passages blacked out in his 'History of German Music', now freshly used in the seminars... As a leading German musicologist has noted, that 'History' was remarkable not so much for the text that had been rendered illegible as for the passages still left intact."
I'm going to steal this from fellow Goodreads contributor Jake Goretzki: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7...
"Rest assured, besides the technical aspects of Leni Riefenstahl's one or two pieces, and Orff's Carmina Burana, it's a pile of schlock and a failure, and a reminder that totalitarian culture is almost inevitably always regressive, backward-looking, prudish, clunking shite. When you kill or chase out all of the talent and put a cap on the influences and inspiration that help create good art, all you're left with is artefacts in the attic and second rate knock-offs."
Well said. I like a good nude painting or statue. "David" and Ingres' "Grand Odalisque" are sublime. Nazi takes on those? They are just... off. And by "off", I mean "terrible." Paul Padua seems to have heard of Mars and Venus, but he is an alien who doesn't know how bodies work. https://www.neumeister.com/en/artwork...
You can find the "heroic" statues and propaganda prints on your own. The only reason I don't give 5 stars is that there is no mention of dance. Have your laptop handy so you can google the 'art' as it is mentioned.
Referring to Borman as a "vulgar bigamist"? Wow! Or "The music writer Joseph Muller-Blattau, however, who had collaborated heavily with the SS 'Ahnererbe' and had held a chair in the core Nazi university of Strassburg, resorted to a different tactic, as he had lines and passages blacked out in his 'History of German Music', now freshly used in the seminars... As a leading German musicologist has noted, that 'History' was remarkable not so much for the text that had been rendered illegible as for the passages still left intact."
I'm going to steal this from fellow Goodreads contributor Jake Goretzki: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7...
"Rest assured, besides the technical aspects of Leni Riefenstahl's one or two pieces, and Orff's Carmina Burana, it's a pile of schlock and a failure, and a reminder that totalitarian culture is almost inevitably always regressive, backward-looking, prudish, clunking shite. When you kill or chase out all of the talent and put a cap on the influences and inspiration that help create good art, all you're left with is artefacts in the attic and second rate knock-offs."
Well said. I like a good nude painting or statue. "David" and Ingres' "Grand Odalisque" are sublime. Nazi takes on those? They are just... off. And by "off", I mean "terrible." Paul Padua seems to have heard of Mars and Venus, but he is an alien who doesn't know how bodies work. https://www.neumeister.com/en/artwork...
You can find the "heroic" statues and propaganda prints on your own. The only reason I don't give 5 stars is that there is no mention of dance. Have your laptop handy so you can google the 'art' as it is mentioned.
June 8, 2019
A slog for the layman perhaps, this book really has to be considered if its rarefied subject tallies with any of your interests or academic bent. It's an exhaustive one of a kind book, concerning not only the culture the Weimar Republic created and which the Nazis hated (once calling atonal 'classical music' a Bolshevist attack on "the senses of German man"), but fully surveying what came about under the Nazi watch before September 1939, what became of all the Jews involved, and how the cultural life manifested itself during the actual war years. Everything gets a look in at one point, whether it be architecture, journalism, theatre and opera or visual arts. So we learn of 'Freikorps fiction', where the brutality of soldiers cleansing the Lebensraum out east was justified and lauded, we see complaints of an "asphalt culture" (city-scapes, risque night-clubs and all that horrid jungle Jazz music, and so on), and so much more.
The author clearly knows his subject – there is a sense of this being a summary of a life's work, for he's approached various art media before now separately. This is a relatively chronological look at the whole kaboodle, however, and so is not the slightest volume out. He shows how this is merely for the academic audience in many small ways, least of which is so often mentioning which Land everyone comes from, as if we all have a passing knowledge of German geography (a quirk I found more annoying was constant air-quotes around the word Aryan). If you have any concerns for 1940s German drama successes, or which of a number of authors and artists may have been in bed with the Nazis philosophically (even if they later denied it, of course, with the protestation that things would have been worse without their efforts), this is a must-turn-to wallow through no end of detail.
The author clearly knows his subject – there is a sense of this being a summary of a life's work, for he's approached various art media before now separately. This is a relatively chronological look at the whole kaboodle, however, and so is not the slightest volume out. He shows how this is merely for the academic audience in many small ways, least of which is so often mentioning which Land everyone comes from, as if we all have a passing knowledge of German geography (a quirk I found more annoying was constant air-quotes around the word Aryan). If you have any concerns for 1940s German drama successes, or which of a number of authors and artists may have been in bed with the Nazis philosophically (even if they later denied it, of course, with the protestation that things would have been worse without their efforts), this is a must-turn-to wallow through no end of detail.
April 12, 2020
This was an interesting and informative book, but very problematic at the same time. It seemed to me that the book lacked the coherent narrative and structure, it is driven by what you might call a "biographical approach" - a collection of short biographies of famous, less famous and completely unknown people. The writing style is terribly dry, the book is generally descriptive rather than analytical and from the methodological perspective I was very disappointed in a Kater´s interest in culture not in an anthropological sense, but rather a "classical" definition "culture=arts" (though he does not provide reader with any explanation on his methodological approach). He ignores a lot of key academic literature on this topic and basically equates Weimar era with modernism and Third Reich with anti-modernism, which is, I believe, a terrible simplification.
However, what really makes this book terrible and academically unacceptable is that Kater is often reproducing the Nazi propaganda jargon ("he was a quarter Jewish") and Kater´s sexism ("the weaker sex," "irresistibly attractive, seventeen-year old female actor"). It is ok to see some anecdotes or to get an information about someone´s look, but it seemed to me at times that every time Kater mentioned an actress, he had to comment on her look.
It would have been a great book and a ground-breaking piece of research – if it was published 20-30 years ago.
However, what really makes this book terrible and academically unacceptable is that Kater is often reproducing the Nazi propaganda jargon ("he was a quarter Jewish") and Kater´s sexism ("the weaker sex," "irresistibly attractive, seventeen-year old female actor"). It is ok to see some anecdotes or to get an information about someone´s look, but it seemed to me at times that every time Kater mentioned an actress, he had to comment on her look.
It would have been a great book and a ground-breaking piece of research – if it was published 20-30 years ago.
August 16, 2021
Phew, didn’t know whether I would make it to the end but I did. The book could have been great but instead it wound up being a display of phenomenal research. How can someone track down the names of over 500 (my guess) figures in all facets of culture from art and sculpture, literature, film and broadcasting, architecture, news media, etc. Not only their names, their careers and their family histories but also their friendships, rivalries and even their feelings about themselves and their society.
Unfortunately I should be impressed but I was more overwhelmed. All these characters appeared to be on a flat field, each presented as being equal to all the others. Each personal story was interesting on its own but after a while I began to gloss over those details and tried to focus on “the story” and keep in mind how it began and where it was going to end.
The one consistent thread through most of the book was Goebbels. He is the main character, he’s the chief architect and builder of Nazi Germany’s cultural framework and details. Perhaps the book would have been more interesting if it were written as his story rather than the story of 500 individuals. The other main characters were Thomas Mann, Richard Strauss, Marlene Dietrich, Bertoid Brecht and a few others.
I’m glad I made it through to the end but it was a struggle.
Unfortunately I should be impressed but I was more overwhelmed. All these characters appeared to be on a flat field, each presented as being equal to all the others. Each personal story was interesting on its own but after a while I began to gloss over those details and tried to focus on “the story” and keep in mind how it began and where it was going to end.
The one consistent thread through most of the book was Goebbels. He is the main character, he’s the chief architect and builder of Nazi Germany’s cultural framework and details. Perhaps the book would have been more interesting if it were written as his story rather than the story of 500 individuals. The other main characters were Thomas Mann, Richard Strauss, Marlene Dietrich, Bertoid Brecht and a few others.
I’m glad I made it through to the end but it was a struggle.
February 4, 2023
A book on this subject has lots of potential, but it instead uses its subject as a vehicle to repeat unnecessary stories - or to say some facts, or tell some forgettable narratives. Though there is stuff to learn here it is not what I expected when I began. Also: the authors bias to abstract and modernist art is quite funny, when he refers to ugly noise as brilliant and inspiring, and what is essentially Social Realism, in a culture which hoped to be inspired by impressive Völkisch artists such as Leibl, or Thoma, as unequivocally opposite. The book also maintains some strange internal contradictions and some contradictions with broader historical knowledge. His opinion on Nazi architecture as ‘megalomanic’ ignores the generally small scale of the ones which did exist - and on the unique ‘Germania’ project ignores the interesting ancient influence which littered it, on ancient Egypt, Sumer, and the Greco-Roman (all three came to characterise Nazi architecture as a whole, tbh). Regardless, I learnt something.
October 28, 2020
The first part of the book, concerning itself with cultural products of Nazi Germany, is excellent. Unfortunately it falls flat on its face in its second part, which obsessively follows a handful of German expatriate artists as they attempt, successfully or not, to reforge their careers in Hollywood and American academia. Marlene Dietrich's private life and political views take up a surprising number of pages for a book that isn't celebrity tattle, and Thomas Mann is treated so ungenerously in a scathing analysis of a fluff piece written for Esquire magazine (!) it makes me suspect the author has some kind of grudge against him.
December 25, 2019
1935, the party ordered editorials in favor of a collection of goebbels collection of his speeches because it wasn't selling. Just like Xi.
Hitler wanted women in the home while speer and goebbels wanted them working.
Bach was top from nazis, bc seen as transparent, opposite of atonality. Like ancestor worship.
A nazi 1941 propaganda movie put forward the argument that the British invented concentration camps in the Boer War. Uncle Kruger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm_Kr%...
Hitler wanted women in the home while speer and goebbels wanted them working.
Bach was top from nazis, bc seen as transparent, opposite of atonality. Like ancestor worship.
A nazi 1941 propaganda movie put forward the argument that the British invented concentration camps in the Boer War. Uncle Kruger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm_Kr%...
April 23, 2021
Very dry and very easy to get lost. Feels like it hit the ground running and didn't look back to see it left its audience behind. There are a couple of small general takeaways from this book - like that Nazi culture was very much always a moving and inchoate one - but I fear I'll forget a lot of this book within a few months.
August 31, 2021
I have read many books on this subject but this book is very heavy going and I have decided that I do not need to read another book on the subject .At page 255 it changes course to deal with what happened to the people after the war,even ending up discussing the Soviet Union!
January 27, 2022
I got a real kick out of this book. It’s hilarious and horrifying to imagine these shitty guys bickering over art
May 7, 2024
Solid overview
December 20, 2025
Not a very easy book to understand or follow
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