Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics

by Frederic Spotts

"A fascinating contribution to our understanding of Hitler's complex, chaotic, and catastrophic personality, and a compelling study of Hitler's artistic policies in the Third Reich."-Foreign Affairs

Featuring a new introduction by the author. A starling reassessment of Hitler's aims and motivations, Frederic Spotts' Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics is an adroitly argued and highly original work that provides a key to fuller understanding of the Third Reich. Spotts convincingly demonstrates that contrary to the traditional view that Hitler had no life outside of politics, Hitler's interest in the arts was as intense as his racism-and that he used the arts to disguise the heinous crimes that were the means to fulfilling his ends. Hitler's vision of the Aryan superstate was to be expressed as much in art as in politics: culture was not only the end to which power should aspire, but the means of achieving it.

Filled with evocative photographs and reproductions from Hitler's 1925 sketchbook, "Spotts's study of the Fuhrer's fascination with architecture, painting, sculpture, and music is ...elegantly composed and richly documented" (The New Yorker).

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Art, Politics, Biography, World War II, Germany

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there is one person who turns my stomach at the mere mention of his name or the image of his face, that man is Adolf Hitler. Of course, I am hardly alone here as millions of people judge the Nazi Führer as the most cruel, evil, destructive, murderous person of the entire 20th century. So, when I saw Frederic Spotts’s Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, I had mixed feeling.

However, since I love anything insightful written on art and aesthetics, I went ahead and took the plunge. I’m glad I did – the book, which could be subtitled ‘Portrait of an Artist as a Demonic Dictator’ is absolutely riveting. If anybody has the misguided notion aesthetics is only on the periphery of culture and society, this is the book that will convince you the truth is otherwise.

The author begins by outlining how as a young man in his 20s with no artistic training and limited talent, Hitler eked out a meager existence selling his paintings of the city where he was living – Vienna. But then things took a radical shift for the young artist. After a stint as a messenger in World War 1, knowing his career as an artist was going nowhere, Hitler joined the tiny German Workers’ Party in 1920 and soon realized that although he lacked talent as a painter, he did have an ability as an orator to electrify an audience with his mesmeric charisma.

Thus, via his oracular charisma, he was propelled into a position of authority and quickly transformed a band of ragtag beer-drinking anti-Semitic chauvinists into the National Socialist Worker’s Party. And by so doing, he quickly grasped how psychological manipulation was more powerful than reasoned argument and how (years before Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote) the medium can be the message.

And, as Frederic Spotts explains, once Führer, for Hitler, control of culture was as important as the control of the economy. Hitler held a deep and genuine interest in music, painting, sculpture and architecture and he linked his concept of artistic creativity and government. Indeed, for him, politics was a means and art was the end. But, as the author cautions, this link between art and government can’t be taken too far, when he writes, “Many of Hitler’s key policies – such as racial genocide and the military domination of Europe – did not grow out of his aesthetic ideals. Hitler the ruler and Hitler the artist sometimes coincided, sometimes not. But at all times he used culture to buttress his power, while power opened the way for him to realize himself through grandiose cultural projects. To that extent power and art merged, and he could as he repeatedly did, define his historic mission in artistic terms.”

The author then details how Hitler combined gobbledygook notions of biology, race, history and national identity into his version of a philosophy of culture. Actually, such gobbledygook was ‘in the air’ in Germany for some time. Spotts cites Max Nordeu, who wrote in 1893 on what he labeled as degenerate art and their creators: “By the same token, degenerate painting was the product of biologically degenerate painters, who suffered from, among other ailments, brain debilitation and optical disease. Impressionists, for example, were victims of disorders of the nervous system and the retina. Such degenerates were enemies of society, ‘anti-social vermin’ who must be mercilessly crushed, who should be tried as criminals or committed to insane asylums.”

And Hitler picked right up on this when he fumed in one speech how artists of modernism were ‘criminals of world culture’, ‘destroyers of our art’, ‘facile smearers of paint’ ‘fools or knaves, ‘imbecile degenerates’ deserving the ‘prison or the madhouse’, ‘incompetents, cleats and madmen’ not to be let loose on the public, ‘pitiable unfortunates who clearly suffer from defects of vision’ and who should be turned over to the police or the criminal court.

Later in the book, the author devotes an entire chapter to the Third Reich’s tragic destruction of Modernist works of art, including the infamous 1937 Degenerate Art exhibit, where works of such German artists as Chagall, Grosz, Kandinsky, Klee, Marc and Nolde were put on display for public ridicule.

So, what art did Hitler like? There is an entire chapter on this subject entitled ‘The Failure of National Socialist Realism’ spotlighting Hitler’s creation of The House of German Art to exhibit the best of Third Reich painting and sculpture. But, alas, even Hitler had to admit his National Socialism failed to inspire great painting. And Third Reich sculpture wasn’t much better. Some technical proficiency but such as Arno Breker and Josf Thorak creating Nazi versions of cartoon superheroes left most people cold.



There is also an entire chapter dedicated to Politics-as-an-art, framing how Hitler orchestrated nearly all the details of his mass rallies (documented by hundreds of photographs and famously captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will). Indeed, Hitler the artist: designer of the Nazi party standard and party flag with swastika and official Nazi colors of red, black and white, spread wing eagle over swastika as official Nazi insignia, verbal cues (Sieg heil! and Heil Hitler!), signature Nazi hand salute, calculated use of voice, gestures and delivery as speaker/performer, calculated employment of location (space enough for tens of thousands), time (night was great for emotional effect) and use of all aspects of lights, action, camera for the optimal theatrical impact so as to bring such a great mass of people under his will, that is, to have each individual surrender their personhood to him as Führer/God-man. Even visitors from other countries reported how moved they were by such a spectacle. Reading this chapter sends a shiver up my spine.


This is a detailed book, covering Hitler’s vision and influence in the worlds of architecture, music, opera, art collecting, city planning and transport (he had a big hand in creating the Volkswagen). However, as the author notes, “But even a dictator could not alter the fact that by ignoring the huge and widening gap between high culture and mass culture Hitler suffered a serious flaw. Radio, phonograph, photography, illustrated magazines and cinema had created new art forms with a vast and varied audience. Two cultures had evolved – highbrow and lowbrow, elitist and popular. This he could not accept. . . . He wanted the public to enjoy the sort of art he himself enjoyed. And so for the remainder of his life it was his aesthetic ideals and taste that he sought to impose on the German people, whether or not they shared them.” Fortunately for the German people and for the world, the aesthetic vision of Hitler as Nazi Führer ended with the fall of the Third Reich. We all can breathe a sigh of relief.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

All adults in the family having been impacted by WWII, mostly in occupied Norway or in combat; most adults in our subsidized veterans' housing community having served as well; Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' was one of the first substantial adult books I ever read, leading to decades of further study of the war and of fascism. Among the scores of books studied, this is one of the best.

I'm no student of art, music or architecture so some of this detailed study of Hitler's own aesthetics was above my head in the sense that I couldn't visualize most of the work discussed. Fortunately, the text is accompanied by enough illustration to suffice the exposition.

Basically, what author Spotts argues is that Hitler's primary sense of self was cultural, his goal being the radical, aesthetic reconstitution of Germany towards which purpose were his politics directed. Politics, war especially, was a distraction, however necessary.

Hitler's aesthetic sense was narrow, closely allied with his genetic-evolutionary beliefs. Art was to represent beauty and strength, music to be uplifting, architecture to elevate the mass over the individual. His historical sense, however, was broad, his achievements intended to endure for centuries in keeping with the achievements of the Persians, Greeks and Romans.

The only failing of this book, so far as I can discern, is that the author does not make the relevant connections between Hitler's pseudo-Darwinianism, his politics and his aesthetic arguments.

[Eric Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up in the 60's and 70's, son of a WW2 veteran, like all the rest of my buddies. It was natural that I would become interested in World War Two and its sinister mastermind, Adolf Hitler. As a teenager I couldn't help but notice how cool the German tanks were - Tigers, Pathers, King Tigers! - compared to our beetle-like Shermans. But it went further than that, the German uniforms too were cool, as were their their machine pistols, their flags, their medals, their swords (swords!), and their parades and, well, it just seemed like a regime art-directed by a great artist. I didn't know at the time that dictatorships and totalitarian societies control everything and "art direct" their entire sphere of enfluence.

This book is a biography of Adolph Hitler from the point of view of his artistic obsessions. It is an astonishing book, in my opinion. I am a trained artist, graduated from art school, and I always knew that Hitler failed to get into art school. Twice. Those rejections changed the fate of the world. The man was obsessed with painting, sculpture, music, and - most importantly - architecture. He has the sensibility of an artist more than a general, men he referred to as "blockheads." This book goes through each obsession in detail: Wagner in music, 19th century romanticism in painting - in direct conflict with modernism, neo-classical architecture on a megalomaniacal scale.

The author provides great photographs that illustrate the book. He takes us through the mind of Hitler the artist/world dominator and it has the feel of a fantasy novel in places. We see Hitler in 1944, as the Russians are nearing the border, still obsessed with his plan to make Linz, Austria into the greatest cultural city in the world.

I have read dozens of military history books about World War Two and Hitler is hard to ignore, but he always comes across as a pure military man, if mad, in those books. Here, we find the other side - he viewed politics and war as a means to an end, the end being his construction of a new Germany, with architecture to found a 1000 year kingdom. It's all in this book. But so is his obsession with opera and opera houses, Greek sculpture reborn to glorify his racist views, and autobahns as an expression of power and a way to control the future (there were only 500,000 cars in Germany at the time!).

I highly recommend this book if you want to know more about the real Hitler, not just the crazed anti-semite and warmonger, here you find an equally crazed man, but motivated by artistic concerns as a means to truly remake society.

[Gerbrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fellow is a catastrophe. But that is no reason why we should not find him interesting, as a character and as an event.

The book opens with this quote from Thomas Mann’s essay Brother Hitler. Hitler and the power of aesthetics offers a different view on the Third Reich. Where most books focus on WW2 events this book explores solely Hitler’s passion for art and architecture and the impact it had. Have a look at the production of his annual rally in Nuremburg, like a stage for a Wagner opera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedr...

Hitler was in many ways an art director. Or better an art dictator imposing his taste. Which meant no Egon Schiele or Gustave Klimt. No Mies van der Rohe or Walter Gropius. No Arnold Schönberg or Paul Hindemith. No Thomas Mann or Bertold Brecht.

10 quotes from this fascinating book:

28 ‘I am convinced,’ he had written in Mein Kampf, ‘that the work of great statesmen and military leaders always lies in the field of art.’

54 To entice people into his phantasmal world, Hitler worked out a vast panoply of artistic techniques – extravagant and imaginative use of lighting, wait for several hours until he appeared. As producer, director and stage manager, he appealed to all but one of the senses.

58 The overwhelming visual and aural effects – the sheer colour of thousands upon thousands of flags, standards, pennants, streamers and banners, the excitement of illumination, searchlights, torchlight processions; the thrill of regiments of bands and singers; the exhilaration of fanfares, sirens, salvoes and aerial fly-pasts – all this pummelled the participants nearly senseless.

61 What Hitler provided was ritual in place of believe. [….] It was following the 1938 party rally that Speer acknowledged waking up to the shocking realization that ‘all these formations, processions, dedications’ were less a clever propagandistic revue than ‘almost like the rites of the founding of a church’.

93 ‘He says that Hitler is the most profoundly feminine man that he had ever met, and that there are moments when he becomes almost effeminate. Het imitates the movements of his white flabby hands’ (Harold Nicolson’s [British diplomat] diary entry on a conversation with Carl Burckhardt)

107 In such ways did Hitler use ceremonies and ritual to create his ideal state – a Germany incorporating the racial purity and martial discipline of Sparta, the aesthetic ideals of Athens and the imperial power of the Romans.

282 And so perfectly did this ambition match his love of opera with his love of architecture that it developed into what both Speer and Goebbels labelled a ‘maniacal passion’. The extent of this mania can be gauged from the fact that even when the stress of domestic and foreign affairs was nearly overwhelming, he always found time for this opera house projects.

377 The closer military catastrophe approached, the more absorbed Hitler became in his Linz dream. The large model of the Linz-to-be was moved from Munich and installed in the bunker under the chancellery on 8 February 1945.

379 No one ever divined Hitler’s purpose better than Goebbels. ‘The [community] halls are to have bell towers; they will be the churches of the future,’ he confided to his diary. Thus was architecture to contribute to a new religion – Hitler worship.

388 He would have his highways because that is what he personally wanted – one more monument to his own genius. Popular doubts were to be overcome by a massive propaganda campaign. In rime the roads would be crowded with cars, he assured his critics, and he had an idea up his sleeve how to achieve that as well. [the Volkswagen…]

[Cerisaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I could see how easy it was to get a whole rally thing going," Bowie said in 1974, recalling the height of Ziggymania in Britain a few years earlier. " There were times when I could have told the audience to do anything." In another interview of that era, Bowie spoke of the way Hitler "staged a country", combining "politics and theatrics" to create the ultimate spectacle. "Boy, when he hit that stage, he worked an audience.. [Hitler] created this thing that governed and controlled the show for those 12 years. The world will never see his like." (Simon Reynolds, Is politics the new glam rock? The Guardian review, Saturday 15th October 2016)

Covers a lot of what this fascinating book is about.

Finally finished. Not that it's difficult to read, or boring, because it most certainly isn't, but there is a LOT to take in, so a book to dip into then lay aside for a bit. Spotts' scholarship is impressive, and worn lightly for the most part. I found his book readable, entertaining and informative, with some elegant writing. He covers the complete spectrum of art and culture so there's sure to be something of great interest to most readers, even those lacking knowledge of, for e.g. Wagnerian opera (me!). Nazi iconography and aesthetics- those SS uniforms, for e.g., the leather trench coats and knee-high boots, Leni Riefenstahl's stunningly beautiful photography of the Nuremberg rallies- are still powerful, and dangerous.

Spotts analyses Hitler's relationship to culture (in the broadest sense) and how he affected all aspects of the arts. He saw himself primarily as an artist and tried to impose his reactionary tastes in art & music onto cultural life in the Third Reich. He used art & aesthetics for political purposes, to control audiences using a mastery of performance (those rants, the arm movements), offering the people 'bread and circuses' and a monumental building programme to inspire awe and and admiration. Right at the end in that Berlin bunker he had original Wagner scores (sadly lost in the destruction) and architectural models of projects never to be fulfilled. Spotts is of the opinion had Hitler "like Mussolini, a cretinous philistine without interest in the arts, he would have been less destructive."

[Reinhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating account of the artistic ambitions and ideals of Hitler and hence Nazi Germany. Throughly documented and provides extensive evidence, especially when he strives to correct the record. He makes the case that Hitler was a much better painter and far better sketcher than most biographies suggest. He makes the case both with inline samples as well as many Pre WWI assessments of Hitlers painting and drawing. He was exceptionally well versed musically and clearly he a gifted architectural draftsman.

Hitler‘s had huge personal influence over the design and staging of Nazi events. Personally designed the Nazi standard and many other party visuals. He was instrumental in the SS and SA uniforms, colors, party event lighting & staging. He had an eye for the dramatic. With the expecting of Göring and Goebbles (and maybe Rosenberg who held no power), the leading Nazi‘s had no artistic sensitivity - along the lines of Mussolini who was proud of never having set foot in a museum.

What also become clear is Hitler was primarily driven to cultural rather than political ends. Politics was a means to achieve cultural greatness. War, politics by other means, was a way to create an enormous blank slate on which to rebuild the culture and cities after his own image. Destruction precedes creativity. Hitler was seeking a blank canvas on which to build, and war, a war of massive destruction, was the means to exercise his creativity.

The one area he took the initiative to dictate was in the arts. In all other realms, he let competing power structures sort out the answers as they ‚worked toward the Führer.‘ In the arts: music, primarily opera; painting, and architecture, he took a leading interest and dictated the smallest detail. He selected an prohibited music at a whim. He selected directors, and conductors. He selected painting for the art galleries, appointed sculptures.

Hitler was well versed in music. He could carry on a detailed musical conversation with world renowned conductors and knew every note of many piece of music by heart. He had a good ear, noting if a single instrument in the orchestra was even a smidgen out of tune. He also had an ear for musical talent able to identify a talented voice early. He was a able pianist, although later, he rarely played.

When it came to architecture, he took and even greater interest. He in essence acted as chief architect on all the important projects. Beginning on the eve of his appointment as Chancellor when he initiated an upgrade to the reichs chancellery Not only did approved every plan for every project, the plans were based on his own personal sketches. As plans were fleshed out, he requested changes and often sketched exactly what he wanted. He did architectural sketches as well as a professionally trained architect.

The scale of his architectural ambition is unfathomable. He wanted to rebuild many major German city centers from scratch. His plan for Berlin involved the largest building in the world as a great hall modeled on the Parthenon as well as a massive train station, airport, all built on an east-west axis. The plan would require the destruction of 80,000 homes as well as many other buildings.

His architectural ideals link closely to the Ancient Greek. He saw their temples as the greatest buildings ever build. His only interest in building was state buildings. He had no interest in residential, commercial or industrial buildings. His architectural ambitions related to public buildings. Buildings that embody the ideals of the culture, in this case the racial, socialistic culture of the state. Individuals have no value, only as a collective does the Volk have value. That ideal was embodied in the architecture. Monumentalism was key to display the power of the state. The building should inspire fear.

Even the autobahns were not envisioned as a model of efficiency. They too were conceived of as a work of art. Not 1 in 100 Germans drove a car. They were build prospectively to allow Germans to see the beauties of the countryside. Some of the routes even took detours to take advantage of good views. The rest stops and gas stations were all modern, technological marvels, some even designed by Miles van de Rohe, of the out of favor Bauhaus school of architecture. He initiated the Volk-wagon project to build a car for the masses - also with a sketch.

One of the cities he was most excited to remake in his image was Linz, his hometown. A complete reworking complete with the best art museum in the world. Money was no object in acquiring art for this museum. Thousands of works were purchased (or confiscated) for this. Virtually every significant piece of art that they were able to get their hands on was designated for this new museum. Exorbitant sums were spent. So much was spent that the art prices in Europe skyrocketed. When new areas came under their control in the war, they generally confiscated art owned by Jew and bought everything else from dealers.

With regard to opera House architecture, Hitler was a veritable expert. He knew by memory every opera house in Europe, although he almost never travelled out of Germany. He knew them from extensive study. He could expound on the decorative effects, acoustics, entrances, exits, the flow of people, the stage, the lighting, the back rooms. And he knew all the dimensions. His team of architects reported he knew the dimensions of every major work of architecture in the world. It shows his prodigious memory. His love of Opera house architecture was revealed in his choice of book he took to the bunker. It was his collection of Opera house architecture.

In addition to steering government largess on artist, he used his substantial private earnings to be a patron of the arts. Unlike Göring, who loved to live in luxury, Hitler was satisfied with relatively meager living arrangement as long as it was filled with art.

One striking fact that give some indication of Hitlers love of the arts is that one and only one profession was exempted from military service: artists. About 20,000 artists avoided military service through this artist‘s exemption. Even long after the was was lost and after many entreaties by both Göbbels and Göring, he maintained these exemptions. That and the nearly unlimited budgets he allocated to arts and culture, even to the detriment of the military.

Holding Hitler as both a sensitive lover and patron of the arts as well as a maniacal mass murderer strains the mind. How can one man be a sensitive artist and have a gift for the arts and yet be such a bloodthirsty monster. We want to believe that art in some way inhibits the worst tendencies of men, but sadly, that was not the case.

A groundbreaking book substantially documented with footnotes as many inline images. Well worth the read to grasp the importance of art and culture to Hitler and his ultimate aims. Provocative and thoughtful.

[Steven Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book shows Hitler the artist...failed artist, to be sure, but he always had the artistic soul, and Spotts studies this side of him, and it is a rich, enhancing view of Hitler. The cover is a perfect summation of the book, and it has many good photographs. Also, Hitler's artistic loves and hates are revealed, and Hitler the raving madman and mass murderer are put aside as we see his aesthetic side. His grandiose building projects are tasteful, well-thought out...and ultimately ruinous. He was more determined to build opera houses than military bases. Indeed, Hitler is seen as more of a grand designer of operas, except in the end he used Germany and the world as his canvas. Spotts accounts of Hitler's early life are thoughtful, and Spotts does a lot of good exposing many earlier, dubious biographies. It's poignant that Hitler had once applied to do stage design, and then ran out on the interview. Had he been hired by the state opera...? Hitler comes across not as a bad artist, but neither a great one, but he kept the artistic temperament, and this book is a valuable study to the life of one of the world's most destructive and enigmatic men. The text is readable, and hard to put down. It is not an apology, but a description.

[Eb · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s incorrect that an aesthetic sense is incompatible with evil men. American ideas about art and strength are unique to our own time and place and largely inaccurate. This aesthetically and environmentally aware vegetarian killed millions of people. He loved the opera, listened to Wagner, painted, and from his prodigious memory could recite the architectural dimensions of countless buildings.

I think it’s important to define evil as it really is, rather than create a caricature which is easier to make fun of. He seemed to love Germany and Germans without loving individual Germans. His, very genuine, love of culture was probably instilled in him at a young age, and for him it likely became a vehicle to gain prestige and fame through the ages, something which he craved. The need for it must have come from a desire to obtain stability and permanency, which we know he lacked in his youth. Ditto for his Reich which would “last a thousand years.” That many people had to die for Germany to achieve its supremacy was no matter for someone too harsh to love human beings as they really are.

[Norm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun fact. Hitler is the only "failed artist" who ever existed. Right? What ever happened to the "successful artists" who were chosen over Hitler for that famous art school? That's what I thought. The book is the real deal. America is modern day Weimar Republic with the same filth promoted by the same people.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did you know Hitler designed some of the furniture for his office? Imagine furniture designed with one goal in mind: to subjugate the will of the people. That's pretty much this book--the aesthetic choices made by the Nazi's to take and maintain control.

[Jonathan Hedgpeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic work of original scholarship. I don't know too much about Wagner so the Opera sections were, for the most part, completely over my head, but the rest was incredible. The images alone are worth the price of the book.

[Christan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in the process of devouring this unique and compelling tome. This is definitely must-read history. Can't recommend this highly enough. This is the portrait of the artist as a psychopath.

[Jeff Swystun · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a fascinating but tough premise. The author had to navigate around anything that may come across as laudatory. At several points, he gives Hitler certain credit without being an admirer. There is the occasional disclaimer to effect of, “he accomplished a lot but was a catastrophe of epic proportions’.

That is why I picked up this book. Hitler was in power for 12 years and in that time, remade a nation in his image. And that is what is said about art, you cannot sculpt or paint or write without your personality being injected into the work.

If you read this book be aware of the following. It is dense and perhaps overly long with a great deal of repetition. It went farther than I thought in the definition of aesthetic. It covers heraldry (which was the most interesting), music, architecture (which Hitler obsessed over), art in all forms, motion pictures, city planning, and interior design.

Also covered were the big spectacles The Third Reich held from Nuremberg to Munich. Midway through the book, I was struck by the notion that Hitler was an event. An impossibly large, garish hodgepodge of an event foisted onto the world with devastation at its base.

One area that intrigued me was the range of military uniforms the Nazis designed and employed. Seeing 50,000 Storm Troopers lined up under hundreds of flags featuring the swastika is still an intimidating and menacing sight.

At the end of the book, I had to think it did not need to be written. But, then again, we cannot forget our history as it is a warning and a guidepost.

[Robin Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gets 5 stars, because it is one of the very few books that presents a different approach to dealing with Hitler, who like Stalin, fancied himself as some kind of intellectual (or perhaps intellectually non-intellectual). The author examines Hitler’s views on painting, architecture, theater, music, urban planning and the dramatic arts. I found it fascinating. Did Hitler really know about music? Was he a reasonable painter or a pure hack (you have to think for yourself)? These are some of the questions the author attempts to answer by reviewing what he did and said. In the process we get a further glimpse into the mind of this strange, obsessed, mass murderer. I give the author kudos for presenting this aspect of Hitler, in a fascinating read.

[o Pailán · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me lo tuve que leer en dos días para hacer un trabajo y aprobar el cuatrimestre pero, sin duda, es un libro perfectamente documentado, en el que aparece una elevada cantidad de información sobre la vida del dictador que no se recoge en otras biografías.
Un trabajo exhaustivo de Spotts sobre la pasión de Hitler hacia la pintura, la arquitectura, lectura, musica, etc. y cómo esto afectó en el devenir de su mandato.
Como la cita de Mann que el propio Spotts recoge en el libro: "El tipo es catastrófico. Pero eso no es razón para no encontrarlo interesante como personaje y como acontecimiento."
MUY recomendable.

[Ron Mexico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't let the title scare you away. This is a fascinating book and extremely well researched. Long story short, Hitler had a ton of cultural ideas he wanted to implement once he was in power. He did some better than others. He also had a cultural appreciation that other dictators never had like Stalin or Mussolini.

[Vasile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Give a new perspective and understanding of the Nazi party

[William Stroock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting discussion of how Hitler used neo-classical architecture to create an imposing aesthetic, domineering, seemingly unstoppable physical Nazi over-culture .

[Masterbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro adatto a chi vuole scavare nella parte umano-artistica di Hitler

[JerryDeanHalleck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book on Hitler and the arts.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook good
Talks about architecture, design of nazi symbols, artwork etc all from Hitler's point of view

Very interesting, he had an extremely good artistic eye and used it for more than just the purpose of pursuit of aesthetics

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction mentioned that certain writers critiqued this volume saying that it read somewhat like a list. I was surprised at this pre-emptive defense upon starting this book since the first half of the book was presented in a narrative fashion. However, in hindsight, since I have recently been reading about and researching totalitarian art I might have bypassed potential difficulties since I knew many of the artists and architects as well as their work beforehand (particularly Breker, Thorak and Speer). When I came upon the chapters on music in the Third Reich I felt that the book did indeed turn into a series of long lists (this also occurred in the chapters about confiscated art which listed work after work and artist after artist without any sort of pictures or reference material). Much more interesting to me were the author's observations as he drew connections between political thought and philosophy to their physical manifestations as well as his insight into historical areas which haven't often been touched. Spotts' presentation of Hitler's sketches for new buildings such as the Triumphal Arch in Berlin made long before Speer drew up the plans and took credit for the designs are as telling as they are fascinating. In this light the important building projects in the Third Reich come off, at the very least, as collaborative efforts.

I was a little put off over two or three instances where Spotts referred to Hitler as effeminate for seemingly random purposes since these observations were taken from quotations and never extrapolated on (and did not relate to the topic at hand). I don't know if the author intended these sections as insults or jabs but they appeared rather silly and superfluous to me - some clarification in those passages was certainly needed. Otherwise this is a good read with more biographical and historical context than art context (which can be found in the excellent "Totalitarian Art" by Igor Golomstock)

[Dianna LeFevre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although Spotts tends to take some of Hitler's comments about giving all his power up so he could be a simple artist at face value, the rest of the book works quite well. Well argued with great supporting material.

[Woogie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic work of scholarship. I highly recommend it. The focus on Hitler's passion for aesthetics and how it played out in the Third Reich is a unique twist that I found absolutely fascinating.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holey moley - Fred Spotts did his homework. The references alone could have filled an entire book. Great read on getting into the mind of Hitler and the thesis that "Wolfie's" main reason for world domination and ethnic cleansing was really about the cultural legacy he would leave.

[Erick · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there were many interesting things in this book that you may have never know about Hitler, there's also many boring things. I went from being enthralled to on the verge of stopping the book due to boredom.

[carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even a good read for those of you without History Degrees

[Strong Extraordinary Dreams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book, unbelievably interesting, compulsive.

I would have given it 4 1/2 stars as, in the end, I felt I might be tiring of it, and it is very detailed. But great, great book