1933 in Nazi Politics and Culture

Organised by

• Department of History

Political upheaval has a huge impact on the senses. Songs, flags, and slogans stick out in popular and academic accounts of political transformations such as the French or Bolshevik revolutions, the European revolutions of 1848/9, and the Risorgimento. When it comes to Germany in 1932/33, images of swastika flags, sounds of jackboots hitting on asphalt, of Hitler’s voice blaring on the radio, and of Nazi songs immediately come to mind. Nazism, more than any other German political movement of the time, appealed to people’s senses and the emotions. In this paper, I ask how a focus on the sensory and emotional history of the Nazi rise to power can yield new insights into the political and cultural dynamics of Germany’s ‘Leap into the Dark’, the transformation of a liberal democracy into a fascist dictatorship.