Through its focus on audiences and their reception of media in Nazi Germany, Audiences of Nazism inverts the typical top-down perspective employed in studies that concentrate on the regime’s regulation of media and propaganda. It thereby sheds new light on the complex character of the period’s media, their uses, and the scope for audience interpretation. Contributors investigate how consumers either appropriated or ignored certain messages of Nazi propaganda, and how some even participated in its production. The authors ground their studies on novel historical sources, including private diaries and letters, photographs and films, and concert programs, which demonstrate, amongst other things, how audiences interpreted and responded to regulated news, Nazi Party rallies, and the regime’s denunciation of modern works of art as ‘degenerate.’
Innovating against the considerable gap in research surrounding historical media reception within Nazi Germany, Audiences of Nazism finds sources of actual audience responses to critically engage with the Third Reich’s media production legacy.
