The Coming of the Third Reich

With the goal of converting the entire population to Nazism, Hitler made Joseph Goebbels the head of the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. It was designed to use all forms of education and entertainment toward the goal of instilling Nazi values and combatting Jewish influence on art and culture. Goebbels established specific departments for various areas and forms of media, such as radio and theater. The Jews were blamed for harming German culture through “cultural Bolshevism” and “modernist inventions” like “atonal music and abstract painting” (399). In reality, many Jewish Germans were “in practice as culturally conservative as other middle-class Germans” (399).

Even Wilhelm Furtwängler, the head of the Berlin Philharmonic and a conductor with right-wing and antisemitic views, objected to the Nazi purge of Jewish musicians and complained to Hitler and Goebbels. Furtwängler was too valuable to purge in the eyes of the Nazis, but the Berlin Philharmonic lost its independence from the state.

Jazz was also banned, although clubs managed to continue playing it either by taking advantage of the fact that it was “almost impossibly difficult to define” (402) or by identifying Nazi spies. Nightclub entertainment and cabaret shows mostly continued under the Nazis, with serious crackdowns reserved for overtly political music and comedy acts.