Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich was published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1966, and it provides the documentary evidence for the arguments Mosse had made in The Crisis of German Ideology. The book is an anthology of primary sources — texts produced within and for Nazi Germany — organized to show how Nazi ideology functioned not merely as political propaganda but as a comprehensive culture that shaped every aspect of daily life.
The sources include school textbooks (showing how racial ideology was taught to children), university lectures (showing how academic disciplines were “coordinated” to serve Nazi purposes), literary criticism (showing how literature was evaluated by racial criteria), scientific papers (showing how biology and anthropology served racial theory), architectural plans (showing how buildings expressed racial ideology), and the documents of everyday life (songs, ceremonies, organizational rules) that constituted the texture of existence in the Third Reich.
Mosse’s introductions and commentaries guide the reader through this material, providing context and analysis. His editorial method is to let the sources speak as much as possible — the documents are often more shocking and more revealing than any summary could be, because they demonstrate the ordinariness of evil: the casual, bureaucratic, matter-of-fact way in which extraordinary cruelty was administered.
Collecting Nazi Culture
First edition (Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1966): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$50
- Without jacket: $5–$15
- Paperback editions: $5–$12