Abstract

Culture and the arts played a central role in the ideology and propaganda of National Socialism from the early years of the movement until the last months of the Third Reich in 1945. Hitler and his followers believed that art and culture were expressions of race, and that “Aryans” alone were capable of creating true art and preserving true German culture. This volume’s essays explore these and other aspects of the arts and cultural life under National Socialism, and are authored by some of the most respected authorities in the field: Alan Steinweis, Michael Kater, Eric Rentschler, Pamela Potter, Frank Trommler, and Jonathan Petropoulos. The result is a volume that offers students and interested readers a brief but focused introduction to this important aspect of the history of Nazi Germany.

Jonathan Huener is Associate Professor of History at the University of Vermont. He has written on aspects of memorial culture in postwar Germany and Poland, is author of Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945-1979, and co-editor, with Francis R. Nicosia, of Medicine and Medical Ethics in Nazi Germany: Origins, Practices, Legacies and Business and Industry in Nazi Germany.

“This slim volume accomplishes a remarkable feat. It provides concise, beautifully crafted essays that provide access to the best scholarship in Nazi cultural history even as they represent the current state of research by leading experts… Supplemented with illustrations and primary sources, this work would make an ideal addition to undergraduate and graduate courses on the Third Reich, sure to provoke lively discussion and further study on the arts in Nazi Germany.”   ·  German Studies Review

“Huener and Nicosia’s collection provides exceptional insight not only into the murky world of National Socialist cultural practices, but also into some uncomfortable areas which survived beyond 1945.”  ·  European History Quarterly

Francis R. Nicosia is the Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont. He has written on German Zionism and German Middle East policy during the Weimar and Nazi periods. He is author of The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, and co-author of The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.