“[Potter’s] book unquestionably provides a ground-breaking historiographic foundation for understanding the mechanisms that stood behind the descriptions and analyses of the Third Reich and the cultural and artistic life of the Nazi state….She raises significant questions related to myths about the unrestricted power of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes in all matters related to culture. And, most important, she hints at anti-democratic, authoritarian trends found in liberal and Western societies today where cultural life is ostensibly immune to intervention and coercion.”
“Pamela M. Potter’s excellent critical historiography boldly breaks down the barriers between the disciplines of music history, theater and film history, and art history to show how the historiography on culture during the Nazi period produced blind spots and distortions that are still in fundamental need of correction.”—Paul B. Jaskot, author of The Nazi Perpetrator: Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right
“In this pathbreaking work, Potter challenges old, well-worn assumptions regarding the creation and consumption of culture. Her book is indispensable for a thorough understanding of culture in Germany, from the Weimar Republic through the Third Reich and the early decades of West and East Germany.”—Michael H. Kater, author of Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present
“Potter’s brilliant and wide-ranging study is both a new interpretation of culture during the Third Reich and an original analysis of the historiography of the postwar period. She shows how the arts in many respects flourished in Nazi Germany, and how this was viewed by most postwar scholars as an ‘inconvenient’ reality. Authoritative and original, this book is a tour de force.”—Jonathan Petropoulos, author of Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany
“Potter has deftly integrated cultural history and critical historiography into a compelling study that should be read by all students and scholars interested in Nazi Germany and the relationship between art and politics in twentieth-century Europe.”—Alan E. Steinweis, author of Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts
