It was my longtime interest in social realism and heroic realism in Germany and Soviet Russia between the wars that brought me to this book, and although its focus was much more on the history than the painting, sculpture and architecture, it didn’t wholly disappoint. There was much of interest in its pages and it kept me reading, and in that I have positive feelings towards it. One misgiving I have, however, is that although it never says it directly, it gives the impression that Nazis in Germany, and the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, represented a time, unlike other periods in history, when politics got involved in art. One might look back to medieval paintings when kings were presented with authority, or when merchants paid handsomely to be placed in religious art works. One might also look the case of abstract expressionism after the second world war, especially to Jackson Pollock, Rockefeller, and the CIA. The above , however, is such a small misgiving and shouldn't put anyone off reading it.

This was a very informative book on how the Nazi Regime tried to control the minds of people through culture, New art made during the Weimar Era was bad and old art was good. Jewish art was bad except for Jews and after Kristallnacht, non-existent, Hitler even arranged a travelling art show to showcase bad art called a "degenerate art" show. Books and movies were written to show pure Aryan love and the countryside as the ideal. Whether this was real or not. Hitler went with the idyllic.

It was interesting to note as the war continued and losing seemed a real possibility, that Goebbels added light music and jazz back into the playlists. The soldiers were already listening to this music on BBC broadcasts and people were upset by the depravities of war. Movie houses were destroyed by allied bombs and there were few musicians left due the amount of men needed at the front and women in munitions work. Radio entertainment was the only outlet as people scrunching for food do no read a whole lot.

While there was much culture created by the Nazis, much of it has not been translated into English. The literature and movies of the Weimar Republic for the most part has been and that is the true test of a lasting culture.