Degenerate Art, Hitler's failed culture war and greatest modern art show ever

On 30 June 1937, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment, authorised the Director of the Reich Chamber for Culture, Adolf Ziegler, to select and confiscate paintings and sculptures from public collections for a major exhibition on 'degenerate art'. Ziegler said “What's been gathered together in [this] exhibition constitutes the portrayal of a true witches' sabbath and the most frivolous spiritual-artistic cultural bolshevism and a portrayal of the triumph of subhumanity, of arrogant Jewish insolence and total spiritual senile dementia.”

This was the infamous exhibition entitled "Entartete Kunst," or "Degenerate Art," in Munich. The objective was to ridicule and condemn modern art that did not align with the party's ideology. This episode delves into the history, motivations, and lasting impacts of this notorious exhibition and unravels the complex narrative of how art became a battleground for ideological control.