Moritz Follmer: Culture in the Third Reich

A fascinating book. It charts how the Nazi party, from its earliest activities managed to use and co-opt all aspects of German culture and mould and remould them in their image to match their ideology.

Each chapter start with a contemporary, seemingly ordinary photograph and the author gives a sharp analysis of each of them, putting them in their socio-historical context and smartly indicating how it reveals much more than is at first apparent.

The first chapter gives an intriguing picture of how the rise of the Nazi party both matched and helped create the zeitgeist - particularly the bourgeois middle class and their marked difference from and lack of sympathy for the more liberal (in their eyes, degenerate), Weimar arts and culture scene. And of course there were major economic problems at this time which helped the Nazi’s although this aspect is, I think, a little underplayed in this first chapter. Their propaganda was skilfully designed so that a large proportion of the population could identify and sympathise with at least some aspects - and it was those aspects that supporters focused on, ignoring aspects which they were not in sympathy . I suppose parallels could be drawn between Trump and supporters in USA and Johnson and supporters in the UK.

The story also shows the importance of people feeling that politicians would give them answers and certainties - abstract ideas which in some cases were more important than the answers and certainties that the politicians actually offered.

The second chapter shows how the party skilfully combined the elements of German culture - high culture, popular culture and rising, Versailles aftermath nationalistic ‘volkisch’ elements while the third chaptershows , particularly with academia, generous financial support for those institutions and subjects that matched the party’s interest and concerns pulled in many people who would otherwise have given the party a wide birth. or many it was opportunism; as the chapter shows ‘ambitious’ Herbert von Karajan’ was a beneficiary. At the same time, of course, they were applying their anti-Semitic and racial purity ideologies through this support.

In the fourth chapter their dominance is shown at its peak with the early years of the war and this chapter gives an excellent overview of how the party obtained their aims, with great popular support.

An excellent and illuminating book, pulling together many strands in a fluent style that manages to give fascinating day-to-day details with a national and international overview being given as well.