The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture by Benjamin G. Martin (review)

"Soft power" is not a phrase that often comes to mind when thinking about the National Socialist regime's aggressive project of imperialist domination as it unfolded between 1938 and 1945. Nor is the language of international cooperation the first vocabulary one conventionally reaches for when seeking to characterize the nationalist and racist voices of the literary, visual or musical cultures with which the fascist regimes of Europe are usually associated. Meanwhile, the still dominant tendency among scholars of the arts to narrate cultural histories of the C20th century according to aesthetic criteria that necessarily marginalize the huge panoply of conservative and nationalist writers, composers or painters who in reality dominated European cultural production to a far greater extent than usually acknowledged also means that very significant cultural histories have not received the attention they deserve. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the considerable efforts of politicians, administrators and creative artists in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to develop pan-European institutions and networks have hitherto been largely overlooked by scholars. For this reason Benjamin G. Martin's study of these regimes' attempts to build a cultural "New Order" between the mid-1930s and the middle years of the war is to be warmly welcomed.

Martin's focus is on the related but discrete histories of the Permanent Council for International Cooperation among Composers (1934), the International Film Chamber (1935) and, later, the European Writers' Union (1942), as well as on attempts to unify, colonize and relocate various international scholarly academies from cities such as Paris or Brussels to Berlin. These measures took place against the wider reconfiguration of diplomatic relations in Europe in the mid-1930s; they were shaped by field-specific logics (rivalries with Hollywood in the case of the European film industry, developments in the management of performing rights in the case of art music); they were also driven by the varying—indeed often conflicting—agendas of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and third party interlocutors from other allied states. Strikingly, though perhaps not entirely surprisingly, they could rely upon much enthusiastic cooperation on the part of conservative artists relieved at the advent of regimes that did not dismiss them as reactionary and atavistic but, rather, celebrated them as exponents of a "healthy," appropriately "rooted" national culture and tradition. This was even more so the case when measures to strengthen international cooperation over performing rights or royalties transfers chimed directly with the material interests of the producers—the fact that the famously venal Richard Strauss played a leading role in the new international architecture of art music, for example, did much to ensure that musicians' interests were well looked after and their loyalty correspondingly forthcoming.

What is particularly interesting about Martin's account—though open to discussion—is the comparatively limited emphasis he places on the role of anti-Bolshevism in suturing together the various versions of fascist "inter-nationalism" he explores. Such anti-Bolshevist rhetoric is familiar from the second half of the war as Germany and its allies sought to mobilize a notion of "fortress Europe" against the Soviet Union. However, as Martin notes, the programmes pursued by Italy and Germany long pre-dated the turn of events in the middle of the war, and were motivated as much by the desire to challenge the pre-eminent position of Paris as Europe's most culturally prestigious city as they were by attitudes towards the east. At the same time, Martin underlines that Italian and German agendas were scarcely synonymous, and unfolded inside of relations of power between the two that were far from symmetrical. This was particularly the case during the war, when Italy's weak military performance served only to emphasize how marginal it really was in Nazi Germany's vision of a cultural "New Order."

The tensions were also anchored in different aesthetic visions, however. As is well-documented, some within Nazi Germany showed continued interest in modernism. But the strong appeal of futurism in Italy did not please...