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.The unusual level of attention the Nazis paid to the mass mediawas based in no small part on the need to mould patterns of consump-tion and pleasure-seeking in accordance with this overarching priority.Second, one of the avowed goals of the National Socialist movementwas to overcome the competing class, regional and religious loyalties inGermany through the cultivation of a wholesome and assimilationistnational culture shared by all national comrades.But most importantly,as a movement whose very existence was based on Germany s defeat andhumiliation in 1918, the Nazi party fervently believed it had learned the lessons of the war : namely that, in Goebbels s words, we did not lose thewar because our artillery gave out but because the weapons of our mindsdid not fire.What Wilhelmine elites had allegedly failed to recognizewas that the mobilization of the mind is as necessary as, possibly evenmore important than, the material mobilization of the nation.2Hence the execution of the Second World War was to be totally differ-ent from the mistakes of the First.In stark contrast to 1914, when mostbelligerent governments radically curtailed public amusements, in 1939 156 Corey Rossthe Nazi leadership like their opponents regarded entertainment as avital factor for popular mobilization.Even seemingly frivolous amuse-ments were now legitimated in the eyes of political elites as an integralpart of psychological warfare.As Goebbels confided in his diary, enter-tainment is nowadays politically crucial, perhaps even decisive for thewar (kriegsentscheidend).3 Yet it is important to recognize that the Nazigovernment never regarded entertainment as an end in itself, and wasnot about to do so in the midst of a war.Amusement was deliberatelyconceived as a lure to political programming, just as recreation in gen-eral was regarded as a factor of production.Although it is extremelydifficult to discern any specifically Nazi characteristics among most ofthe actual artefacts themselves during this period the countless films,radio shows and musical hits that appeared over the latter 1930s andearly 1940s entertainment and pleasure were ultimately conceived asa means of achieving political goals.If the aim was to mobilize popular support, the trick, as always, wasto stir desires while channelling them in a particular direction.Put dif-ferently, the challenge was to strike a balance between release and con-trol.In the context of wartime Germany, this balance could obviouslynot be attained via heavy-handed ideological indoctrination.While ahard line might be feasible for the representative arts, in the realm ofmass entertainments the forms and messages needed to be more sub-tle and appealing.This was of course the logic behind the PropagandaMinistry s famous orchestra principle whereby different media andcultural outlets played different communicative roles.But certain sec-tions of the orchestra were always more prominent than others.Pleasureand entertainment formed the bedrock of popular culture in the ThirdReich, especially during the war.Perverse though it may seem, the veryyears in which the Nazis unleashed the most destructive war in historyactually marked a high point in the legitimation and popular consump-tion of public amusements.Never before were Germans so encouragedto indulge in light entertainment, and never before was it so acceptedby governing elites.Paradoxically, it was precisely amid the mountingcalls for discipline and self-sacrifice that the regime placed the greatestemphasis on pleasure.This resulted in a powerful set of contradictions and tensions thatescaped straightforward political control.Although the fuzzy boundarybetween political mobilization and consumer-centred entertainmentwas already more blurred than ever under the Nazis, there was none-theless an inbuilt dissonance between the desire to steer popular viewsand the need to provide amusement and distraction.Naturally, these Radio, Film and Morale 157two strategies are not mutually exclusive. Mere entertainment canundoubtedly function as political propaganda, and propaganda is at itsmost effective when it is also entertaining.But ultimately they are aim-ing at different ends and, despite their overlap, tend to diverge from oneanother.4 The Nazi leadership clearly recognized this.From the verybeginning of the regime, the aim of its chief propaganda officials wasto steer views without spoiling the atmosphere through overt didac-ticism.As the newly appointed Propaganda Minister proclaimed inMarch 1933, The correct political attitudes must be conveyed, but thisneed not be boring.You must use your imagination, an imaginationthat is based on firm foundations and that employs every means avail-able to bring to the masses the new way of thinking in a modern, up todate, interesting and appealing manner; instructive but not preachy. 5As Goebbels in particular recognized, pleasure and gratification were ofthe utmost importance.The aim was to forge a subtle union of politicalvalues with sensory experience, and the key to merging a positive innerexperience with Nazi sensibilities was to make it enjoyable.In the event, the actual balance that was struck between collectivemobilization on the one hand and individualized pleasure-seeking onthe other crucially depended on the wider military and political contextin which they operated.And of course this wider context changed dra-matically over the six years of the war, in terms of both military fortunesand in everyday life on the home front, of which public amusementswere an integral part for the bulk of the populace.As the followingdiscussion very briefly seeks to show, German popular entertainmentsthus underwent a noticeable evolution from mobilization to distractionover the course of the Second World War, not only in terms of what wason offer, but also though this is more difficult to trace and conclusionsmust therefore remain more provisional in terms of popular demand
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