The arts

Goebbels' constant theme as Propaganda Minister was the need to guard against what he described as Jewish corruption. In laying such stress on destroying Jewish influences Goebbels was defining culture by what it was against, rather than what it was for. This inhibited genuine cultural growth. Nazism was an attempt to force people to think along prescribed lines. It stifled creativity. The arts did not flourish; they became unadventurous and predictable.

Censorship ensured that painting and sculpture glorified the myths of the German past and emphasized manly, heroic deeds. Abstract works were unacceptable. Jazz was rejected as the product of a decadent African-American sub-culture. Art had to be formal and figurative. Directors of opera or ballet, as with theatre producers and playwrights, had to be careful that the story line did not offend Nazi values. The music of the composer Richard Wagner (1813-83) was reverentially referred to as an expression of the German soul.

Most Germans who had a career in the arts chose to co-operate with the Nazis' demands for cultural conformity, evidence that the majority of German writers, performers and artists, without being avid supporters of Hitler's Reich, were quite prepared to make the necessary compromises in order to be able to continue to work.

Prominent examples were the celebrated conductors Wilhelm Furtwangler and Herbert Von Karajan, and the renowned composer, Richard Strauss. Furtwangler later justified his behaviour by saying that since music transcended politics he felt no guilt. Critics responded by asking why, if music was transcendental, had he not protested against the Nazi ban on performing the works of the Jewish composers Mahler, Schoenberg, Mendelssohn and Hindemith.

Perhaps the outstanding example of intellectual betrayal was that of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who called upon his colleagues and students to reject such notions as freedom of speech and instead place themselves with entire obedience in the service of the new German Reich. It should be added that, rather than put up with political control, some 2,500 artists and scientists went into voluntary exile. If they were Jewish, of course, their motive was not simply artistic freedom but sheer survival.