Degenerate Art Propaganda

Art is a communication platform that can connect different culture on a basic level. Therefore, to control art and culture would be the ultimate weapon against humanity and a way to control a nation. This was the way that Hitler and the Nazis saw art after 1933 because once the Nazi party came to be in power it saw art as a problem that needed to be controlled. They launched several propaganda campaigns that were aimed to lead the people away from non-German artworks or from artworks created by the inferior races. Once this propaganda tool began to be implemented, laws soon followed. These laws would restrict the artists to create art that would follow the Reich’s rules of ‘True Art’. Those who were from non-German ancestry and who were part of the Modern Art world would be considered Degenerate by the State. The reasoning behind this type of control was the continuation of the Nazis idea that it was the Jews fault for the degeneracy of the German public because the Jews were the ones who were producing and purchasing these artworks that were tarnishing the German intelligence and their morals. Many artists during the Nazis regime struggled to keep producing artwork with these new
Many of the pieces that the Nazis confiscated from the museums under the different laws that were passed was eventually filed away somewhere in the Reich. “The SS knew where the artwork was hidden; they had lists of everything.” Many of these lists have still survived until this day. One of the most famous art lists is labelled Entartete Kunst, and this lists all of the pieces of artwork by location. Inside the book, they labelled the artwork that had been sold, traded or destroyed, by either a V, T or X. The list is very detailed right down to the number that the artwork was purchased for and by whom. However, this means that the Nazis were keeping a surveillance on all of the collections for a possible