Wagner, Hitler, and Germany's Rebirth after the First World War

This article examines German national renewal following defeat in the First World War. It emphasizes the importance of a 'unique' German culture, particularly the music dramas of Richard Wagner, in the politics of pan-German nationalists, Hitler, and the National Socialist Party. Hitler believed national revival depended on the rebirth of German culture, a concept that predated the war and was popular in volkisch circles and the radical right. Hitler owed his rise from obscurity as much to his appeal to cultural longings, which enabled him to attract the attention of Bavaria's elite, as he did to his political ideas and abilities.