Hitler's War Poets: Literature and Politics in the Third Reich. By Jay W. Baird. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2008. Pp. xvi+284. Cloth $80.00. ISBN 0-521-87689-3.

摘要

When Josef Goebbels seized control over artistic production in 1933, most ofrnGermany’s finest authors fled or stopped writing. But scholars have had thernunfortunate reflex to assume that the remaining active ones—those whornwrote positively about war, glorified German superiority, slandered Jews andcommunists, or, worst of all, had commercial success in an era of political andrncultural repression—were abject opportunists. As this study of six authorsrnwho published during the Third Reich shows, many of the remaining poetsrnand novelists were in fact genuinely popular before 1933 and did not needrnthe Nazi Party to sell their books after 1933. The title Hitler’s War Poets is inrnthis regard somewhat misleading. Except for Hans Zo ¨berlein, the other fivernauthors—Rudolf Binding, Josef MagnusWehner, Edwin Erich Dwinger, Eber-rnhard Wolfgang Mo ¨ ller, and Kurt Eggers—did not have personal, financial, orrndirect political connections to Hitler. (I should add that two published almostrnno poems, and the fame of five was due to their prose.) Four of them alsornhad a falling out at some time or another with the Nazi Party. Nevertheless,rnthrough their well-liked books, they justified Hitler’s rule and spread Nazirnworldviews.