The topic of music in the Third Reich was introduced to our history class briefly. Due to the time limits of our course, we were simply informed that Germany had become a musical wasteland in which Nazi music reigned supreme. But thinking of Beethoven and Bruckner—who were so admired by Hitler—I did not see how music of the time was so intrinsically ‘Nazi’. What was ‘Nazi music’ like? What was the reasoning behind this conclusion?
I started by...