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This question is something of a definitional quagmire. Rather than attempt to provide a detailed account of the concepts of Ideology, Nazi Thought and Mass-Culture, I will instead provide a framework of `common-sense' working definitions within which to discuss the problem. In so doing, I will attempt to draw out some of the relationships between Nazi ideology, propaganda, cultural production, and cultural consumption. In assessing these relationships I will first discuss some terminology. Next, I will analyse three themes: Hitler and his image, the volkgemeinschaft, and anti-Semitism. Finally I will offer some interpretations and conclusions.
`Ideology' is a slippery term, and Nazi ideology is notoriously difficult to define, especially given its propensity to alter over time. While recognising the "heterogeneous nature of the catch-all Nazi programme" [1] it is still possible to highlight some important elements amongst the "conglomerate of ideas and precepts, of concepts, hopes and emotions" [2], elements which represent powerful driving forces acting upon Nazi policy-making. It is the three elements discussed in detail below that I will refer to as `Nazi ideology'. `Mass-culture' is, again, a term with little descriptive power in itself. My usage of the term here, rather than being limited to the arts and broadcast media, will be extremely broad: mass-culture seen as any aspect of social life which impinged upon the consciousness of large sections of the population - from film to public speech, from music to leisure associations. Another definition that informs the discussion here relates to the interpretation of the word `mould': it could imply the action of an operative force on a passive recipient. However, a population of human beings is not composed of inanimate, insensate material: to any transaction between itself and the state, the government, the Party, or in relation to any form of cultural expression, the population brings a history of personal experience and development, cultural prejudices and traditions, and behaviours. Any interaction is a dialectical process, not a puppet-like response to some omnipotent external stimulus.
The first ideological area to discuss here is the role and image of Adolf Hitler, both as leader of the Nazi Party and as national leader. Since Hitler was such a profoundly influential figure in the Party, and since his influence shaped the policies propounded by the Nazis both in and out of power, it is hard not to conclude that Hitler's thinking was the key influence in Nazi ideology and practice.
Hitler's weltanschauung, although turgidly expressed in his writings and riddled with obfuscating hyperbole, retained throughout the 1919 - 1945 period some essential elements : racial hierarchy, anti-Semitism, and the conviction that what Germany required was the "rebirth of the moral and spiritual energies of the nation." [3] It is these precepts that permeate the whole body of Nazi thinking.
When Hitler joined the DAP it was just one amongst many extreme right-wing groups in Bavaria, but the consensus seems to be that it was largely through the political skills and personal charisma of Hitler that the NSDAP became such a powerful force in German politics: it is a commonplace that Hitler was a mesmeric orator and activist, and this `lay' view is borne out both by reminiscences such as Speer's and by the contemporary accounts of friend and foe alike. Even before the Fuhrerprinzip was institutionalised after 1933, Hitler was the dominant figure in the Party - despite the existence of factions such as the Rohm/SA nexus - and it was largely Hitler's image and appeal which brought the Nazis their electoral and political successes. [4] Once in power, the projection of the Fuhrer's image continued to play a central role in the Party's presentation of policy. In this way, Hitler's - and the Party's - ideological commitment to a strong, visionary leader was made manifest in propaganda and other forms of cultural representation. Reflecting his ideologically-driven task of "winning the soul of [the] people" [5] and his self-image as a `man of destiny', Hitler was portrayed in newsreels and on posters as a mixture of `man of the people' - glad-handing the crowds, sharing platforms with lowly workers - and of remote hero and `conscience of the nation'. These latter portrayals often have Hitler staring off into the distance, as if he were surveying the future and the destiny of the nation. [6] One image portrays him as a `Teutonic' knight with a silver-coloured breastplate, against a background of Nazi flags. Other recurrent themes are Hitler with children, or with his dogs.
This duality of the `great leader' and the `little man' partially accounts, I think, for his greater popularity compared to the oft-disdained `little Hitlers' of the NSDAP machine, and the perpetuation of the perception that `if only Hitler knew' (about the mismanagement and corruption of Party officials, and about the public's wartime sufferings) he would improve things. [7] This perception was to last long into the war, when the propaganda and lived reality became so divergent as to defy reconciliation. [8]
Hitler's public profile complemented that of his Party as a party of action - "Nazism was above all else an ideology of struggle, force and violence." [9] This dynamic of action, artistically embodied in official sculptures and paintings through the firm muscles and granite jaws of `Aryan' heroes poised for explosive action, [10] can also be contrasted with the inertia and chaos of the `alien' systems of liberal politics and democracy that were perceived as having been so disastrous for Germany after 1918. This sense of Hitler being the bringer of order and stability to replace an `un-German' chaos - an image promoted extensively in mass-culture, be it his oversight of a rally or his haranguing the forces of disorder - is also linked to another important element of Nazi ideology: the secure and stable national homeland and spiritual community to which Hitler and the Nazis would lead the German people - the volkgemeinschaft.
The Nazi promise of a volkgemeinschaft had its roots in deep intellectual soil. This soil was composed of a number of ideas: of a German `special mission' to protect the `true values' of civilisation [11]; of an `organic community' wherein the individual recognises the primacy of the nation and subjugates themselves to the national good; and of a "new Germanic community in which they and all of their countrymen [sic] would at last find the peace of complete unity." [12] These ideas of an organic community were growing in popularity by the end of the nineteenth century, and although they were still a minority interest, they reflected certain myths and ideas which had widespread popular currency: ideas about a pure, forest-based, ancient Germanic culture which permeated folklore and art iconography. [13] It is interesting to note here that for some Nazi ideologists, the search for a pedigree of Germanic origins led to attempts to obtain a mediaeval manuscript of Tacitus's Germania, a work which described the `Germans' - rather ironically - in distinctly non-`Aryan' terms - that is, as `red-haired savages.' [14] Despite this anomalous description, what was valuable to the Nazis in ideological terms was precisely the `barbarism' of the early Germanic peoples: the image of their pure, unconstructed nobility was set against the corrupting influences of effete Roman culture and politics. [15] These Nazi ideas resonate with the growth of a German sense of the "superiority of an anti-liberal, anti-enlightened German political tradition, and...[of the necessity to protect] the uniqueness of German culture from alien influence." [16] Nazi ideology did not generate these ideas, but they were appropriated and given wide dissemination: for example in the stress on `blood and soil' as the ancient source of national strength and unity, and in Hitler's participation in such traditional, quasi-pagan rites as the Buckeberg Harvest Thanksgiving ceremony. [17]
Although it is perhaps a little too much to suggest that post-Depression Germany had a "craving for the return to the womb of community," [18] it is clear that the Nazis were tapping a rich vein of feeling with their idealisation of a volkgemeinschaft where equality was promised for all, along with stability and reciprocity.
However, the volkgemeinschaft could not encompass all of Germany's existing population. The volkgemeinschaft was posited as a national community based not on universal political rights but on the premise of a racially-defined homogeneity. It was this definition of `national belonging' as a racially-based principle that focused Nazi theory and practice in a third crucial sphere: anti-Semitism.
As has been suggested above, the Nazis appropriated the idea of a pure Germanic `national soul' which had been corrupted by alien influences. By reifying the essence of national community in `blood' and `race', rather than in political or religious terms, the Nazis purveyed an exclusive conception of nationhood. `Aliens' could not be assimilated: they had their own unalterable spiritual and physical characteristics. The spurious identification of fixed, uneradicable racial characteristics was used to promote the idea of Germany as an organic body infected with the contagion of immensely harmful Jewish influence.
The portrayal of Jews as a poisonous infection is strong in some of Hitler's most repellent writings, including images of Jews as maggots and as crippled violators of pure German girls. Crassly racist stereotyped images of Jews were found everywhere - in newspapers, on film, in political cartoons, and in children's school books. The pervasiveness of racial exclusivity and prejudice is chillingly embodied in Jakob Graf's Heredity and Racial Biology for Students, where pseudo-science and racism combine in a set of assignments on "How we can learn to recognise a person's race." [19]
Although it can be argued that - at least as far as mischlinge were concerned - "ultimately Jewishness was defined in religious rather than racial terms[,]" [20] it is in the underlying assumptions about the biologically unchangeable nature of race, and of the unassimilability of different racial groups that Nazi ideology manifested its most profound and awful consequences. Even if past or present religious affiliation is the ultimate arbiter of one's racial categorisation, it is the consequences of that categorisation that are critical: once the categorisation was made, the categorised person assumed the full burdens of their racial genus, and there was no chance of assimilation. Destiny was thus fixed by biology.
In combining the conception of a racially-based volkgemeinschaft and identifying the Jews as the main impediment to the achievement of the ideal, the Nazis channelled existing ideas of nationhood, popular resentments, and opportunism into a series of anti-Semitic policies which both satisfied Hitler's (and the Party's) ideological aims and created a cultural environment awash with anti-Semitic imagery and sentiment, a cultural environment which arguably rendered the marginalisation and persecution of the Jews easier.
This last point, about the `normalisation' of ideas which might otherwise seem unacceptable, also suggests a further issue: the `Nazification' of social life. Hitler wrote of the "nationalization of the great masses." [21] This could be achieved not only through the censorship of the press and of foreign influences, through the increased provision of radios, through book-burnings, and through mass-audience newsreels and feature films, but also through the infusion of Nazi ideology and practice into everyday social discourse - a "symbolic framework through which people would be incorporated into the new `national community'." [22] One example of this would be the use of the so-called `German Greeting', which, however reluctantly it may have been performed, permeated all levels of society, at least in the public sphere.
Another issue to mention here is the pressure of conformity: anyone who has stood on a football terrace can probably testify to the effects of the crowd and of peer pressure in precipitating homogeneous group responses. How much easier to understand cultural conformity in a society where non-conformity is publicly punished by the agents of the state, and where the range of cultural expression and iconography is limited and demarcated by an official ideology which permeates so many aspects of cultural life.
A final consideration: the `cultural mediocrity' mentioned in much of the literature can be interpreted in a number of ways. Firstly, we can see this label as retrospective judgement and disapproval: guilt by association with the Nazi regime. Secondly, we might see it as the imposition of the judgement of a cultural elite - we are also supposed to despise bull-fighting posters, trios of ducks, and screw-top wine bottles, are we not? [23] Thirdly, the material that embodies this mediocrity, rather than being construed as the imposed, impoverished cultural vision of a few philistine Nazis, could instead be seen as a continuity of extant modes of cultural expression - perhaps it is true that "Nazi culture appealed to an unchanging popular taste." [24] Another way of finessing this is to see the emergence of an `inward-turning' attitude by Germans in the face of the demise of free political and cultural association at the hands of the Nazis' policing of cultural life. Hence the taste for escapist films, light music and intellectually undemanding cultural forms could be seen as a way of `non-engagement' with the real world of the Nazi society.
In conclusion, I would argue that, despite differences of emphasis and aim - for example Goebbels' pragmatism compared to Rosenberg's zealotry - there were aspects of Nazi ideology which strongly influenced the choices made in attempts to mould - to demarcate, proscribe, and channel - mass-culture. These attempts often drew on existing ideas and cultural forms, and ranged from direct intervention and regulation of artistic and journalistic endeavour to the more subtle effects of the incorporation of Nazi rituals and practices into everyday social life. Mass-culture encompasses, for me, every aspect of life, and in the Nazi desire to create a `total culture' [25] we can perhaps see a recognition of the interconnections between the varied identities and cultural spheres of modern societies. That the Nazis were able to channel existing beliefs and behaviours, and to subvert cultural life to the extent that they did is perhaps best evidenced by the deafening silence that seems apparent in mass-responses to the implementation of anti-Jewish measures and, ultimately, in the execution of the Final Solution.
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Bracher, The German Dictatorship Penguin, 1973
Karl Dietrich
Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich Penguin, 1970
Richard
Kershaw, Ian The Hitler Myth OUP, 1987
Kitchen, Michael The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany CUP, 1996
Mosse, George L. Nazi Culture Schocken Books, 1966
Noakes, J.
and
Pridham, G. Nazism 1919 - 1945
[a] Volume 1: The Rise to Power 1919 - 1934 University of Exeter
Press, 1983
and
[b] Volume 2: State, Economy and Society 1933 - 1939 University of Exeter
Press, 1984
Schama, Simon Landscape and Memory Harper Collins, 1995
Sereny, Gitta Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth Macmillan, 1995
Stern, Fritz The Politics of Cultural Despair University of
California Press, 1961
[1] Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth, OUP (1987), p. 49
[2] Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship, Penguin (1973), p. 38
[3] J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Nazism 1919 - 1945 Volume One: The Rise to Power 1919 - 1934, University of Exeter Press(1983), p. 13
[4] See Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, Macmillan (1995), Ch. II - V, passim, and Kershaw, op. cit., passim
[5] George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture, Schocken Books (1966), p. 8
[6] See, for example, the poster of Hitler reproduced in Michael Kitchen, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany, CUP (1996), p. 274
[7] Kershaw, op. cit., passim
[8] ibid.
[9] J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Nazism 1919 - 1945 Volume 2: State, Economy and Society 1933 - 1939, University of Exeter Press (1984), p. 377
[10] See, for example, the plates in Mosse, op. cit.
[11] See Bracher, op. cit., pp. 38 - 44
[12] Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, University of California Press (1961), p. 267
[13] See Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Harper Collins (1995), Ch. 2, passim
[14] ibid.
[15] ibid.
[16] Bracher, op. cit., p. 40
[17] Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich, Penguin (1974), p. 55
[18] ibid., p. 67
[19] Mosse, op. cit., pp. 79 - 81
[20] Kitchen, op. cit., p. 264
[21] Mosse, op. cit., p. 8
[22] J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Nazism 1919 - 1945 Volume 2: State, Economy and Society 1933 - 1939, p. 410
[23] This latter point may seem frivolous, but for me it is an example of the kind of tastes which, although labelled as `kitsch' in our culture by voices which dominate in one cultural sphere, are still capable of giving people pleasure and which still maintain their popularity in a different cultural sphere.
[24] Mosse, op. cit., p. xxii
[25] ibid., pp. 133 - 141