Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity
Hitler’s rise to power in Germany owed much to the creation of his own celebrity. Hitler believed he was an artist, not a politician, and in his Germany politics and culture became one. This celebrity was cultivated and nurtured by Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s supreme head of culture. Hitler and Goebbels enjoyed the company of beautiful female film stars, and Goebbels had his own ‘casting couch’. In Germany’s version of Hollywood there were scandals, starlets and secret agents, premieres and party politics, and an actress who was the key to killing Hitler. In Nazi Germany, the cult of celebrity was the embodiment of Hitler’s style of cultural governing. The country’s greatest celebrities, whether they were actors, writers or musicians, could be one of only two things: if they were compliant they were lauded and awarded status symbols for the regime, but If they resisted or were simply Jewish they were traitors to be interned and murdered. Meticulously researched, this book is the shocking account of Hitler’s fantasy of power and stardom, of the correlation between art and ambition, of films used as a weapon, and of sexual predilections.It reveals previously unpublished information about the ‘Hitler film’, which Goebbels envisaged as ‘the greatest story ever told’, while Hitler was planning on his own Wagnerian finale
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