Totalitarianism, Intentionalism, and Fascism in Cold War Cultural Histories
Totalitarianism, Intentionalism, and Fascism in Cold War Cultural Histories
This chapter and those that follow undertake more focused historiographic analyses. Chapter 4 opens with an examination of the origins of the concept of totalitarianism and historians’ debates over the viability of models for framing Nazi history: the totalitarian concept, intentionalism versus functionalism, challenges to the totalitarian paradigm with the alternative concept of fascism, and the historians’ debate (Historikerstreit) of the 1980s. With arts disciplines traditionally focused on high culture and the life and works of individuals, the totalitarian concept was useful for exonerating artists from any voluntary involvement in Nazi cultural production and persisted as a model for cultural histories of the Third Reich, despite losing its usefulness in other historical fields. A form of cultural intentionalism that credited Hitler and Goebbels with personal oversight of all artistic affairs held a similar appeal. As arts disciplines showed signs of taking their first steps away from these older paradigms of structural nazification, however, the Historikerstreit in the mid-1980s, with its warnings against relativizing the Holocaust—as well as simultaneous events in the art world that raised new questions about the pernicious effects of artistic products from the Third Reich—slowed any progress toward placing Nazi culture within broader historical and global contexts.
Keywords: totalitarianism, intentionalism, fascism, Historikerstreit, Hitler, Goebbels, high culture, structural nazification
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