Chapter 8
Hitler and the Arts
Culture as Propaganda
Goebbels viewed culture as a means of propaganda and considered it to be the very sustenance of the Volksgemeinschaft, the people’s community. He maintained that “the essence of propaganda must always be simplicity and repetition.” The framework of National Socialist propaganda was constructed from a mixture of truth, half-truths, and blatant falsehoods, providing a flexible structure that could be molded and reshaped to accommodate the regime’s evolving policies. Despite the arts being portrayed to Germans as instruments of edification and entertainment, the Third Reich’s utilization of culture served as a means of disseminating the National Socialist worldview.1
The “Great” Artist
To speak about Hitler as a warmonger and a monster responsible for brutality and genocide is easily acceptable, as it conforms to the facts that we have learned and that are public knowledge. To describe Hitler as a lover of the arts makes most people uncomfortable and sometimes irate. Any attempt to narrate Hitler’s life that in any way humanizes the man or might present him in a remotely positive light is usually squelched or condemned as being “pro-Nazi.”
However, this present work strives to remain open-minded in its study of the numerous aspects of the Third Reich. The aim is to help the reader to view a larger picture and to acquire a deeper understanding of all the elements that enabled Hitler to play pied piper to a majority of the German people. Art, architecture, and music were favored topics in Hitler’s speeches, and his regime would later confirm to the nation that German culture and the fine arts occupied an elevated position in the Third Reich. Hitler’s alleged aim, after his wars and racial genocide had cleansed Europe, was to create a culture-state in which the arts would be the first priority.2
According to his sister Paula, as a child Adolf Hitler displayed an “extraordinary interest in architecture, painting and music.”3
While in Vienna, Hitler produced mainly dreamy watercolor landscapes or renditions of well-known Vienna landmarks such as the Karlskirche. His work, though middle-of-the-road artistically, eventually increased in detail, particularly in its architectural elements. One feature that stood out, however, was a gaping absence of people: Hitler was inept at painting figures. Sometimes completing a picture per day, Hitler estimated, years later, that he had turned out some seven to eight hundred pictures during his stay in Vienna. His artwork was bought by those who could not afford anything better—often tourists wishing to take a souvenir back from Vienna or, occasionally, by frame shops.4
Awkward at hawking his own work, apart from the assistance he received from his friend Hanisch, Hitler teamed up with two other men from the hostel, Neumann and Löffner, both Jews, who occasionally made a sale on his behalf. Hitler also personally frequented two art dealers who occasionally purchased his work: Altenberg and Morgenstern. It was especially the latter, a Jew, who was not only the first person to offer a good price for Hitler’s pictures but occasionally gave him a commission. Hitler said later of Morgenstern that he had been his “savior.”5 The art dealer kept a card file of his clients’ purchases: ironically, most of those buying Hitler’s artwork were local Jewish residents.6
All the while, Hitler devoured books; his favorite pastime was reading histories of art, culture, and architecture. His secretary Christa Schroeder remembered him saying that in his young days in Vienna he had purportedly consumed the entire five hundred volumes of a city library.7
Hitler viewed and described himself as an artist ad nauseam. “If someone else had been found,” he later commented, “I would never have gone into politics; I would have become an artist or a philosopher.”8 It is of interest to note that, once he had risen to power, the first building Hitler erected was an extensive art gallery: the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Hitler’s grip on the German people was twofold: on the one side, he created a police state that monitored and controlled people’s views and freedoms; on the other, he seduced the Germans through symbols, pseudo-religious rites, spectacles, and his personal dramatized showmanship. It has been said that Hitler motivated the German people into active political participation by transforming them from spectators into participants in the National Socialist “theater.”
According to the cultural historian Frederic Spotts, “Hitler aimed at creating a German culture state where the arts were supreme and where he could construct his buildings, hold art shows, stage operas, encourage artists and promote the music, painting and sculpture he loved.” He also “held a deep and genuine interest in music, painting, sculpture and architecture. He regarded politics, not art, as a means to an end, the end of which was art. Hence the paradox of a man who wanted to be an artist but lacked the talent, who hated politics but was a political genius.”9
It has been said that all totalitarian leaders deem the control of culture to be as important as the control of the economy. The loud flaunting of cultural ideals creates a sense of national pride and unity, lends the leader an allure of respectability, and helps to veil the ugly acts that a totalitarian government invariably commits. It might appear that Hitler’s struggle for power was not for political glory but, rather, a means to achieve his personal cultural gratification.
In a speech delivered in Nuremberg in 1923, Hitler stated, “All great art is national. Great musicians, such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, created German music that was deeply rooted in the very core of the German spirit and the German mind. . . . That is equally true of German sculptors, painters, architects.”10 About a year or so later he wrote in Mein Kampf that twentieth-century culture had degenerated due to a social decline, not because of military or economic failures. Cubism and Dadaism were, in Hitler’s opinion, “art Bolshevism” and could drive people “into the arms of spiritual madness.”11 Foreign art and aesthetics would ultimately threaten the very foundations of Western civilization. In a chapter of Mein Kampf titled “Nation and Race,” Hitler attempts to prove that the Aryan race is at the root of “all human culture, all art, science and technology.”12
Hitler saw culture and homeland as living hand in hand and, as the Jews were “a disorganized tribe without a territory,” they “lacked the basis on which alone culture can arise.”13 His opinion was that “the Jewish people, despite all apparent intellectual qualities, is without any true culture, and especially without any culture of its own . . . the two queens of all the arts, architecture and music, owe nothing original to the Jews.”14 In conclusion, Hitler ascertained that “the Jew” contaminated art, literature, and the theater, and that through control of the press, Jews promoted international, Modernist, Bolshevist, and cosmopolitan, rather than German, works of art.15 We can conclude that Hitler’s early denigration of the Jewish people aimed at making them appear as a threat to the allegedly unique standards of Aryan culture. In his hateful assertations, Hitler chose to totally ignore the excellence of Jews in the fine arts and performing arts on both national and international levels.
Hitler described modern society as one of cultural decay and believed that a Kulturkampf (cultural struggle) had been taking place in Germany since 1871, the beginning of Germany’s Second Reich. Political degeneration and cultural decay walked hand in hand, and at the 1935 party rally he exclaimed that the perpetrators of Modernism were “criminals of world culture,” “destroyers of our art.”16 He also claimed that “art is the clearest and most immediate reflection of the spiritual life of a people. It exercises the greatest conscious and unconscious influence on the masses of a people. . . . In its thousand-fold manifestations and influences it benefits the nation as a whole.”17
It remains an enigma how the man who built up an army in which up to seventeen million served also regretted that so much money had to be spent on warfare rather than on art. In the heat of the war, he commented, “It is a pity that I have to wage war on account of that drunk [Churchill] instead of serving the works of peace.”18 And again, in line with the idea that art was his ultimate goal and that war and persecution were a means to an end: “The whole point of power,” Hitler said, “was to produce cultural wonders. . . . If I were to assess my work, I would first emphasize that in the face of an uncomprehending world I succeeded in making the racial idea the basis of life, and the second that I made culture the driving force in German greatness.”19
State-Controlled Culture
Once a police state was established in Germany, the new leaders carried out a Säuberung, a racial and cultural purge, a cleansing “of the collective body of the nation.” This included the entire education system, the cinema, literature, press, and radio. A few months after Hitler came to power, the Reichskulturkammer, or RKK (Reich’s Culture Chamber), under Josef Goebbels was founded with the aim of overseeing—and controlling—the various professional cultural associations. The RKK was composed of professional chambers for film, radio, music, theater, the fine arts, press, and literature. In early 1935, the RKK implemented racial regulations that forbade Jews as well as Romani and Sinti from becoming members.
As no one was allowed to practice a profession in the arts unless he or she was a member of this association, a massive wave of discrimination and exclusion soon followed the creation of this “cultural” ministry, an institution ensuring that state and culture were inseparably linked. Those targeted also included members embracing an opposing political view, such as Communists, Social Democrats, and Liberals. Needless to say, thousands of professionals thus lost their customary and essential source of income. Countless musical works and books were banned, the entire theatrical repertoire purged, and on May 10, 1933, about twenty thousand books were burned in several German university cities. By 1938, some three thousand Jews had been removed from German artistic life.20
Goebbels and the Ministry of Propaganda employed various cultural mediums to establish and reinforce their political agenda and ideology. Film was considered by Goebbels to be a key “leadership tool of the state” due to its ability to create a manipulative narrative. The German theater occupied a secondary position to film but could be transformed to emphasize political objectives, thereby fostering a new “political consciousness at the theater.” The visual arts were utilized to depict the beauty and strength of the pure German race, while music had the power to evoke emotions at political mass events. Literature could create archetypes of racially correct behavior and outline the goals of National Socialism, while the press could be tailored to each social class and target group. And, finally, the radio attracted listenership through light entertainment interspersed with a political message.21
Awards and Rewards
Perhaps it was Hitler’s “struggling artist” days in Vienna and in Munich that pushed him to lavish money on his favorite artists. “My artists should live like princes and not have to inhabit attic rooms,” he stated.22 He presented them with grants, awards, commissions, titles, tax rebates, studios, and even houses—some of which had been confiscated from Jews.23 These generous tokens of recognition were also bestowed on conductors, photographers, sculptors, architects, singers, and those in diverse branches of the fine arts and performing arts. Goebbels noted, “No royal patron was ever so generous to artists as he.”24 Hitler saw himself as the successor to Bavaria’s patron of the arts and fellow Richard Wagner fan King Ludwig II, builder of the world-famous fairy-tale castles.
Hitler’s subsidies to the arts surpassed anything seen before in Germany. Money flowed into cultural institutions and into the pockets of individual artists to the extent that Goebbels complained about Hitler’s “excess of unrestricted spending.”25 Hitler personally disposed of vast sums gained legally and semi-legally. One source was royalties from the sale of Mein Kampf—required reading for Germans or, at least, encouraged ownership of a copy—as well as royalties earned from the sale of postage stamps bearing the Führer’s image. The cultural fund also received donations from the film industry and other assorted sources. Hitler used these funds to reward his artists of choice, as well as for his personal art purchases and toward building projects. Funds were also donated by German industrialists and stolen from Jews by the state’s sale of their confiscated property.
Though Hitler’s cultural chamber mercilessly stripped Jews of their right to work in the art world, he resentfully gave recognition to several Jewish artists such as the composers Gustav Mahler and Max Rheinhardt, the director of the Berlin theater. He promoted the career of one of his favorite opera singers, Margarete Slezak, who was half Jewish, as was one of Hitler’s art dealers, Maria Almas Dietrich. He reinstated a Jewish composer, Arthur Piechler, at Augsburg’s Conservatory and was amicable toward a number of artists whose spouses were Jewish.26 These were, of course, just a few exceptions to Hitler’s untiring discrimination and oppression of the Jewish community in his Reich.
Another award Hitler granted to artists was that of military exemption. It is estimated that more than twenty thousand discharges were approved, much to the chagrin of Germany’s military leaders—especially as the war dragged on and drained the number of able-bodied soldiers by the millions (World War II resulted in an estimated 4.3 million German casualties).
Masses and Monumentality
Hitler’s long-term plans for the Greater German Reich encompassed stunning edifices, theaters, opera houses, and museums. He meant to reshape the Reich on a grand scale, as well as on a regional scale with the fine arts and performing arts present in even small towns. Munich was to become the capital of German art, and Hitler’s hometown Linz, in Austria, was to be lavished with the world’s greatest art gallery. Even in February 1945, when Germany’s defeat was imminent and inevitable, as already stated, Hitler focused his wholehearted attention on his cultural plans for Linz. He seemed to find solace in examining and discussing architectural plans even while his Reich was crumbling around him.27
As a suborganization of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front), the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) program, also known as KdF, aimed at making it possible for the German masses to take vacations. It intended to stimulate the enjoyment of life and the joy of working and promote health, physical performance, and community spirit so as to boost the nation’s economic productivity. Formerly restricted to the wealthy, leisure activities and the arts now became affordable to the working class. In some cases, art exhibitions and music were even brought directly to the factories. Many viewed the KdF programs, allowing them inexpensive access to the arts and to family vacations, as one of the most positive aspects of the National Socialist regime.28
The flipside of KdF is that it strengthened the implementation of the Third Reich’s racial discrimination: Jews, “gypsies,” and the government’s political opponents did not qualify for participation. Though the purposes of Kraft durch Freude included breaking down class divisions and stimulating the German economy, the actual goal was part of the party’s effort to control all aspects of life in the Third Reich. In 1937 alone, close to ten million Germans took part in KdF programs, many on organized hikes.29
Though, with the onset of war, the Kraft durch Freude program petered out, Hitler insisted that museums and theaters should remain open in Germany throughout World War II. He told Goebbels that if the cultural activities stopped, the quality of artistic life would be seriously damaged. He wished to boast that the Third Reich remained the world’s great cultural state and that culture was the essential element he was fighting for. He also wanted to prove that Germany could wage a full-scale war without the disruption of social life. By so doing, he would convince the German people that victory was just around the corner.
People saw in this Hitler’s confidence that Germany would win the fight, and they viewed the cultural opportunities as an escape from the horrors of war. Like never before, masses filled the museums, opera houses, theaters, and cinemas.30 Only the bombing of such buildings put a damper on Germans’ cultural drive. After a final discussion with Hitler about cultural issues, Goebbels noted, “I can easily foresee that once the war is over he [Hitler] will once again devote himself with the most passionate enthusiasm to such matters.”31
His great admiration of Grecian architecture and that ancient civilization’s fondness of sporting competitions led Hitler to emulate the Greek style in both architecture and events. At the BDM (League of German Girls) performances at the Nuremberg party rallies, thousands of girls donned outfits resembling Greek tunics to present gymnastics and dances. Also typically Grecian in essence, the strong naked male figure became a major feature of National Socialism’s imagery. The prototype of a tall and muscular Nordic Aryan male, often brandishing a sword, was widely incorporated into sculptural works of the time. The symbology suggests, on the one hand, the power and superiority of the new Germany—proud of its beauty and strength—and, on the other, the German willingness to fight and die for state and Führer.32
Hitler’s appreciation of the arts was, above all, shaped by the nineteenth century, the “golden age” of Germany’s intellectual and cultural achievements. Hitler often reaffirmed his admiration for the German accomplishments of that era and lamented how, suddenly, an extensive cultural degeneration had cut off the creative flow. “Up to 1910,” Hitler said, “we displayed an extraordinarily high level in our artistic achievement. After that, unfortunately, everything went ever more precipitously downhill.”33
Hitler found it alarming that art and science were headed in drastically new directions and were earmarked by novel ideas. He was uncomfortable with this trend and wished to end it at any cost, in order to return to the accustomed styles. In his opinion, the Modernist style was corrupting not only the art world but society itself, and he maintained that a Jewish influence was behind it. To him avant-garde painting, the works of Bolshevists, Cubists, and Futurists, were “the products of spiritual degenerates” and “the hallucinations of lunatics or criminals.”34
The State versus Modernism
Following World War I, many German artists were inspired to make a fresh start and embarked on a journey of innovative experimentation with new forms, themes, and techniques in art. The Novembergruppe, named after the end of the war in November, was comprised of prominent figures such as Walter Gropius and aimed to bring about a unified approach to art, architecture, craftsmanship, and urban design. The group proclaimed that “the future of art and the gravity of the current moment compels us, the revolutionaries of the spirit (Expressionists, Cubists, Futurists), to unite and work closely together.” This artistic resurgence became known as the Bauhaus movement, centered in Weimar, the same town where the new postwar political regime was established. Walter Gropius and other Bauhaus leaders explored new ways of designing and painting and even formed their own jazz band, capitalizing on the growing popularity of the genre in Germany.35
In Mein Kampf, Hitler criticized “Cubism and Dadaism” as types of “Bolshevist art.” He subsequently publicly disavowed any art movement, including Impressionism and Expressionism, that he considered to be a reflection of sickness and degeneracy caused by physical and mental illness and associated with Jews.36 The National Socialist “revolution” was, above all, supposedly, a “cultural revolution,” and once Hitler could exercise total political control of Germany, his cultural jurisdiction followed. The National Socialists discharged hordes of museum directors and curators nationwide, to be replaced by authorities chosen thanks to their political allegiance rather than their artistic competence. These new “experts” now became responsible for separating classic and time-honored art from Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, and the “Modernist and Cultural Bolshevist monstrosities” of the twentieth-century styles. Germany had, interestingly, reared the highest number of Modernist artists and works (totaling about eighteen thousand). Hitler’s attack and ban resulted in countless contemporary German artists losing both income and cultural standing in National Socialist Germany, and many fled the country.
In 1936, the regulation of the press was further tightened by suppressing analytical commentary. During the Weimar Republic, analysis and criticism were established features of the intellectual world. Under the new restrictions, only authorized National Socialist writers were allowed to critique books, films, theater productions, art, and other cultural forms. The role of the critic changed from Kunstkritiker (art critic) to Kunstbetrachter (art observer), and this effectively limited the critic to offering approval rather than engaging in analytical criticism.37
In order to show the German people the type of art that Hitler considered to fall in the category of Modernist horrors and a corruption of the high standards of German culture, in 1937 an exhibition was put together, titled Images of Decadence in Art (not to be confused with the works of the late nineteenth-century Decadent movement). The Degenerate Art Exhibition made its debut in Vienna before traveling to Nuremberg to coincide with the annual party rally and, finally, to the newly opened House of German Art in Munich. Hitler’s aversion to modern art can be expressed in his view of it as “thought-provoking, unconventional, uncomfortable, shocking, abstract, pessimistic, distorted, cynical, enigmatic, disorderly, freakish.” Hitler simplified his opinions on art when he stated, “Deutsch sein heißt klar sein”—to be German means to be clear. Hitler wanted art to provide escape from pain, not confrontation with it. Hitler opined that art and society are moved by similar forces and that art not only reflects but promotes social upheaval.38 Most of the confiscated “degenerate” artwork was sold overseas, often to enrich Göring or Hitler personally, or traded with Swiss art dealers. Art objects that could not be sold were burned, resulting in an irretrievable loss for the civilized world.39
With the banning of “degenerate” or “culturally and socially corruptive” artwork, there proved to be a vacuum in the field of good contemporary art. Hitler realized this when trying to organize an exhibition of German contemporary art at Munich’s brand-new art museum in 1937. Of fifteen thousand entries, some nine hundred works were selected for consideration, but Hitler had a fit when he reviewed the works. Goebbels recounted the event as follows: “The sculptures are alright, but some paintings are a downright catastrophe. Pieces were hung that made one positively cringe. . . . The Führer was beside himself with rage.”40
Hitler’s anger was likely caused by the realization that his National Socialism had not succeeded in inspiring great works. “These paintings demonstrate,” Hitler seethed, “that we in Germany have no artists whose works are worthy of being hung in this splendid building.”41 Hitler stormed off to the Berghof in Berchtesgaden and left his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, to carry out the contemporary art exhibition’s selections. Over the next years, other temporary and permanent art shows of a wider period and “acceptable” styles opened throughout Germany, attracting countless visitors.
The Unscrupulous Collector
In June 1939, just months before Hitler set the wheels of World War II in motion, he summoned Dresden’s famous Picture Gallery director, Hans Posse, to the sumptuous Berghof, his home at Obersalzberg. He proposed for Posse to take on the task of supplying the artwork for a world-class museum to be established in Hitler’s hometown, Linz, in Austria. His choice of Linz was, on the one side, for it to become a superlative city of the arts vying with Florence or Paris. On the other, he didn’t want his museum to have to compete side-by-side with the unmatched museums of the Greater Reich, such as those of Berlin, Munich, or Vienna. It would house “only the best of all periods from the prehistoric beginnings of art . . . to the nineteenth century and recent times.”42 The decision to create a museum on German soil as a lasting monument to himself was more than likely inspired by his recent trip to Italy, where in the company of Mussolini he marveled at classic masterpieces in the museums of Florence and Rome.
In his younger days, Hitler had sketched a detailed design of his ideal museum structure, titled “Sketch of a German Museum for Berlin.” Now he possessed the authority and the means to commission the construction of the museum of his dreams—a Hitler Museum—in the city of his youth and to turn it into an enviable treasure chest of world renown. To complement Hitler’s already extensive collection of German Romantic paintings, Posse’s mission would be to locate and procure the artwork that Hitler would personally select and acquire by “purchase or confiscation.” Although Hitler favored German and Austrian paintings from the nineteenth century, Posse’s focus included early German, Dutch, French, and Italian paintings.43
Hitler set up a small task force of about twenty members, the Linz Special Commission, headed by Martin Bormann and with Hans Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, in charge of the financing. For the first four years of its existence, the Linz cultural center project was kept secret from the public. Finally, in April 1943, at a time when the war was wearing down on the nation and Germany’s cities were being relentlessly bombed, Hitler allowed the Linz plan to be revealed. In a special edition of Heinrich Hoffmann’s art magazine Kunst dem Volk (Art for the People), the idea was presented in a carefully worded text—personally examined by the Führer—announcing the creation of a great art gallery in Linz as part of the postwar beautification of the Reich. The article boasted how little time it had taken to make the acquisitions for the art gallery, as opposed to other nations that had required centuries to collect their museums’ content. Of course, no mention was made of the number of these art treasures having been “acquired” through the confiscation of Jewish or other private property. The article ended with the notion that Hitler had bestowed the German people with a gift it could never forget and that the people would never be able to repay “its debt of gratitude to the Führer.”44
Though a large portion of the works acquired by Posse for Hitler’s selection and possible approval was legally purchased, the bulk of it was conveniently confiscated under the designation of staatsfeindliches Vermögen (property of enemies of the state). This category applied to the possessions of Jews or citizens considered by the authorities as undesirable, or those who had fled the country. A further means of acquiring artwork was by forced sale through blackmail. The bane of the National Socialists’ illegal art collecting raked in roughly 220,000 works of art and began with the annexation of Austria in March 1938. It continued unabashedly in Germany following the shameful Kristallnacht in November of the same year.
The next year, when Hitler seized Czechoslovakia, the systematic looting of valuables was not limited to Jewish homes but to all private, public, and religious property as well. Following Poland’s invasion, the German rape of art treasures grew even more savage and included several Old Masters such as works of Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Raphael. The ransacking of the Netherlands began in May 1940 with the customary confiscation of Jewish property and the fevered purchasing of valuable artwork.
The German occupation of France in June 1940 secured Hitler some of the world’s most valuable art collections, many belonging to Jewish families such as the Rothschilds. Hitler issued a decree declaring that all private artworks and antiquities, including those of the French state, should be “taken into provisional custody . . . [as] guardianship of property to be used as collateral in peace negotiations.” Nearly twenty-two thousand items soon filled the Jeu de Paume pavilion in Paris, from which Hermann Göring helped himself to some six hundred pieces.45 On his mission to acquire outstanding artwork for Hitler’s Linz Museum, Hans Posse also traveled to Italy on three occasions, where he purchased some twenty-five items. These acquisitions were certainly not to the liking of the Italians in general, who view their art heritage in a more nationalistic way than even their own social identity.
“Books, Books, and More Books”
Thus commented Hitler’s childhood friend Kubizek about Hitler’s lifelong passion for reading. By 1941, World War II was well underway, and Hitler could not find sleep unless he spent several hours looking at picture books on art or architecture. Hitler’s personal library, distributed between Berlin, Munich, and Berchtesgaden and allegedly consisting of some twelve thousand books, was discovered at the Altaussee salt mines in Austria. About three thousand were shipped to the United States, but unfortunately, many were “duped out”—discarded or recycled—over the years. Today, some 1,200 are housed in the rare book collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.46
In keeping with Hitler’s passion for books, he intended to include a library in his plans for Linz. Originally, some 250,000 volumes were to form this collection, but with time and his inherent megalomania, Hitler determined it should become the largest library in the world.47 The more Hitler collected, the more he wanted, and he soon decided to add two more collections to his Linz museum: one for coins, the other for arms and armor. As the requisitioning of art treasures continued, Hitler’s ambitions for Linz grew even greater. In addition to the art museum and library, he eventually made plans for an opera house, a music hall, a theater, and a cinema. Sketching himself the outlines of the types of structures he wanted, Hitler’s “European Culture Center,” as it was often referred to, was not to stand out as just the largest and best in the German Reich but to dazzle as one of the leading cultural centers of the world.
Hitler’s secretary Christa Schroeder stated that “the Linz museum was one of his favorite conversation topics at late afternoon tea.”48 Hitler wished for each display to have plenty of space, as opposed to the cluttered way the artwork in the Louvre was exhibited. He wanted the different schools to be grouped into specific periods, complete with furniture and decoration corresponding to the time.
It is likely that Hitler viewed the collected artwork as symbols of personal power and wealth and took pride in the number and value of the works that he had selected for the “Führer Museum” in Linz. Hidden in various castles and monasteries, according to some, the total number of looted or purchased artworks destined for Linz is estimated at around seven thousand. Among the main depositories for that collection were the iconic Neuschwanstein Castle, the Kremsmünster Monastery, and the remote Altaussee Salt Mine in Austria. The latter is where the bulk of the Linz selection was painstakingly stored, deep in the mountain. The exciting story of these art treasures’ close escape from destruction at war’s end was featured in the Monuments Men film, based on the book of the same name.
Treasures in Salt Mines
As early as 1939, the Viennese art museum curators visited the old salt mines near Altaussee, in a remote corner of the Austrian Alps, to evaluate them for the possible safe storage of valuable artwork. An interesting factor about these particular mines is that wood used in construction projects appeared freshly cut even decades after having been installed, and pine twigs used in the decorating of the miners’ chapel remained fresh smelling after months. Tests led to the conclusion that the mine’s unique atmosphere of 75 percent humidity and a constant 8 degrees Celsius (46° Fahrenheit) offered ideal conditions for the long-term preservation of artwork. In 1943 the miners developed proper rooms with upright props to avoid cave-ins, with boarding on floors, walls, and ceilings. To complete this massive undertaking beneath the mountain, the workers used 1,200 square meters (42,000 ft3) of wood and some five kilometers (3.1 mi) of electric cable.
By the end of the year, Hitler suggested transferring the large collection hidden at Kremsmünster Monastery to the Altaussee Salt Mine. By January 1944, the transfer was completed, soon to be followed by further transfers from the Führerbau in Munich, Hitler’s artwork from the Berghof, his personal library, and his entire coin, weapon, and armor collections intended for the Linz museum. Due to the mine’s inaccessibility in snow, additional transports in the winter of 1944–1945 were carried out by caterpillar trucks originally manufactured for the Russian campaign.
Among the looted masterpieces from Belgium, such as Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna, perhaps the most famous piece of the entire hoard was the Ghent Altarpiece. This fifteenth-century masterpiece, marking the transition from the art of the Middle Ages to that of the Renaissance, has been stolen seven times, in part or in its entirety, thus making it one of the most coveted pieces in history. In the 1800s the wings of this triptych altar were pawned by the Ghent diocese and, as they were never reclaimed, eventually purchased by the king of Prussia and, finally, exhibited in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie.
During World War I, German forces confiscated the main part of the altarpiece, but the entire work was returned to Belgium soon after, as part of the reparations agreement under the Treaty of Versailles. After Germany’s invasion of Belgium in 1940, Belgian authorities shipped the priceless altar to the Vatican for safekeeping, but it did not travel farther than the south of France before Hitler ordered it to be seized and brought to Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany. Along with another Flemish altarpiece, the precious Last Supper of Leuven, the Ghent Altarpiece now rested deep under the mountain in the relative safety of a secret repository of some seven thousand exhibits: the world’s largest museum at the time.49
Just weeks before the end of the war in Europe, Adolf Hitler gave instructions that the stockpile of art should be preserved and, in the event of the enemy’s approach, the entrance tunnels to the mine destroyed. However, Gauleiter Eigruber, the regional governor, refused to accept the Führer’s order. In his steadfast National Socialist conviction, he considered it his duty to guard the artwork from the enemy and destroy it rather than allow its possible return into the hands of “world Jewry.”
Determined to destroy the world’s largest art collection, Eigruber ordered eight aircraft bombs to be placed inside the mines. Their transport cases were marked “careful, marble, do not drop.” When the salt mine’s director, Pochmüller, found out about the half-ton bombs, he and the miners became determined to prevent the mine’s destruction. Their motivation in this endeavor was, on the one hand, to save the inestimably valuable art treasure and, on the other, to preserve their mining jobs.50
Employing a ruse, Pochmüller traveled to Linz to speak with Gauleiter Eigruber, where he explained to him that the explosive devices would not suffice to destroy the artwork unless the mines’ entrance tunnels were capped. The quickest way to block them, he said, was to blast them shut with explosives before detonating the half-ton bombs by cable from a distance. Little did the Gauleiter know that Pochmüller never intended on setting off the devastating bombs. On April 22, 1945, renewed instructions arrived from Hitler, again forbidding the artwork’s destruction and instructing that the mine’s entrances be sealed, if necessary.
Pochmüller interpreted this as permission for him to take the bombs out of the mine. As soon as the miners managed to remove all eight bombs from the mines, they blew up the mine’s access tunnels with explosives, thus successfully saving the monumental treasure hoard from imminent destruction.51 A few days later, on May 8, 1945 (VE Day), Major Ralph Pearson of the U.S. 3rd Army secured the Altaussee site, to be followed on May 20 by a team of the so-called Monuments Men. In the months to follow, the contents were transported by truckload to the “central collecting point” in the former National Socialist Party headquarters in Munich.52
In the months and years following World War II, the various nations that had lost art in a legal or illegal manner made an indecorous scramble for not only Hitler’s Linz collection but the rest of the art now stockpiled in Germany and Austria. A substantial portion of these works and collectibles had been legally purchased by the German state or by Hitler’s “Linz art fund,” the small fortune accumulated through industrialists’ donations and from postage stamp royalties. Nonetheless, ostensibly due to the fact that much of the artwork had been obtained by looting private, public, and above all Jewish-owned collections, the American army was instructed to return works to the country of origin, to be left in the care of each nation’s authorities.53
Two additional mines were used as repositories for sizable amounts of art: one in Austria, the other in Germany. Not far from the Altaussee mine in the Salzkammergut region, extensive collections of priceless artwork and objets d’art, principally from Vienna’s museums, were stowed nearly three kilometers (almost 2 mi) deep in Bad Ischl’s mines.54 These included works of such artists as van Eyck, Velazquez, Dürer, Munch, and Monet55 as well as masterpieces by Rembrandt, Raphael, Rubens, and Bruegel.56 In addition, crates arrived with Egyptian finds and the more than two-thousand-year-old Venus of Willendorf statuette.57 Though more shipments from Vienna arrived later, Bad Ishl’s inventory at the end of February 1945 included 518 crates, 668 paintings, and 171 tapestries.58
Toward the end of the war, with increased air raids over Berlin, Merkers’s giant potash mines, about 380 kilometers (236 mi) southwest of the capital, were selected as a secret repository for most of Germany’s gold reserves, currency totaling a billion Reichsmarks bundled in one thousand bags, a considerable quantity of foreign currency, piles of confiscated valuables, as well as one-fourth of the major holdings of fourteen of the principal Prussian state museums. At war’s end, the find was so sensational that it was celebrated by a joint visit to the mine by the three top U.S. armed forces generals: Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley.59
Hitler and the Wagners
During Adolf Hitler’s younger years in Vienna, he made three attempts to meet Alfred Roller, a professor of fine arts and stage designer. Though Hitler was hoping to work for Roller in creating stage sets, each time the insecure artist got cold feet and left just before the meetings took place.
Though the visual aspect of operatic stage sets was of significant importance to Hitler, it was above all Richard Wagner’s music that exerted a hypnotic fascination on him. He attended his first opera, Wagner’s Lohengrin, at the age of twelve and, after that, became obsessed with not only the composer’s operas but the man himself. Christa Schroeder said of Hitler, “Wagner’s musical language sounded in his ear like a revelation of the divine.”60
As an obsessed fan, Hitler was intimately familiar with both the stories and the musical content of Wagnerian operas. The American German theater director Carl von Schirach, father of the National Socialists’ Reich Youth Leader, Baldur von Schirach, stated, “In all my life I never met a layman who understood so much about music, Wagner’s in particular.”61 Despite the poverty of his Vienna days, Hitler managed to attend Tristan und Isolde thirty or forty times and, in the course of his life, saw Die Meistersänger about a hundred times.62 Notwithstanding the Reich Youth Leader’s adulation, it has often been suggested that Hitler possessed a limited understanding of music; in all likelihood, his admiration for Wagner arose from the composer’s combination of traits that Hitler himself sought to embody: a blend of drama and action that reflected his own inclination toward pathos and ideology, a platform from which to perform and speak to the masses, and a visually stunning stage created through the use of color and form.63
In his youth, Hitler produced stage sketches for Wagner’s operas, and from the mid-1930s on, he enjoyed working on Wagnerian productions with Benno von Arent, whom he appointed “Reich stage designer.” Hitler personally funded several joint productions with Arent, one of which included a setting reminiscent of the Nuremberg party rallies, complete with a sea of banners and a martial chorus.64
In a 1923 speech in Bayreuth, Hitler expressed heroism as the essential attribute of human greatness and stated that this quality was possessed by three men: Luther, Frederick the Great, and Richard Wagner. While in Bayreuth, Hitler was hosted by the influential piano manufacturers Edwin and Helene Bechstein, who also owned a holiday home at Obersalzberg, Berchtesgaden, just a stone’s throw from Hitler’s future residence and headquarters, the Berghof. On this occasion, he met Winifred Wagner, the composer’s English-born daughter-in-law, who would later run the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth from 1930 to 1945.
Winifred’s invitation to visit Haus Wahnfried, the villa that Richard Wagner constructed for himself in 1874, thanks to King Ludwig II’s generosity, was a moving moment for Hitler, one that he repeatedly reminisced about for years to come. This first visit was the start of a lifelong personal friendship with Winifred and her family. She and her husband, Siegfried, backed numerous National Socialist activities and campaigns. Hitler turned a blind eye to the fact that Siegfried leaned toward homosexuality and had married Winifred to save himself from public scandal. Hitler often stopped by the house—usually after dark and hidden from the prying eyes of Bayreuth’s residents—to spend the night. Haus Wahnfried not only became a refuge for him, but Winifred and her four children became like family to Hitler. According to Frederic Spotts, Winifred was the woman Hitler never married, and her children were the offspring he lacked.65
Rumors of romance between Hitler and Winifred Wagner—even the possibility of marriage—abounded, but all such allegations were shrugged off. Nonetheless, he doted on Wieland, the eldest of the Wagner children and grandson of Hitler’s idol. Hitler gifted him a Mercedes, allowed him to work at the Bayreuth Festival instead of completing the compulsory Reich’s Labor Service, and exempted him from military service during the war.
With near religious regularity, Hitler attended the Bayreuth Festival every summer from 1933 to 1940. By this time, Winifred Wagner had become the director of the festival and was expected to become a member of the Reich Theater Chamber—an instrument of “cultural cleansing”—which, despite Goebbels’s urging, she was able to refuse thanks to Hitler’s intervention on her behalf. Notwithstanding the Cultural Chamber’s nationwide purge, Winifred refused to fire anyone for political or racial motives, and she employed Jews in the festival up until their final “emigration.”66
Though Winifred came under fire from the National Socialist authorities, Hitler’s patronage paradoxically resulted in the Bayreuth Festival becoming the only cultural establishment not subjected to the National Socialists’ control and censorship.67 At some point in each festival season, Hitler summoned the entire theater crew for an evening at the Wagners’ residence. His social invitation included the team’s Jewish members, as well as those who had a Jewish spouse. According to Winifred Wagner, those of Jewish descent accepted Hitler’s invitation “with pleasure and out of a sense of curiosity.”68
The upheaval of war in no way deterred Hitler from implementing “his” Wagner Festival. In his mind, what could be more comforting and rewarding to a wounded or convalescing soldier than to attend an opera of the divine Wagner? Bayreuth was promoted to the mythical status of exerting miraculous and curative powers on those whose psyches had suffered in their heroic duties on the front.
Stukas, a 1941 popular propaganda film of the war years, glorified young Luftwaffe pilots’ victories during the Battle of France, and featured the story of a handsome hero who, after France and Poland’s defeat, lay comatose in a clinic. It was only after attending a performance of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung that he regained his lust for dive-bombing and decimating Germany’s enemies. From 1940 to 1944, Hitler’s “War Festival” in Bayreuth was attended by an impressive 142,000 “guests of the Führer,” whether these war-weary or fight-happy soldiers chose to or not.69
Music for the Masses
In addition to his adulation of Wagner, Hitler encouraged the public’s appreciation of other German and Austrian composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Bruckner, and Franz Lehár in particular. By the same token, the Reich Culture Chamber’s State Music Institute condemned and purged “modern” artwork and its creators from the new Germany. Mahler, Mendelssohn, Offenbach, and Schoenberg were just a few of the great “Jewish-born” composers whose works were now banned. Debussy drew disfavor simply because he had married a Jew, and among other political dissidents, Alban Berg’s music was ousted. So-called Negermusik, as well as jazz or swing music, fell into the general “degenerate” category. The same applied to any Jewish bandleaders and composers such as Bennie Goodman, Irving Berlin, and George Gershwin.
The National Socialists’ principal attack on Modernist music focused on its alleged “atonality and dissonance,” which, for propaganda’s sake, were strung together with the terms “social chaos, Bolshevism, Jewish influence and Internationalism.” In the same way that Hitler’s art appreciation was mired in late nineteenth-century Romanticism, his musical tastes remained trapped in the past. Hitler’s aim was to provide music with the same standing that he imagined it had enjoyed in ancient Greece. Art and music’s sole purpose was to elevate the finer emotions of the Volk, and thus it should not only be readily available but aesthetically accessible to the general public. This meant that a composer’s duty was to create a medium that people from every walk of life could understand and be moved by.
To Hitler, atonality and dissonance in music was a perversion of reality, similar to the work of Cubists and Expressionists. An insult to finer senses, modern music was, to Hitler, elitist. Artists should not compose for a small minority, but rather, as culture was the glue that bound society together, music should hold the same appeal to everyone. As Hitler was of the opinion that music had reached its zenith at the turn of the century and declined ever since, he said, “We need not create any new art; if we cannot achieve anything great, then let us concentrate on what is already there, which is immortal.”70
The Music Chamber’s censorship board oversaw every aspect of musical recording, broadcasting, programming, and publication and was responsible for categorizing works as either acceptable or “degenerate” music. In a 1935 speech, Goebbels stated that “we do not intend to tell a conductor how he should conduct a score. But we do claim the sovereign right to decide what is played and what conforms to the spirit of our time.”71
As one cannot physically destroy music as one can artwork, the National Socialists’ aggressiveness in the music purge of Germany was not quite as assertive and rigorous as with painting or sculpture. In hindsight, Hitler managed to inflict less harm on music than on the other fine arts.72 Music was undoubtedly Germany’s chief cultural legacy, and Hitler used it to drown out the sounds of his underlying dictatorial policies and his totalitarian state. Hitler’s untiring control and promotion of the fine arts would create an image of Germany’s “New Order” as one of culture rather than political terror. This appearance was intended to fool not only the German people but the rest of the world as well.
With the removal of Modernism and Jews, Hitler believed that he had pruned the German music world in such a way that a new blossoming could now take place. Indeed, an overwhelming number of compositions streamed in, honoring Hitler, the New Order, the party, or the military—overall more quantity than quality. Hitler was disheartened by the scarcity of outstanding new composers and likely realized that he had set his own expectations too high by anticipating a new Wagner to emerge like a phoenix.
In a 1938 speech at the Nuremberg rallies, Hitler defined the music for the German Volk as follows:
Music must follow the broad rules of national life and therefore produce not a confusion of sounds that will bewilder a perplexed listener but, instead, move the heart through the beauty of sound. . . . Whether in architecture, or music, or sculpture or painting, one fundamental principle should never be overlooked: every true art must in its expression bear the stamp of beauty. The ideal for all of us lies in the cultivation of what is healthy. Only what is healthy is right and natural, and what is right and natural is therefore beautiful.73
With no precise direction as to what might be deemed by the Führer to be “healthy and beautiful,” musicians were left with no clear guidance. Some reverted back to the accepted classic Romanticism; others experimented with a mixture of genres that they hoped would earn the Third Reich’s stamp of approval.
The Theater
Hitler deemed himself an authority on numerous topics, especially in cultural affairs. Although the National Socialists aimed to politicize all performing arts, the theater received less attention than the film, music, and art industries. Differing opinions on taste and direction made it challenging to establish clear guidelines for the theater’s mission. Goebbels believed that the theater should provide nonsentimental, heroic entertainment that reflected the National Socialists’ desired portrayal of life rather than reality. Hitler’s dramatic values were relatively straightforward: he reportedly favored Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Gone with the Wind, and King Kong as his top three movies.74
Though the National Socialist dictatorship implemented an anti-Jewish policy, parallel to German non-Jewish actors, Jewish-born theater practitioners in Germany also found creative niches for their artistic flow. Despite the bans and restrictions, a wealth of cultural production persisted, even in places one may think impossible for any kind of creativity. Forms of theater and related musical events endured until 1941 in a cultural organization solely for Jews: the Jewish Kulturbund.75
The Kulturbund (Cultural League) of German Jewry, later renamed the Kulturbund for Jews in Germany, was established with the approval of National Socialist officials in Joseph Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda. Under the directorship of the musicologist Dr. Kurt Singer, a network of cultural leagues across the Führer’s Reich provided theaters with musical and theatrical events for Jewish subscribers from October 1933 to September 1941. This permission was restricted to Jews to perform in, attend, and review play productions, operas, cabarets, and orchestral concerts at Kulturbund-sponsored theaters. The dramatic repertoire, however, was limited mainly to works written by non-German Jewish artists, though some pieces succeeded in escaping censorship.76
The Reich’s Dramaturgical Bureau published a “List of Abusive and Undesirable Literature for the Stage.” Some playwrights, such as Franz Arnold, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Zuckmayer, and Bruno Frank, were relegated to the list right from the start and remained there till the oppressive regime’s demise. Sidestepping the laws regarding repertoire selection was not as difficult in the field of comedy. The idea of performing comedy—and a lot of comedy was presented—during a reign of terror may seem out of place. The fact is that of the more than forty-two thousand productions that were staged between 1933 and 1944 during the Third Reich, the majority were comedies.77
The Cinema
Within two months of Hitler’s rise to power, he and Goebbels decided that the motion picture industry was important enough to create a separate department, the Reichsfilmkammer (Reich Film Chamber), within the Ministry of Propaganda. Formally established as early as July 1933, the department comprised ten different branches to deal with every aspect of filmmaking. A “Reich film dramaturg” was appointed for the censorship of film scripts and for the rating of distributed films.78 By so doing, filmmakers and actors opposed to the ideology of the Third Reich were simply banned. Three years later, the chamber created a special commission for Weltanschauung, with the aim of ensuring that films would present ideologically correct views to moviegoers. Similarly to the theater world, by the midthirties, the cinematographic industry was nearly Judenrein (cleansed of Jews) in personnel and content.79
Throughout the duration of the regime, the Reich Ministry of Culture made significant efforts to boost the film industry. While there is disagreement among researchers regarding the exact number, it is estimated that between 1,150 and 1,350 movies received censorship approval during the Third Reich.80 These films aimed not only to shape public opinion on various issues but also to distract from the severity of Germany’s situation during the war years. It is challenging to differentiate between politically charged films and those created purely for entertainment, but most experts agree that all movies distributed during the Third Reich contained some element of propaganda, to varying degrees. Those most steeped in National Socialist ideology were documentaries and newsreels.
The “dream factory” of the film industry was a powerful tool in the hands of propaganda masters Goebbels and Hitler. The main themes included an idealized portrayal of Hitler Youth, the plight of Germans residing outside the Reich homeland, great leaders of Germany’s past, the breeding of animosity against enemy nations, antisemitism, invincibility in the war effort, honoring the dead, and the Führer cult. This last theme, which consisted of offering gratitude and paying tribute to Adolf Hitler, is best exemplified by Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will, for which she earned medals not only in Germany but in the United States and other countries as well.
Architect of the Reich
Although Hitler was unable to extract new and valuable music from the Jewish and Modernist-free Reich, he sought to enhance the performance and presentation of classical music. To improve musical standards, he carefully selected and supported numerous conductors and provided ample funding for musicians. One of his first acts upon assuming power was to refurbish Nuremberg’s opera house. Even during his Vienna years, Hitler had been intrigued by opera house architecture and was familiar with the world’s most prominent opera houses. The fact that a room full of illustrated opera house architectural books was found in his Berlin bunker confirms his keen interest in this area. Hitler’s aim was to provide everyone, regardless of their financial status, with access to the opera. The “illusion” provided by the opera was what people needed in order to cope with life’s struggles. “Opera belongs to the people,” he said, “and must therefore be available to the people. Prices should accordingly be kept down. . . . Opera must also be accessible to youth.”81
To make opera available to all, opera houses were to be refurbished and their number increased. Apart from the opera houses of Vienna and Dresden, which he liked, Hitler planned on replacing the rest with his style of opera house. Over the years, he sketched and developed plans for numerous opera houses. The plan for Munich—the world’s largest, with seating for four to five thousand spectators—was the only architectural drawing he fully completed and that he wished to use as a model for others. At the time, there were some ninety opera houses in the Reich, but if Hitler had completed his opera house project, this number would have easily doubled. Despite all the planning, only two opera houses were built during his time in power.
Hitler’s obsession with opera houses was so great that during World War II, Albert Speer remembered that “the bombing of an opera house pained [Hitler] more than the destruction of whole residential quarters.”82 As a result, when the opera houses in Berlin, Mainz, and Munich were bombed, Hitler ordered their immediate reconstruction.83 This prioritization of rebuilding a theater over a destroyed residential neighborhood is a clear indication of his fixation on a utopian future rather than empathy for or assistance to the suffering civilian population impacted by his belligerent policies.
A few weeks after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933, a fire conveniently destroyed the Reichstag (Parliament) building. Hitler seized the opportunity to set its reconstruction in motion, the first of hundreds of buildings that he would plan for the “Thousand-Year Reich.” With the unstoppable passage of time, a civilization’s most visible cultural legacy is that of its architecture. A culture’s physical monuments bear witness to the artistic achievements of its people as much as its literature, music, or art. Though mostly in ruins, Athens’ Parthenon and Rome’s Colosseum are monumental stone reminders of the greatness and grandeur of civilizations dating back thousands of years.
Though over the centuries many artists have romanticized ruins in painting and sculpture, it is one of Hitler’s architects, Albert Speer, who is attributed with the term Ruinenwert, literally, “ruin value,” in architecture. He reflected on the depressing sight of rusting iron debris of a building he observed under reconstruction. He wondered if, by using special materials and by applying certain principles of statics, one could erect buildings that, centuries later, might resemble Roman ruins. In Speer’s Inside the Third Reich, he wrote,
To illustrate my ideas, I had a romantic drawing prepared. It showed what the reviewing stand on the Zeppelin Field would look like after generations of neglect, overgrown with ivy, its columns fallen, the walls crumbling here and there, but the outline still clearly recognizable. In Hitler’s entourage this drawing was regarded as blasphemous. That I could even conceive of a period of decline for the newly founded Reich destined to last a thousand years seemed outrageous to many of Hitler’s closest followers. But he himself accepted my ideas as logical and illuminating. He gave orders that in the future the important buildings of his Reich were to be erected in keeping with the principle of this “law of ruins.”84
In addition to shaping new German politics, military goals, and foreign diplomacy, Hitler assumed the role of the nation’s primary architect for its reconstruction. His motives were undoubtedly a combination of self-aggrandizement and megalomania, evident in his plans for exaggeratedly oversized structures like the future German stadium in Nuremberg, which had a seating capacity of over four hundred thousand. Rather than creating new ideas for the Reich, Hitler handpicked approximately ten architects, including Albert Speer, to execute his own concepts and plans. He selected the sites for state buildings, whether for political or entertainment purposes, appointed individual architects, provided rough outlines, approved final plans, arranged financing, and supervised the construction work as it progressed.85
Architecture’s appeal to Hitler undoubtedly began when he was a teenager roaming the streets of his native Linz, examining its buildings and landmarks. Viewing architecture, as well as music, as the “queens of the arts,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “I was firmly convinced that I should someday make a name for myself as an architect.”86 In one of his early speeches at Munich’s Hofbrauhaus, he stated that great architecture is the outward sign of inward political greatness. In a subsequent Munich address, he announced that Germans needed to adopt a totally new way of thinking and a wholly new view of the state’s cultural role. The new Germany was not going to be known for its department stores and factories but for “documents of art and culture” that would last for centuries. Great structures of the past were not just an inspiration for the ages but had at one time prompted a sense of identity and communal unity.87
Megalomania and Monumentality
Hitler viewed the columns of ancient Greece and the arches of the Romans as symbols of enduring empires. This inspiration is evident in the design of Third Reich structures, particularly in Nuremberg’s monumental congress hall. The Third Reich’s major state buildings were modeled after the austere grandeur of neoclassicism. In a speech at the 1935 party rally, Hitler emphasized that Germany’s cultural greatness would be demonstrated through its architectural accomplishments.88 He also believed that state and party buildings should be more impressive than other structures and rival the great structures of the past to showcase their ideological superiority. Initially, Hitler criticized modern buildings, such as American skyscrapers, but eventually changed his stance and allowed functional and Modernist public buildings like schools, airports, factories, and railway stations.89
At the 1937 Nuremberg party rally, Hitler shared quite openly that the buildings of the Third Reich “exist to strengthen our authority.”90 Examples of this so-called intimidation architecture are also easy to distinguish not only in projected plans for the Third Reich monuments but in many of the buildings that subsist today, either in part or in their entirety. This type of architecture utilized natural stone to cover concrete or brick shells, enlarged the structures to make viewers feel small and insignificant, and created the impression of timelessness by emulating the colossal structures of past civilizations, which were meant to endure for a thousand years. All of these elements combined to create, on the one hand, a sense of awe and, on the other, a feeling of admiration.
The Olympics venue for the 1936 games in Berlin, Tempelhof Airport, and the Luitpoldhain grounds for massive party rally events in Nuremberg serve as testimonies to the immense size the Reich foresaw for public structures and mass venues. Today, of these former statements of power and colossal architecture, we can still see the unfinished congress hall, the zeppelin field, and the SS training center in Nuremberg, as well as the former Luftwaffe ministry building in Berlin and, in a different style, the so-called Eagle’s Nest perched on a mountaintop in the Bavarian Alps, a building that was to convey an impression of loftiness and domination.
“Wort aus Stein” (word out of stone) is how Hitler referred to his architectural creations or, simply said, Third Reich ideology manifested in monumental structures.91 It is well known that Hitler viewed the German people as suffering from an inferiority complex, but by February 1939, in a secret speech delivered to the army troop commanders, he assured them that the Germans were the “strongest people not only in Europe but . . . for all intents and purposes, in the world.”92 Linking this development to his personal rebuilding program for Germany, he declared that it had restored Germans’ self-assurance. His plans were to elevate Berlin to the world’s greatest city, Munich the world’s prime cultural center, Linz the greatest art center, and Hamburg the greatest port. He also stated that the autobahn network had helped restore the self-confidence that the nation deserved and needed.93
“Bauen, bauen!” (Build, build!)94 was Goebbels’s entry in his diary in September 1937 after the laying of the cornerstone for the oversized German Stadium in Nuremberg, which, incidentally, was never built. Speaking to Speer, Hitler assured him, “We are going to create a huge Reich combining all Germanic people, starting in Norway and going all the way down to Northern Italy. . . . And your Berlin buildings will be the crowning achievement.”95
In January 1938, Hitler appointed Albert Speer as the general building inspector for the nation’s capital and tasked him with overseeing the extensive remodeling of Berlin, to transform it into the greatest city in the world. Hitler described his vision as follows: “As world capital, Berlin will only be comparable with Ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Rome! What is London, what is Paris compared to that!”96
Hitler’s grandiose plan included slicing through existing neighborhoods to create wide boulevards for military parades, with a triumphal arch towering four hundred feet high at the center and a Great Hall with a dome of 825 feet in diameter, the largest on the planet. The main avenue would lead to the Great Hall, and four other boulevards would lead to airports. Due to the project’s enormity, Hitler did not expect it to be completed until 1950.97 Though the main colossal undertaking was to be carried out after Germany’s victory, some of the projects were completed before, such as the establishment of a great east–west city axis, which included widening Charlottenburger Chaussee (today Strasse des 17. Juni) and placing the Berlin victory column in the center, a long distance from the Reichstag building, where it originally stood.
When Norway fell, Hitler confided to Goebbels that he had “great plans” for that country. He would build “a great German city” near Trondheim and, from there, an autobahn would link the far north to the Austrian-Italian border at Klagenfurt: “In no time at all, these countries will be Germanified.”98 Implicit in all these programs, Speer confessed, was Hitler’s design for world domination. All the building projects would be finished by 1950, by which time Hitler would have reached his political and military goals. The Führer’s final victory would be manifested in stone, and Berlin, now renamed Germania, would be recognized as “capital of the world.”99
Hitler was so confident of his political future that he developed elaborate plans for state structures even before coming into power. As early as 1932, he created designs for party headquarters and two other sizable buildings in Munich. Once he assumed the position of chancellor, he wasted no time in ordering the renovation of Berlin’s old chancellery. Soon after, construction began in Nuremberg for the party rallies, as well as for the refurbishment of the opera house. In Munich, he embarked on the reconstruction of the grand, neoclassical Königsplatz, where his personal offices and the party’s headquarters would be located. As if this were not enough, Hitler’s projects elsewhere included museums, opera houses, autobahns, bridges, railway development, war monuments, and special schools for party ideology. As “architect-builder,” Hitler flourished in his element.100
According to Christa Schroeder, Hitler’s architectural knowledge and skills were impressive,101 and Albert Speer said of Hitler regarding planning and sketching, “An architect could not have done better.”102 Though Hitler may have favored simplicity and austerity in his architectural ideal, he endeavored to impress the viewer through overbearing massiveness. Perhaps following the examples set by the pyramids, Persepolis, New York skyscrapers, and Gothic cathedrals, Hitler used intimidation architecture to humble the individual, as well as the world, through gigantism. By so doing, Hitler could aggrandize himself and debase human beings into tiny objects.103
Notes
1. Michael H. Kater, Culture in Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 62.
2. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 1.
3. “Interview with Hitler’s Sister on 5th June 1946,” transcript provided by Michael Williams, https://www.oradour.info/appendix/paulahit/paula01.htm.
4. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 127.
5. Billy F. Price, Adolf Hitler: The Unknown Artist (Houston: B. F. Price, 1984), 15.
6. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 128.
7. Werner Jochmann, ed., Monologe im Fürerhauptquartier 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Knaus, 1980), 235.
8. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 8.
9. Ibid., 10.
10. Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), 779.
11. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 259.
12. Ibid., 290.
13. Ibid., 302.
14. Ibid.
15. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 19.
16. Adolf Hitler, “Art and Politics,” in Liberty, Art, Nationhood: Three Addresses Delivered at Seventh National Socialist Congress, Nuremberg 1935 (Berlin: M. Müller & Sohn, 1935).
17. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 27.
18. Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier: Hitler wie er wirklich war (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag), 21 March, 1942, p. 128.
19. Adolf Hitler, Monologue im Führerhauptquarier: Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed. Werner Jochmann (Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus,1980), October 21–22, 1941, pp. 101–102.
20. Boguslaw Drewniak, Das Theater im NS-Staat (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1983), 163.
21. Kater, Culture in Nazi Germany, 63–65.
22. Arno Breker, Im Strahlungsfeld der Ereignisse (Preussisch Oldendorf, Germany: K.W. Schütz, 1972), 100.
23. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 79.
24. Goebbels’s diary, November 19, 1936, quoted in Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 80.
25. Goebbels’s diary, February 8, 1939, quoted in ibid., 81.
26. Ibid., 84.
27. Ibid.
28. Volker Dahm et al., eds., Die Tödliche Utopie: Bilder, Texte, Dokumente, Daten zum Dritten Reich (Munich: Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1999), 267.
29. Graham Land, “Tourism and Leisure in Nazi Germany: Strength through Joy Explained,” HistoryHit.com, July 23, 2018, https://www.historyhit.com/tourism-and-leisure-in-nazi-germany/.
30. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 38–39.
31. Goebbels’s diary, December 2, 1944, quoted in ibid., 39.
32. Ibid., 111.
33. Henry Picker, ed., Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier (Bonn: Athenäum, 1951), 142.
34. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 258, 262.
35. Kater, Culture in Nazi Germany, 2.
36. Ibid., 18.
37. Ibid., 23.
38. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 159–60.
39. Kater, Culture in Nazi Germany, 46.
40. Goebbels’s diary, June 6, 1937, quoted in Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 171–72.
41. Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler, wie ich ihn sah (Munich: Herbig, 1974), 143.
42. Hans Posse’s diary, June 21, 1939, quoted in Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 187.
43. Angelika Enderlein, Monika Flacke, and Hanns Christian Löhr, “Database on the Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Commission: Linz): History of the Linz Collection,” German Historical Museum.
44. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 194.
45. Ibid., 197–207.
46. Timothy Ryback, “Hitler’s Forgotten Library,” Atlantic, May 2003.
47. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 211–12.
48. Christa Schroeder, He Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler’s Secretary (London: Frontline Books, 2009), 218.
49. Veronika Hofer and Hannes Androsch, “Introduction,” in Berg der Schätze (Scharnstein, Austria: Prospera Verlag, 2006), 9.
50. Veronika Hofer and Hannes Androsch, eds., Berg der Schätze (Scharnstein, Austria: Prospera Verlag, 2006), 24.
51. Ibid., 25–26.
52. Ibid., 33.
53. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 220.
54. Katharina Hammer, Glanz im Dunkel: Die Bergung von Kunstschätzen im Salzkammergut am Ende des 2. Weltkrieg (Altaussee, Austria: Burgverein Pflindsberg, 1996), 80.
55. Ibid., 95.
56. Ibid., 100.
57. Ibid., 103.
58. Ibid., 106.
59. Greg Bradsher, “Nazi Gold: The Merkers Mine Treasure,” Prologue Magazine 31, no. 1 (Spring 1999), https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/spring/nazi-gold-merkers-mine-treasure.html.
60. Schroeder, He Was My Chief, 189–90.
61. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 235.
62. Joachim Fest, Hitler: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main: Propyläen, 1973), 520, 712.
63. Kater, Culture in Nazi Germany, 60.
64. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 239.
65. Ibid., 247–50.
66. Interview in Hans Jürgen Syberberg, dir., Winifred Wagner und die Geschichte des Hauses Wahnfried (1975).
67. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 258.
68. Interview in Syberberg, dir., Winifred Wagner und die Geschichte des Hauses Wahnfried.
69. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 262.
70. Adolf Hitler, speech on January 26, 1928, in Munich, quoted in ibid., 271.
71. Helmut Heiber, Göbbels-Reden 1932–1945 (Bindlach, Germany: Gondrom Verlag, 1998), 227–28.
72. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 276.
73. Michael Walter, Hitler in der Oper: Deutsches Musikleben 1919–1945 (Berlin: Springer, 1995), 155–57.
74. Glen W. Gadberry, Theatre in the Third Reich, the Prewar Years: Essays on Theatre in Nazi Germany (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995).
75. Music and the Holocaust, https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/.
76. Ibid.
77. William Grange, “Rules, Regulations, and the Reich: Comedy under the Auspices of the Propaganda Ministry,” in Essays on Twentieth Century German Drama and Theatre, ed. Helmuth Rennert (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2004), 196–97.
78. David Weinberg, “Approaches to the Study of Film in the Third Reich: A Critical Appraisal,” Journal of Contemporary History 19, no. 1 (January 1984): 109.
79. Ibid., 111.
80. Ibid.
81. Klaus Backes, Hitler und die Bildenden Künste (Cologne: Dumont, 1988), 181.
82. Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 104.
83. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 286.
84. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 97–98.
85. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 312.
86. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 35.
87. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 315.
88. Hitler, “Art and Politics.”
89. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 319.
90. Norman Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), 592.
91. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 321.
92. Jochen Thies, Architekt der Weltherrschaft: Die Endziele Hitlers (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1976), 79–80.
93. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 321.
94. Goebbels’s diary, September 10, 1937, quoted in ibid., 330.
95. Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth (New York: Random House, 1995), 185.
96. Werner Jochman, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Knaus, 1980), 318.
97. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 117–22.
98. Goebbels’s diary, July 9, 1940, quoted in ibid., 331.
99. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 69.
100. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 331–33.
101. Christa Schroeder, Er war mein Chef (Munich: Langen Müller, 1985), 219.
102. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 143.
103. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 335–36.