Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, & the Americans, 1945-1953

Abstract

The “nazifcation” of the arts in Germany has been the subject of important books by Michael Kater, Alan Steinweis, and others. David Monod picks up the story in 1945 in his study of American occupation policy and the German classical music establishment. He argues that despite contradictory policy objectives and the low priority the military government gave cultural issues, a corps of dedicated and largely competent officials “push[ed] through important structural reforms and encouraged new thinking about the freedom of the arts and how to ensure” it (p. 10), thus contributing to the democratization of western Germany. American officials were, however, less successful in barring deeply compromised figures from concert halls and in broadening the conservative musical tastes of conductors and audiences alike. The author relates a by-now-familiar and sad account of the postwar purges. For a brief period immediately after the war, American denazification policy was the most sweeping and punitive of those adopted by the several victorious powers. Yet the policy's sheer unworkability, German opposition, and the onset of the Cold War led to its rapid curtailment. Many Germans constructed personal narratives whereby they absolved themselves of everything but the most (supposedly) superficial relationship with the regime and its policies. Such narratives were accepted by other Germans, who had in any case assumed the bulk of the responsibility for denazification by the fall of 1946 and by their putative American overseers, who were either disinclined to provide rigorous oversight or simply ignorant. (Monod cites one official who asked an American colleague whether Richard Wagner's music was banned by the Nazis.) The result for the classical music establishment in the American zone was similar to that in other prominent sectors of German society: former Nazis flooded back into positions of influence. This fact makes it difficult for the reader to agree with the author's assertion that denazifcation's impact was “truly revolutionary and transforming” (p. 9).