Janet Gregory
To the average person the name Wagner means nothing more than the name of a German composer and writer of operas. However, that name means to the German people almost as much as the name of Hitler. Wagner’s music is so impressive that it has lived through the past century and has come to be one of the most outstanding influences on modern Europe. It has been said that whoever expects to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner. Adolph [sic] Hitler has often told his friends [which ones?] and the whole National Socialist regime, which finds its foundation in the Germanic myths [no supportive citation], that Germany would be impossible without Wagner and all he represents [no supportive citation]. In that sense the whole present war resolves itself into a super Wagnerian opera turned into grim reality [unacknowledged is that this is a direct quote from Tolischus 1940].Wagner was a romanticist who has now been taken over by political realists [no supportive citation]. He was the first artist who strove to combine art, science [sic], and life, music, poetry, grammar [sic], philosophy, sociology [sic], and politics [no supportive citation]. He implanted German myths far more successfully in the subconscious German mind than all the German philosophers and historians [no supportive citation].Hitler himself has been a personal devotee of Wagner all his life [no supportive citation]. He witnessed “Lohengrin” when he was a small child, and has had a deep interest for Wagnerian operas ever since. He reads Wagner’s scores as a pastime [no supportive citation] and notices any slight changes in the performances [no supportive citation].Today the people scarcely realize that the internal economic and political structure of Nazi Germany is almost entirely the result of the twentieth century interpretation of Wagner's theories [no supportive citation]. More powerful, however, than any political or economic ideas of National Socialism are its deeper emotional and mythological elements which raised it far above a purely political organization [no supportive citation]. These elements came from Wagner, from whom other details have been taken, such as “heil” of the Hitler salute [no supportive citation], the National Socialist slogan, “Germany Awake,” [no supportive citation] and many of their celebrations [no supportive citation]. When Hitler came into power, he raised Bayreuth, a little Bavarian town, to the position of which Wagner had always dreamed [no supportive citation]. Bayreuth and Wagner’s festivals are in charge of an English born woman, Winifred Wagner, widow of Wagner's son, Siegfried.In America, people class operas as a luxury, but in Germany they hold a place similar to our motion pictures. There is an opera house in nearly every Germany town. The people witness Wagner’s operas from childhood throughout their lives; therefore, his ideas are thoroughly implanted in their minds [no supportive citation]. As long as the German people are compelled to witness Wagner’s works, they will not realize that Hitler’s ideas are merely interpretations of the originally harmless librettos [no supportive citation].
http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=manuscripts
Or http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/manuscripts/vol9/iss4/15/The latter source gives the date of publication as 1942:
Gregory, Janet (1942) "Hitler and Wagnerism," Manuscripts: Vol. 9 : Iss. 4 , Article 15.
Things like this are written as an IQ test to see how gullible the reader is, though in the author's defence you can tell by the phrase "this present war" that this is a propaganda piece written in the emotional heat of the anti-Kraut sentiments of the war. My favourite line from the Gregory 1942 piece has to be the one that claims that the economic principles of the National Socialist government were based on operatic theory:
...the internal economic and political structure of Nazi Germany is almost entirely the result of the twentieth century interpretation of Wagner's theories.
Interestingly, this comes to light at the same time as another piece of trashy pseudo-history by Roger Moorhouse does its rounds in pop culture:
In this popular novelistic speculation, National Socialism was a drug fuelled orgy rather than an opera fuelled orgy. Both represent sensationalist populist speculations that make serious historians instantly scoff. Similar rampant speculations involve satanism, and even UFOs. All pulp fiction in the guise of history. Note that both Norman Ohler and Joachim Köhler are also novelists.
Coincidentally, I also just got trolled by Michael FitzGerald, an author of innumerable far-fetched books, devoid of the slightest of academic credibility, involving Nazi satanism and aliens. He spammed this blog with a blatantly self-promotional comment full of links to his new "novelistic" book on National Socialist history. So yet again we find another novelist who shamelessly peddles pulp fiction in the guise of history. A lot of the Occult Reich speculations by FitzGerald have started to show evidence of merging with Nazi opera conspiracy theories.
The idea that National Socialism was an operatic movement based on Wagnerian histrionic principles is another gross pop culture exaggeration and distortion with about as much academic credibility as a theory about the Nazis making UFOs in collaboration with the aliens. No senior member of the National Socialist Party ever stated that their movement was an operatic one devoted to realising Wagnerian principles on the stage of history. And nor would they make such a self-incriminating statement making themselves look so ludicrous. Most speculation to this effect has come from novelistic accounts of history by non-historians. Genuine academic historians have merely scoffed.
Because of a popular legend linking Wagnerism with madness, it was natural that Allied war propagandists did suggest that Hitler had, like King Ludwig of Bavaria, gone mad from excessive indulgence in opera causing him to seek to "transform the world into a Wagnerian drama". It was a way of making the Party look ridiculous, but it was always more political satire than anything meant to be taken too serious. Although the utility of such emotive Kraut-hate propaganda has long expired, like the one about Hitler going beserk after losing a testicle, such stories continue to circulate on the internet in the form of urban myths.
Yes, Hitler did like Wagner's music, just as he liked Shakespeare and Disney animations. Yet nobody seems to want to say that Walt Disney caused WWII and the Holocaust. Hitler's favourite was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and he owned a copy of the film for personal viewing. Obviously Snow White must be Aryan—and the dwarves, negative caricatures of Jews. Why else would Hitler have liked this Disney feature? Hitler’s political and economic ideas are merely interpretations of the originally harmless Disney animations. He must have been trying to transform the world into a Disney animation. If you can't see the blinding obviousness of this Truth, you must be a Holocaust denialist!
Of greater concern is the fact that Wagner was a pro-democracy activist who continued to espouse support for socialism and pacifism until the end of his days. That is why The Ring is about the apocalyptic end of the theocratic dominion of the gods of war over man. Wagner wrote that point of The Ring was to "make clear...the meaning of the [1848 pro-democratic] revolution" (Wagner Complete Letters Vol 4, p.176). The idea that National Socialism was a pro-democratic pacifist movement, and that democratic socialists are all therefore to be hated as "Nazis" is a right-wing political revisionist polemic that has nothing to do with history, and has more to do with contemporary culture wars. Put simply, whereas the right used to accuse the left of being "Judeo-Bolshevik" conspirators, they have now instead taken to accusing the left of being "Nazis" with Wagner being showcased as allegedly definitive evidence of this.
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