The art and architecture of Nazi Germany: 1933-39

This thesis consists of two major sections. The first part is a description of the intellectual framework which underpinned the aesthetic thinking and cultural policies of the Nazis in the period 1933-39. The second section is an analysis of a selected number of paintings and buildings in order to uncover the contradictions which were embedded in these cultural artefacts. This part of the analysis sets out a brief historical resume, of some early attempts at the creation of a mass-based art, and explores the transformations which this process engendered in the traditional modes of European high art. This analysis of Nazi art attempts to relate both the form and the content of the artefacts to the wider context of the clash between the Nazi movement as a mass based populistic political phenomenon and its later retrenchment in the form of a highly stratified caste system based upon the totalitarian concentration of power in a strong absolutistic state. The final section attempts to encompass certain extra-aesthetic phenomena such as parades, rallies and war memorials, in order to illustrate this working out of the basic contradiction in Nazi aesthetics throughout the whole fabric of their political spectacle