Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich / Edition 1

by George L. Mosse

Overview

What was life like under the Third Reich? What went on between parents and children? What were the prevailing attitudes about sex, morality, religion? How did workers perceive the effects of the New Order in the workplace? What were the cultural currents--in art, music, science, education, drama, and on the radio?
Professor Mosse's extensive analysis of Nazi culture--groundbreaking upon its original publication in 1966--is now offered to readers of a new generation. Selections from newspapers, novellas, plays, and diaries as well as the public pronouncements of Nazi leaders, churchmen, and professors describe National Socialism in practice and explore what it meant for the average German.
By recapturing the texture of culture and thought under the Third Reich, Mosse's work still resonates today--as a document of everyday life in one of history's darkest eras and as a living memory that reminds us never to forget.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299193041
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	10/09/2003
Series:	George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

George L. Mosse (1919-1999) was the John C. Bascom Professor of European History and the Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has long been recognized as one of the most creative and innovative historians of modern Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century. His research ranged from the Protestant Reformation and the seventeenth century to the political, social and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mosse revolutionized the study of Nazism and facism, and opened new dimensions in such diverse fields as nationalism, racism, historical memory and symbolism, the commemoration of mass death, German-Jewish history, and the history of sexuality and the body. No other Europeanist historian of the later twentieth century exhibited so broad a range of research and analysis.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	xix
1.	Hitler Sets the Tone	1
	Editor's Introduction	1
	From Culture as the Faith in an Ideal Reich to Its Diffusion Among the Masses	5
	The Power of Ideals	5
	The Aryan as Custodian of Culture	5
	The State Is Not an End But a Means	6
	The Jew Has No Culture	7
	The Necessity of Propaganda	7
	How Hitler Viewed the Masses	8
	Education Must Be Based on Ideals	9
	Education, Instinct, and Will	10
	Hitler Defines Culture in Defining Art	11
	The Cultural Renascence	11
2.	What Sort of a Revolution?	17
	Editor's Introduction	17
	The Good Fight	24
	Here Marched the New Germany	24
	A Meeting-Hall Brawl	27
	The Bonds of Family	30
	National Socialism Has Restored the Family	30
	The German Volk Is an Interlacing of Families	34
	Marriage, Morality, and Property	35
	The Ideal of Womanhood	39
	The Tasks of Women	39
	Emancipation from the Emancipation Movement	40
	Domestic Diligence from Blood and Soil	41
	The Female Bird	41
	Women That We Can Love	41
	Frau Goebbels on German Women	42
	The Blond Craze	43
	A Shiny Nose and the German Nation	43
	Faith and Beauty	44
	Right Conduct	45
	The Honor Cross of the German Mother	45
	The Woman Student	46
	Against the Political Woman	47
	The Social Reality	47
	Does the Five O'Clock Tea Suit Our Time?	47
	Fairytale Scenes on Peacock Island	53
	Beautiful Gowns at the Annual Press Ball	54
	Wanted: Croupiers	55
3.	The Foundation: Racism	57
	Editor's Introduction	57
	The Nordic Race as "Ideal Type"	61
	Racial Soul, Landscape, and World Domination	65
	The Earth-Centered Jew Lacks a Soul	75
	Heredity and Racial Biology for Students	79
	The New Biology: Training in Racial Citizenship	81
	To Preserve the Strength of the Race: Compulsory Sterilization	90
4.	Building Myths and Heroes	93
	Editor's Introduction	93
	Nietzsche and National Socialism	97
	A Soldier Believes in Plain Talk	101
	Michael: A German Fate	104
	Germany Must Live	112
	The Difference Between Generations	116
	Fritz Todt: Contemporary Hero	118
	Frederick the Great: Prussian Hero	119
	The Diary of an SA Man's Bride	122
	On Festivities in the School	127
5.	Toward A Total Culture	133
	Editor's Introduction	133
	Intellectuals Must Belong to the People	141
	The Birth of Intellectuals	145
	Streicher the Intellectual	146
	A Balance Is Necessary	146
	The German Peasant Formed German History	147
	Freedom and Organization	151
	On the National Responsibility of Publishers	159
	Goebbels Forbids Art Criticism	162
	What Is German in German Art?	163
	The Poet Summoned by History	165
	Wulfe's Manor: Two Episodes in a Peasant's Life	168
	A Rowdy as Hero: From an Anti-Jewish Novel	177
	Events at the Prussian State Theater	185
	Playbills of the Herne City Theater, 1936-1940	188
	The Winter Program of the German Radio, 1936	191
	Fundamental Features of Radio Programming, 1938	192
	German Films for Venice, 1938	194
	The Film Public Is Not So Stupid	195
6.	Science and National Socialism	197
	Editor's Introduction	197
	The Limits of Science	201
	Respect for Facts and Aptitude for Exact Observation Reside in the Nordic Race	205
	Nature Presupposes a Spiritual Disposition	208
	Psychotherapy and Political World View	215
	The Physician Must Come to Terms with the Irrational	227
7.	Christianity	235
	Editor's Introduction	235
	The Fuhrer Bequeathed to Me by the Lord	241
	Christ in the Community of Blood and Fate	241
	The Task of Proclaiming Christ among the German People	243
	National Socialist and Christian Concepts Are Incompatible	244
	The Epistle of St. Paul Is in Error	248
	To Capture Youth	250
	Judaism, Christianity, and Germany	256
	Nurses and Philosophy	261
8.	The Key: Education of Youth	263
	Editor's Introduction	263
	Inside the School	271
	To Be Part of a Movement!	271
	The Parents Abdicate	274
	Skepticism and Participation	276
	The Lively Youngster	280
	The Test	280
	Physical Education and National Socialism	281
	Ten Calories More Character	282
	The Fellowship of Battle	283
	Racial Instruction and the National Community	283
	Do Not Stand Apart!	284
	Can Youth Be National Socialist?	286
	A Schoolbook Sampler	287
	The Fuhrer of Elementary-School Children	287
	From the Oak Tree to Certain Victory	288
	The Sun as a Symbol of Dedicated Youth	290
	A Flight Through the Storm and Hitler's Mission	291
	Essays with Right Answers	293
	The Pressures Outside the School	294
	The Hitler Youth	294
	The Development of the SS Man	303
	The University Community	304
	The Renovation of the Academic Community	304
	Work Is Future	308
	Admission to the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin	309
	New Courses for a New Reich	312
	The Nature of Academic Freedom	314
	Jewish Graduates Are Numbers, Not Persons	317
9.	What is the State and Who are its Citizens?	319
	Editor's Introduction	319
	Public Law in a New Context	323
	Civil Rights and the Natural Inequality of Man	327
	The Reich Citizenship Law	335
	The Jew Is Outside the Law	336
	Anchoring the Civil Service in the Nation	337
10.	Workers and Shopkeepers	341
	Editor's Introduction	341
	The Worker: Ideal and Reality	346
	Statistics on Occupational Composition of Members of the Nazi Party	346
	The Struggle for the Achievement of German Socialism	347
	The Correct Attitude Toward Work	348
	Plant Managers--This Must Not Be!	350
	A Wage Freeze for Stenographers	350
	The Conversion of "Comrade" Muller	351
	The Bill is Presented	357
	What the German People Pay in Taxes, 1939	357
	The Cost of Living, 1933-1937	359
	They Who Serve Are Well Paid	361
	The Situation of the German Retail Trade	362
	Throttling the Retail Trade	362
	The Price Police	363
	A Butcher Resists	364
11.	The Assumption of Power	365
	Editor's Introduction	365
	Our Town under the Swastika	369
	The Changed Tempo of Life: The City of Herne	375
	The Nazis Take Over Cologne	377
	Little Things Create Pressures	383
	Vanishing Friends	385

Editorial Reviews

"A full picture of the scope and methods of the anti-cultural vandalism of the Nazis."--Christian Science Monitor

"A magnificently edited collection."--Chicago Tribune

"For the sanity of the human race it is essential that the record of Hitler's Germany should remain alive and be retold again and again as a warning for the future. Professor Mosse's book helps keep the record alive."--Saturday Review

From the Publisher