[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.20 But undoubtedly the particular happy end it peddled also went down remarkably well: namely, thatloyalty and perseverance are eventually rewarded in private happinessas in national victory.This convergence of personal fulfilment andnational destiny is also the central theme of Die Große Liebe, in whichpilot Paul and cabaret singer Hanna fall in love during a short fur-lough in Berlin.Here, too, duty calls the warrior away from his lover,and personal happiness is threatened by the wheels of fate.Yet the twoare eventually reunited after Paul forfeits his personal wishes to thegreater good and becomes injured while fulfilling his duty.Personalfulfilment and pleasure once again go hand in hand with loyalty andsacrifice for the national cause.In both of these films, as in countless mass cultural artefacts of thetime, pleasure itself is depicted as a sure reward for current hardship.If the war invariably caused great pain and suffering in the meantime,its ostensible purpose was always portrayed as delayed gratification.Inthis sense, wartime entertainments did not so much function as hasoften been suggested as a veil behind which the killing took place,but rather integrated Nazi aggression into everyday life.Despite theseemingly apolitical emphasis on personal pleasure, Nazi mass culturethus forged subtle connections between individual enjoyment and vio-lent conquest.The promise of future satisfaction after German victorywas not only an implicit theme of films such as Wunschkonzert and Diegroße Liebe, but was also explicitly presented as a principal war aim.On 31 May 1942, as Cologne literally still burned from the RAF s first 1,000 bomber raid , Goebbels argued in a widely publicized article enti-tled What s it all for? that the purpose of the war was not merely todefend the Fatherland but above all to secure the preconditions for anational prosperity which will give our people the amount of earthlyhappiness they deserve.At base, military conquest was nothing otherthan a struggle for the good life, for plentiful raw materials, adequatefood stocks and housing, for a living standard befitting a racially andculturally superior people. We as a nation want at last to cash in (ein-kassieren).to enjoy the fruits of our endless working and fighting, ofall our efforts and our patience. 21 If performing one s duty representedthe clearest path to individual fulfilment, then killing for the nationalcause was ultimately the means to a better future.The wages of victorywould be enjoyment.22 162 Corey RossFigure 8.2 Zarah Leander singing for wounded Wehrmacht soldiersSource: Scene from the film Die große Liebe: here as back cover of army magazine Signal.Courtesy of Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Radio, Film and Morale 163This same blend of national unity, self-sacrifice and personal pleasurealso shaped wartime radio programming.Although the transition to amore popular and entertaining programme had been going on since1935, the outbreak of the war significantly accelerated the trend.By1939, light entertainment and relaxation were a key priority of Naziradio, marking an unambiguous departure from the Weimar-era con-ception of German radio as a cultural factor towards a new emphasison consumer wishes.One indication of the change was the expansion ofmusic broadcasts at the expense of lectures.Even more indicative werethe scheduling changes whereby popular music was, for the first time,given pride of place in the programming timetable.Whereas broadcast-ers had hitherto reserved the primetime slot of 2000 2200 hours forclassical music or other demanding material, by the second half of the1930s it was dominated by light entertainment concerts, variety showsand dance music.23 But once again, the provision of popular amusementwas never for its own sake.The overarching goal was to bind listenersto the radio and thereby make them receptive to political messages.In the words of one contemporary study, political broadcasts, alwaysaccounting for only a small portion of broadcasting time, first acquiretheir value through the existence of entertaining broadcasts that leadlisteners to the receiver.24But the line between political and entertaining broadcasts wasalways fuzzy, and especially so during the early years of the war.Indeed,the most popular programme of the entire war era, the Wunschkonzert fürdie Wehrmacht, was a hybrid of politicized entertainment par excellence.Under the motto the front holds out its hands to the homeland , it rep-resented the pinnacle of the national community on the airwaves thatthe Nazis had long strived for.25 These request shows, which ran weeklyfrom October 1939 to May 1941, were based on a tried-and-tested for-mat first developed during the Weimar years and subsequently adaptedfor the Winter Aid programme in 1936.Soldiers could send in musi-cal requests along with a personalized message to loved ones at home,and the selected songs were performed before a live studio audience ofmilitary and emergency personnel.The first wartime Wunschkonzert,held on 1 October 1939, was an instant hit, and immediately triggereda maelstrom of postal requests.Within roughly two months aroundone half of the entire population tuned in.The enormous success ofthis programme was reflected not only in listening figures, but also inthe production of the blockbuster film as well as the publication of abest-selling anthology of highlights.26 Indeed, it was arguably the singlemost successful piece of integration propaganda of the entire Nazi era. 164 Corey Ross Whoever heard one of the request shows knows how the nation andarmy felt bound together into a single great family during those hours,noted its moderator Heinz Goedecke.27 For the most part, what thisvast and socially diverse audience shared on Saturday afternoons wasa fairly standard amalgam of amusement and pleasure: comic sketches,hit songs and guest appearances by popular stars.But what truly setthe Wunschkonzert apart from other variety shows, and what also seemsto have made it so extraordinarily popular, was its deliberate conjur-ing of a sense of national unity, a common national experience in realtime
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
