Arts, Economy, and Foreign Relations
Week 13
Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6uVrO5d6KU
Light-weight screwball comedies
Glückskinder (Lucky Kids, 1936)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hgUx9h3nU4
“Degenerate art” exhibit, 1937
Arno Breker’s Readiness
Speer’s New Reich Chancellery, 1934-43
Hitler’s plans for Germania
Nazis’ economic revamping
• Preceding administrations’ improvements• World-wide improvement in the economy• Autobahn: over 100,000 jobs• Reinhardt programs: investment in job creation• Support of agricultural sector, hereditary farms• Marriage loan scheme: women at home• Creative way with statistics
“Primacy of politics”
• Tim Mason’s Marxist reinterpretation of Nazi Germany, written in 1960s and 1970s
• Rather than a consequence of capitalism, Fascism was driven by ideology
• Big industry stayed on the side• In the middle of the total war, improving workers’
standard of living• Lively discussion among East German historians
German foreign policy, 1933-41
• At first calming other countries, pact with Poland• Failed coup in Austria in 1934, turning the country into autocracy• Saarland (1935), Rhineland (1936)• Rapprochement with Italy: conflict in Ethiopia and Spain• Berlin-Rome Axis, 1936: closing ranks with Mussolini• Hossbach memorandum, Nov 1937• Japan becomes ally in 1937• Austria annexed in March 1938• Appeasement: Czechoslovakia broken up Sep 38, occupied March 39• Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, August 39• Attack on Poland and beginning of WWII, Sep 1, 1939• Operation Barbarossa: attach on the Soviet Union, June 1941
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