The Definition of Good vs. Bad Art under the Third Reich

Throughout the Third Reich era, the NSDAP consistently asserted that any art, literature, or music that did not fit its careful mold of what was acceptable was not art at all.  The Nazi regime particularly disdained any artistic form produced by a Jew, even if such a work would have been revered by the Nazis had it been produced by someone of Aryan descent.  Cohen uses his film the Architecture of Doom to illustrate the way in which Hitler and the Nazi propagandists used art and aesthetics to justify the destruction of people in order to create a beautiful and homogenous society.  The Nazis saw art as a vessel to inculcate the German people with their ideology of racial purity, which becomes the ultimate definition of good art and bad art during the Third Reich: art was considered “good” insofar as it furthered Nazi ideals, and was “bad” or degenerate if it did not extol the characteristics that Hitler considered beautiful and pure.  One example of the Nazi classification of art is the inability of Hitler and his contemporaries to see the value in modern art.  As we saw in the movie, Paul Schultz-Naumburg even juxtaposed pictures of the mentally-ill with paintings of modern, or “degenerate,” art.  Furthermore, and not surprisingly, Hitler seemed to like all art to be grandiose.  From his elaborate plans for the new Berlin to the monstrous painting of the Alps he purchased, Hitler seemed to see art as a reflection of the grandeur of the Nazi party and himself.  For this reason, Hitler saw the state itself as a work of art, and this abstract and idealistic idea most likely contributed to the eventual downfall of the Reich.

I think Cohen definitely meant for this to be a piece of political art, although it is unique in that he is not trying to convince the audience of something, but rather to illuminate something that they may not have known.  In other words, Cohen doesn’t need to prove or argue in his film that Nazi ideology was backwards and irrational.  He most like assumes that the majority of his audience already knows that.  But I do think that he made this film in an attempt to show us how the Nazis utilized art and aesthetics in an attempt to infiltrate society with his racial ideology.  While it could have possibly gone undetected by contemporary Germans, it is easy to see in retrospect how subtle some of the Nazis’ messages through art were.