The Nazi-fascist New Order for European Culture

Following France s crushing defeat in June 1940, the Nazis moved forward with plans to reorganize a European continent now largely under Hitler s heel. While Germany s military power would set the agenda, several among the Nazi elite argued that permanent German hegemony required something more: a p [...]
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Following France s crushing defeat in June 1940, the Nazis moved forward with plans to reorganize a European continent now largely under Hitler s heel. While Germany s military power would set the agenda, several among the Nazi elite argued that permanent German hegemony required something more: a pan-European cultural empire that would crown Hitler s wartime conquests. At a time when the postwar European project is under strain, Benjamin G. Martin brings into focus a neglected aspect of Axis geopolitics, charting the rise and fall of Nazi-fascist soft power in the form of a nationalist and anti-Semitic new ordering of European culture.As early as 1934, the Nazis began taking steps to bring European culture into alignment with their ideological aims. In cooperation and competition with Italy s fascists, they courted filmmakers, writers, and composers from across the continent. New institutions such as the International Film Chamber, the European Writers Union, and the Permanent Council of composers forged a continental bloc opposed to the degenerate cosmopolitan modernism that held sway in the arts. In its place they envisioned a Europe of nations, one that exalted traditionalism, anti-Semitism, and the Volk. Such a vision held powerful appeal for conservative intellectuals who saw a European civilization in decline, threatened by American commercialism and Soviet Bolshevism.Taking readers to film screenings, concerts, and banquets where artists from Norway to Bulgaria lent their prestige to Goebbels s vision, Martin follows the Nazi-fascist project to its disastrous conclusion, examining the internal contradictions and sectarian rivalries that doomed it to failure."