The Literature of the Third Reich

Abstract

The student of modern German literature is necessarily confronted by dates which carry a heavy historical significance: 1871 and the formation of the new, second Reich; the outbreak of war in 1914 and the armistice of November 1918; Hitler’s accession to power in 1933; the period of the Second World War, 1939–45; the formation of the two separate Germanies in 1949; the Wende of late 1989. This chapter is concerned with those dark years of German history encapsulated by the dates 1933–45, the years of Hitler’s triumphs and subsequent defeat, and the literature associated with the Nazi regime and its mentality will be assessed. It would be erroneous, however, to assume that the period in question was a hermetically sealed unit with no precursors and no transitions: novels extolling the greatness of Germany’s past, the apparent superiority of the German race and the inherent glory of the German landscape were rife before 1933, and belligerent, chauvinistic attitudes, together with vastly exaggerated claims for the transcendental nobility of the German soul, prepared the way for the even more strident demands of the National Socialists. It will also be necessary to differentiate between antecedents, Nazi literature per se, the concept of Inner Emigration and the role of those writers who, publishing in Germany within the Nazi period, survived and continued to write into the early 1960s: the parameters are by no means fixed, and the idea of a sudden beginning in 1933 and of a ‘Stunde Null’, or zero point, in 1945; is unsatisfactory. The literature of exile is large enough to warrant a separate chapter, and will be considered later.