Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics

"Frederic Spotts, the distinguished author of Bayreuth, here develops a radical new interpretation of Hitler. Hitler's aim was the Aryan super-state, but it was to be expressed as much in Nazi art as in politics. Culture was not only the end, to which power should aspire, but the means of achieving it. This reassessment of Hitler's aims and motivations examines his perverse obsessions and shows how his artistry - expressed in spectacles, festivities, parades, rallies and political dramas, as well as in architecture, painting and music - destroyed any sense of individuality and linked the German people with his own drives. In a wide-ranging argument which covers topics as varied as Wagner's operas and the German Autobahn system, Spotts provides a key to the understanding of the Third Reich which has hitherto been missing in more straightforwardly political and military studies."