Pleasure and Power in Nazi Germany

On the eve of the Second World War, consumers in Nazi Germany openly complained to interviewers from the Society for Consumer Research (Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung) about shortages and the declining quality of goods. This is one of many remarkable anecdotes in the excellent edited volume, Pleasure and Power in Nazi Germany, which complicates and textures the image of both daily life and policy under this regime. The volume does not dismiss, as merely confused and dangerous nostalgia, oral histories that have described the early Nazi period as ‘good times’. Nor does it bend to possible critiques regarding the triviality or inappropriateness of investigating pleasure in a period so defined by terror. Instead, this volume convincingly asserts that diverse pleasures, including material satisfaction, aesthetic enjoyment and identification with community, reconciled Germans with the regime even in its final years. In other words, pleasure and power were deeply intertwined. This volume emerged through a workshop at the German Historical Institute in Paris, and the eleven essays range widely in topic. The first two sections, ‘Consumption and the Privileges of Pleasure’ and ‘Entertainment and the Aesthetics of Pleasure’, offer welcome information and insights into an established but still flourishing historiography on Nazi consumer culture. Essays by S. Jonathan Wiesen and Fabrice d’Almeida tackle the highly debated question of how well the regime provided materially for the populace. Both authors critique Götz Aly’s assertion that the regime simply ‘bought’ the loyalty of Germans with confiscated and plundered goods. Using surveys gathered by the Society for Consumer Research, Wiesen reveals German consumers’ material frustrations as well as their faith in future prosperity and its pleasures. Thus, the essay provides perspective on the experiential and emotional impact of what Hartmut Berghoff has described as regulatory policies of ‘enticement and deprivation’. D’Almeida stratifies Aly’s characterization of the German masses as ‘Hitler’s Beneficiaries’ into different tiers of consumption, from the core elite to the ‘Aryan’ masses. The disparity in access to luxury goods, he argues, indicates the absence of genuine populist sentiment within the upper ranks. Both essays underscore the inability of the regime to compel adherence to an ideologically pure model of consumption purged of alcohol, cigarettes, French cuisine and French fashion. Essays by Pamela Swett and David Pan explore symbolic continuities and breaks from previous periods. After the reconstitution of the German advertising industry in 1934, advertisements for anti-impotence treatments shifted the blame for impotence from social crisis to hormonal deficiencies, and the promised benefits from marital bliss to male satisfaction, according to Swett. Manufacturers initiated these changes, however, based on their own reading of the market, rather than because of pressure from the newly-constituted Ad Council (Werberat). Pan argues that the popularity of the play Faust in Nazi Germany stemmed from both ‘a longer development of German culture’ (p. 92) and the contemporary relevance of its moral themes. Here, he touches on whether the potential for ‘escapism’ or ‘distraction’ determined the success of entertainments—a question further developed in essays by Patrick Merziger on humour books, by Karl Christian Führer on popular magazines, and by Corey Ross on radio and film. These essays concur that, even if Germans responded tepidly to overt propaganda, they nevertheless preferred works that affirmed state values, promoted social cohesion and referenced current events, particularly before 1943. But a consensus also emerges from these essays that, regardless of the experiences of the populace, the regime never endorsed pleasure for its own sake but only in the service of broader ideological goals.

Aesthetics · Art · Flourishing · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Pleasure · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · European history and politics · History · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Imagens e textos de propaganda sobre a União Soviética na revista Die Wehrmacht (Berlim, 1939-1944)

  Open Access•João Arthur Ciciliato Franzolin•Topoi (Rio de Janeiro•2021

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