[.ca] Hitler And The Power Of Aesthetics (ISBN 1585673455)

Cyanide Capsules Are Available At The Door...:
Do we really need another book about "Der Fuhrer"? Surprisingly, if the book is this one, the answer is yes. Because this book looks at Hitler from a different angle- one that is pretty much unknown to the layperson: this book is about the "sensitive," "artistic," and "cultivated" Hitler. As you might expect when using such words in connection with Hitler, contradictions abound. The man who could weep while listening to the music of Wagner is the same man who, the moment he came to power, fired or drove into exile musicians and artists he didn't approve of: Jews, Bolsheviks, Modernists, etc. On the other hand, if he liked you personally and thought you were talented, he would sometimes look the other way- he supported, or at least didn't harass, several people who were Jewish or who disagreed with him politically. Some of you may have winced when I used the word "cultivated" in connection with Hitler. But, consider the following: he was very well read (and had a tremendous, possibly photographic, memory); he was a competent, though unimaginative, artist- he could draw and paint as well as your average art school student (and he was completely self-taught); he knew a tremendous amount about the operas of Wagner, and was a good judge of opera singers; he was knowledgeable about architecture, could make architectural sketches, and could intelligently discuss technical aspects of the craft, etc. Having said that, we must remember the flip-side- Hitler was very narrowminded. His love of art was pretty much limited to 19th century German Romantics and some of the painters of the Italian Renaissance. He thought all modern art- which for him started with the Impressionists- was trash, and decadent to boot. He loved opera, but only Wagner and Puccini. He didn't much care for other music- he wasn't really enthusiastic about Beethoven, Mozart, etc. He couldn't stand Brahms, although he eventually did develop a taste for Bruckner. He thought modern music, with its dissonances and atonality, was horrible. In architecture, he admired the Greeks and Romans- but in his building plans for the Third Reich everything had to be magnified to colossal size to awe people. Glass and steel structures left him cold, although he grudgingly realized he'd have to agree to build skyscrapers if only to show that National Socialist Germany could outdo America. Surprisingly, Hitler generally liked his culture "neat." He didn't want political messages- he wanted high-quality, beautiful, soul-elevating art/music/sculpture. Of course, he would tell you what qualified as high-quality, beautiful, and soul-elevating. It may seem odd, but Hitler was embarrassed by the crudity of his Nazi cronies. The vast majority of them had no interest in art, music and sculpture. They'd be dragged, although only silently kicking and screaming, to Bayreuth for the yearly dose of Wagner. They'd fall asleep and start to snore. No wonder the Little Corporal preferred the company of artists, musicians and sculptors. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the man who wanted "art" with no political content- "art" that elevated people and helped them to get away from the problems, big and small, of everyday life, succeeded in politicizing culture to an unprecedented degree. This book is a brilliant achievement by Mr. Spotts. It forces us to look at Hitler not as a ranting, foaming-at-the-mouth, caricature, but as a fellow human being with, dare I say it, some positive qualities. Yes, the devil is given his due.....but Mr. Spotts never forgets who or what he is dealing with. Why did I give this review the title I did? Mr. Spotts mentions that it was agreed that, when the end of the "Thousand Year Reich" was at hand, the Berlin Philharmonic would add Bruckner's Fourth Symphony to the programme. On the night of April 13th, 1945, the symphony was finally played. As people filed out of the concert hall afterwards, Hitler Youth were in the lobby, hawking cyanide capsules to interested takers. Poor Bruckner probably turned over in his grave.

Amazing:
An amazing read. I have read a lot about Mr.Hitler and the National Socialist Movement, and I have see references to Mr. Hitler's artistic bends. However to see all of it in a single book..AMAZING. Nothing can take away the horror of 1933-1944 in Germany and Europe, but to think that the whole purpose, in the eyes of the dictator was to create beauty. Adolf Hitler wanted to create a world of absolute German neo-classical art and society. In and of itself, not a bad goal, but not an achieveable goal, and espscially in the way it was attempted! An amazing new angle at the often flat and one sided person of Adolf Hitler.

A revelation. A very important book.:
I had never previously read books that dealt with Hitler or World War II before reading this one. Like every other Baby Boomer, I've seen enough films and TV shows to write my own WWII movie that most people would probably find credible. What we know of the war is about the fighting, the arrests of those pronounced "undesirable" by the Nazis, children denouncing their parents to the authorities, the concentration camps, etc. The Germany that Hitler presented to his people was a forward-looking state of culture and enlightenment, the acme of modern civilization. People want to believe the best about themselves. Hitler had an instinctive sense of theatre, a passion for ritual, and the desire to make everyone in the entire world subservient to him, as well as the power to squelch all opposition. In some ways, he was visionary. The Volkswagen was mostly his idea. (It was created to justify his building of the Autobahn, which is still one of the wonders of modern Germany.) But he wanted everyone to have HIS taste. Only his taste was acceptable. Everything else was either kitsch or decadent. Disagreement meant losing one's job in most cases or, in some extreme cases, a one-way ticket to Auschwitz. Of course, the most troubling aspect of Hitler was how he could have gotten so many people to go along with him. For me this book explains it. I think this is an important book that made me see things from a different perspective. Parts of the book made me drop my jaw. "Awesome" is an overused word, but it really is the applicable term here. The author made me extremely interested in a subject that basically had little appeal for me. I want to do a lot more reading about this subject now. Spotts' book is a knockout. It gets five stars from me.

A must read book:
Absolutely compelling. No other writer can dissect the great paradox as much as Spotts. Hitler, being an artist whose role was to create, killed and annihilated Jews for the sake of Aryan supremacy. Hitler psychologically manipulated people by showing massive shows and major productions (with all the lighting effects) similar to all the processions and religious practices done by the church. People looked up to him as if they were experiencing epiphany. Hitler was a great fan of the arts. He loved the opera, theater and spent most of his time on how Berlin could be a perfect city for all his architectural ambitions. He was a product of all his artistic frustrations that stemmed when he was rejected in the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He commissioned people to take care of Munich so that it would be the center of the arts and remove the title from its Vienese rival. Certainly, avoiding anything that is modern and jewish. Spotts took a lot of references especially from Mein Kampf. This book is a must read to understand the psychology why Hitler succumbed to his own good intentions and to his end.

A Tremendous Achievement:
This is the book that I wanted to write. That having been said, I think Mr. Spotts did a considerably better job of it that I ever could. It is impossible to begin to understand Adolf Hitler without understanding his aesthetic approach to the world as he wanted it to be. Usually, histories and biographies of Hitler dismiss his interest in art as either sub-bourgeois sentimentality or propaganda-oriented. This book is intelligent enough not to take either of these tacks, and as a result delivers an exhaustive and meaningful account of how Hitler was, ultimately, an artist who achieved political power. I wrote an initial paper on the subject in college (imagine how popular that was), but my thesis centered primarily on Hitler's hopes for his art career and the psychological issues underlying his artistic preferences. This book addresses the former, but not the latter, I think quite rightly. What Spotts does, which I would never have been able to do, is exhaustively examine Hitler's work schedules and attendance at specific meetings and events, not to mention budget allocations. This establishes without question the priorities he put on various components of the arts, versus politics or even the business of fighting the war. Spotts is mostly objective, or mildly condemnatory. This makes for a more focused read. I think this is the only book I have ever seen on Amazon.com where all the reviews are five stars. It absolutely deserves it.