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MUSIC IN THE THIRD REICH - THEN AND NOW

 

 

By A.V. Schärfenberg

A grim portrait of modem American music was presented in issue #120 of The New Order. How could it have been otherwise, given the Jews' domination of our culture? It was no coincidence that fine art in the U. S. was trashed at the same moment National Socialism triumphed in Germany. The kosher corrupters who scurried away from Europe beginning in 1933 were the same alleged 'artists who poisoned our musical life. We need only look around at the laughably deplorable state of modem American composition and performance to appreciate the magnitude of their disastrous impact.

Elsewhere, Aryan culture was suddenly freed from Jewish domination and blossomed into a late 2nd Millennium Renaissance. Naturally, the source of that Western revival was Adolf Hitler's Germany. It is nothing short of miraculous that during the brief twelve-year period of peace allowed the Third Reich, such an incredible burst of dynamically creative musical achievement took place. The spirit of Aryan genius could at last express its genuine instinct, uncoloured by the alien agendas of Jews hostile to everything German.

AN OPERATIC BATTLE

Generally regarded as the greatest symphonic composer of the 20th Century, Richard Strauss was urged by 'émigré' Jew impresarios to join them at New York's Metropolitan opera. They dangled lucrative performance fees to entice him, but he answered them indirectly by writing a public statement in support of the National Socialist Revolution, signing it in his own hand, 'Heil Hitler!' With the invention of the first sound tape recorder by Third Reich scientists, Strauss conducted performances of all his major symphonic works, recordings still prized as the best of their kind. During World War II, he composed a concert overture dedicated to the Japanese Royal House on the occasion of its 500th anniversary and to simultaneously commemorate the signing in 1940 of the Axis pact between Germany and Japan. His Metamorphoses, a tone-poem lament for the devastation wrought by the duped Allies on Germany, will forever serve as a deeply moving memorial to the worst tragedy in human history.

Strauss's contemporary, Hans Pfitzner, although not well-known outside of his homeland, was among the most important figures in neo-romantic music, and composed what many listeners consider his greatest works, a pair of symphonies in 1939 and 1940, respectively. Four years earlier, Pfitzner became the first 'Reich Cultural Senator'. The reputations of these two musical titans were so established in the world of art that not even the hysterical hatred of the Jews could destroy them, and their compositions are presently available to a larger audience than ever before, thanks to Aryan man's technological advances in audio reproduction.

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Wilhelm Furtwängler
the greatest orchestral director ever!

But what the Jews cannot destroy they poison. A case in point is perhaps the greatest orchestral director ever to take up the conductor's baton, Wilhelm Furtwängler. It would be untrue to suggest that he was a dedicated National Socialist. His life was music. Furtwängler was favourably inclined to our Idea, but he was too busy with his art for much of the outside world. As a musician who profoundly cherished traditional compositional values and no less deeply despised the cultural rot of the Weimar Republic, he often expressed his gratitude, both publicly and privately, to Hitler for kicking out the Schönbergs, Shaperos, et al, of the 1920's. Less than a year after the National Socialist Seizure of Power, however, Furtwängler found himself embroiled in an extra-musical controversy. He agreed to stage Matthias the Painter, by Paul Hindemith. Oblivious to and totally disinterested in both the story of the opera and the political identity of its composer, the innocent music director found his rehearsals being picketed by battalions of angry Stormtroopers.

It seems Hindemith, although Aryan, was a loudmouthed Communist and his Matthias the Painter a blatant propaganda piece urging its audience to take up arms against the government. "even if it had been elected"-- a transparent reference to the recent National Socialist electoral victories. Furtwängler dismissed the work's proletarian politics as so much out-dated flummery, especially in view of National Socialism's on-going popularity, but insisted the music was good. Performances would proceed as planned, he announced. In a short time, whatever artistic merits or demerits Hindemith's piece might have had were utterly eclipsed by a violent ideological storm gathering over the Berlin Opera House.

Assuming that the last of such Marxist drivel had been cleaned out after January 30th, 1933, the public in general and National Socialists in particular were outraged at news of the up-coming Red Opera. Meanwhile, scattered remnants of the country's enfeebled, dwindling Communists suddenly began to suck a reviving breath of life into their moribund movement and vowed to pack the opera house on opening night, just as they used to in the 20's. Even more so an he Communists, the Stormtroopers wanted Matthias the Painter to be staged, because they relished the opportunity of busting up the performance and exterminating the last of the Red vermin. Not without cause, the city police feared a serious ideological confrontation of the kind so common up until only a few years before. Indeed, it was to bring peace and order to public life that the voters had put Adolf Hitler in power. Even so. the National Socialist authorities were inclined to allow the performance, no matter what came to pass, if only out of respect for Furtwängler, who was, by then, an icon throughout the whole cultural world.

DR. GOEBBELS INTERVENES

Doubtless, Hindemith's music would have been heard, the old Reds would have had their last hurrah (better yet, the Stormtroopers would have beaten the be'jesus out of them all) and the controversy passed as a footnote in the history of the Third Reich. Instead. America's and England's Jew-dominated newspapers turned the premiere into a cause celebre of international proportions. With that, Dr. Josef Goebbels, as Reich Cultural Minister, decided to act. He addressed a long, polite letter to Furtwängler. The situation, he explained, had gotten out of hand. so much so that the enemies of National Socialism, to whom music was only as good as it was politically expedient, were using the impending performance for obvious, non-artistic purposes; namely, to incite hatred and violence against the new regime. Dr. Goebbels added that Hindemith belonged to a by-gone era when national greatness had been despised. The German people, after fourteen long years of difficult struggle, had overcome that shame Now was the time for art to extol the folk-genius of our Race, not down-grade it. He asked that the troublesome opera be shelved for the sake of present peace and future cultural development. But, if the conductor considered its music worthwhile, performance of an orchestral suite from Matthias the Painter could take place.

To the great disappointment of all, save the general opera-going public, Furtwängler responded with his own public letter, in which he heartily subscribed to each of Dr. Goebbels' objections, including his own observation, "There are moments when even art must make room for the good of something greater." Corning from such a fanatic musician, it was a deeply generous statement. With the cancellation of Hindemith's first and last chance at fame, the defunct Reds were disappointed because their own last chance for a big political demonstration evaporated, and the Stormtroopers were disappointed because they missed their chance to whup Germany's last Communists.

In all the hateful hullaballoo turned up by the Jews ever since, and whenever Hindemith's name is mentioned today, conveniently forgotten was the concert performance of Matthias the Painter, which did indeed take place in 1934, as Dr. Goebbels promised. The piece was even recorded in a Third Reich sound studio under Furtwängler's direction in 1934! That this concert version of musical highlights was not much performed thereafter only means that it failed to generate any lasting hold on concert-goers' imaginations, a failure which persists to this day, since it is not often heard, even though it is still touted as some kind of anti-Nazi masterpiece. Indeed, the opera which was supposed to have been too wonderful for the Nazis to appreciate or tolerate, was a huge flop when ostentatiously performed in New York. Since then, it has never again seen the light of day.

It turns out that Hindemith was not such an interesting composer after all, and the controversy surrounding his name had more to do with his obnoxious politics than his own music. Overlooked, too, is the fact that, despite his Red identity, he was allowed to compose, perform and even record in the Third Reich, hardly the tyrannical system the Jews would lead us to believe existed. Hindemith grabbed the U.S. Jews' offer of cash and fled with sheaves of his useless scores. Apparently, New York's kosher environment was less inspiring than that of evil old Nazi Germany, and his artificial reputation withered away into virtual oblivion. Happily, he lived long enough to see his life's work savaged by Jew critics in the 1950's, when they ridiculed him as 'hopelessly obsolete.' True to character, his one-time kosher benefactors eventually turned on their 'righteous Gentile.'

THE CRUCIFIXION OF AN ARYAN MUSICIAN

Only the newspaper Jews overseas manipulated by the Matthias the Painter situation to their advantage, portraying it to gullible goy readers as proof positive that great music was being suppressed by the Nazis, to whom Furtwängler had weakly capitulated. However, they, too, were soon disappointed when, sure he would defect following the Hindemith affair, they offered him (as they had offered Richard Strauss) large performance fees with the New York Philharmonic.

He turned them down and, after war came, was personally active in donating a great deal of concert time to soldiers and factory workers. Audiophiles for decades considered his greatest recorded achievement to have been a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, the Choral, given in the presence of Adolf Hitler on the occasion of the Führer's 55th birthday, April 20th, 1944. Until the very end, Furtwängler was still giving public concerts in Berlin. His last Reich recording (the Cesar Franck Symphony in D minor) is the best performance ever made of that work. It took place in the cataclysmic days of January, 1945.

The Jews castigated Germany's 'Nazi dictatorship' for censorship, a lie, as cited above, when Hindemith was allowed to perform. But immediately after the war, German artists were prevented by the occupation forces from working. Only those who could suck up to the Allies by loudly proclaiming their anti-Nazi sentiments stood a chance of employing their craft. The very censorship the Jewized Allies falsely condemned in National Socialism they practised themselves when the chance came along. Among the proscribed was Wilhelm Furtwängler, even though he never held any post in the Reich government He was not a Party member, and had never even voted for a National Socialist candidate.

The occupation authorities promised he could resume his conducting career if he agreed to sign a public statement begging them for forgiveness for his past participation "in the criminal Hitler regime." He refused, declaring his life then, as always, had been entirely musical, not political, and he objected to the accusation that he had ever been part of anything 'criminal.' The ban against him was upheld and he had to subsist on the charity of friends.

The Jews and their Gentile dupes in uniform tried to show the Germans that their culture was better off under Allied occupation than with their own, elected, National Socialist government. Trouble was, with all the country's real artists dead, jailed or censored, there wasn't much culture to go around. Desperate to maintain their facade of democratic civilisation, they returned to Furtwängler with a watered-down version of the statement presented for his endorsement two years earlier. This time it read something to the effect that he publicly condemned 'totalitarianism' in all its forms, without mentioning National Socialism. He unhesitatingly signed the document and was allowed to resume his musical duties.

'DEMOCRACY, SMOCKRACY!'

Although Furtwängler's return to the podium was greeted with universal acclaim, his performances mostly lacked the greatness of his wartime and pre-war conducting. Many concerts he held were surprisingly disappointing. The old fire seemed to have died out in him. Only occasionally was it seen to flare to life. While a few appearances, such as his performance of the Choral Symphony, at the re-opening of the Bayreuth Festival, exemplified the full scope of his genius, more typical were his lacklustre renditions of Beethoven's and Bruckner's works, his long-time favourites. He had been a Wagner specialist, too, but his post-war recordings of Tristan and The Ring are indistinguishable from any average interpretations. Clearly, the maim was not inspired by post-war democracy. Yet, he was no different than artists of all kinds who reached heights of their greatness from 1933 to 1945. Immediately thereafter, Germany and the West fell into their steep decline toward cultural sterility and extinction from which they still have not pulled out.

Artists depend for their supreme achievement on high inspiration. The Third Reich was the most inspiring epoch in all of history, and its artists thereby felt their talents lifted by the greatness of the times. In the dismal, hypocritical world of the Allies sham 'victory,' there was only despair, not inspiration. This is no idle speculation. P roof may be found in the very audio legacy left by Furtwängler himself. His Third Reich recordings are today widely prized for their universal excellence. It is well-known among collectors that any Furtwängler performance dated before 1946 will be guaranteed for its high value, even if the technical quality is inferior by later standards, while his post-war recordings are largely shunned for their reputation as mediocre. Recording companies make sure that the date of a Furtwängler appearance is displayed prominently on the disccover -- if the performance occurred during the Reich. The dates of his post-war performances are virtually never printed, a sure sign to knowledgeable collectors that the concert was made under a democracy and consequently of relatively slight artistic merit.

Furtwängler's death in 1954 was followed by decades of commonplace conductors who consistently rendered the great music of the past in uniformly colourless renditions. Almost by chance, after decades of middling music directors, audiophiles rediscovered Furtwängler's old recordings almost by chance. For a generation oblivious to his art, his preserved performances came as nothing less than a revelation. Sharply contrasting the commonplace output of Leonard Bernstein, Seji Ozawa, Dean Dixon and other non-White non-entities from the 1960's to the present, his concerts were regarded as by far the best interpretations of great music on record. The international Furtwängler resurgence which began some twenty years ago not only continues today, but has broadened and intensified, Whenever another lost recording of his is discovered, it instantly shoots to die top of the best-seller lists.

THE RECASTING OF WILHELM FURTWÄNGLER

It was only a mailer of time, of course, before the Jews were alerted to the popular renaissance of this recalcitrant 'Nazi musician'. Banning his recordings or even making them quietly disappear by pressuring C.D. companies into discontinuing them would have lost the shrewd shysters new revenues generated by such sales. Instinctually unable to forego a financial profit, they took over the Furtwängler revival themselves.

In an irony typical only of unscrupulous Jews, the same clique who fulminated against him in the 1930's and banned him in the 1940's are peddling his recordings today. As tie most politicised creatures on the planet, however, they are not content with the vast revenues his C.D.'s net them. They must distort his memory to conform with their own perverse notions of political correctness. In justifying sales of his music and using their twisted image of him to propagandise their Gentile customers, the Great Masters of the Lie are now depicting Furtwängler as an anti-Nazi who secretly hated Hitler and stayed in Germany only to help save Jews from being gassed! While such a bald-faced misrepresentation would have flabbergasted the Allied Occupation authorities who banned him from performing, it is just one more piece of the deceitful chutzpah for which the Jews have long been infamous.

No one should then be surprised that the loudest spokesman on behalf of a de-Nazified Furtwängler is Hebrew Henry Fogel. He laments that this "righteous goy, oops, Gentile" was mistaken for a Fascist. The conductor actually loved Jews and risked his life to save them from Hitler, before whom Furtwängler gave his best performance on the Führer's birthday! Such demented 'logic' could only come from die profit-fevered brain of a crazed Jew. Now that his reputation has been sanitised in the mikvah of political correctness, we no longer need trouble our conscience when buying a Furtwängler recording. The past has been re-arranged to make things work for the Jews in the present. Such insidious duplicity recalls one of the brain-washing slogans concocted by Big Brother in George Orwell's prophetic novel, 1984: "Who controls the present, controls the past; who controls the past, controls the future."

But the revival of Aryan music under National Socialism spread through the 1930's and early 1940's beyond the borders of the Third Reich. Helga Rosswänge, Askel Schiotz and Thorsten Raif, who made their careers in Hitler's Germany, were, bar none, the greatest tenors Denmark ever produced, before and especially since the end of World War II. Years before the war, Belgium's greatest tenor, Marcel Wittrich, cut a recording of the concert aria "God Bless our Führer!", which topped the best-seller charts for most of the 1930's. Kirstin Flagstad, among the most important Wagnerian sopranos of the 20th Century, left the Metropolitan Opera, where her success in Die Valkyrie had been nothing short of stupendous, to join her husband in Norway. He was not only the country's leading conductor, but a high-ranking officer in the Nasional Samlung, the Norwegian National Socialist Movement. When a post-war return engagement at the Met was scheduled for her, Flagstad was prevented from performing by hysterical mobs of incensed New York Jews. They openly and successfully prevented a world-class artist from publicly performing for ideological reasons, the very thing for which they had so long falsely condemned the Nazis.

THE VENGEFUL GHOST OF WILLEM MENGELBERG

Mengelberg was dedicated heart and soul to Adolf Hitler.

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Like Furtwängler, Josef Willem Mengelberg's reputation was world-wide!

Furtwängler's only contemporary to approach and even perhaps surpass him on occasion was the Dutch conductor, Willem Mengelberg. His recordings, too, have witnessed a spectacular comeback, although in his case the Jews are far more uncomfortable. Henry Fogel cannot bring himself to utter a dispensatory word on his behalf. While Furtwängler was little more than emotionally or artistically sympathetic to National Socialism, Mengelberg was dedicated heart and soul to Adolf Hitler. we coined 1940's German invasion of Holland as his country's liberation from Jewish tyranny. Like Furtwängler, his reputation was world-wide and he would have been welcomed in the United States, where he could have lived out his life in safety. Instead, he publicly endorsed tie greatness of National Socialism at every occasion and performed all over the Reich. Even so, he was a vigorous champion of Dutch music and all of Holland's best modern composers owed their early success to him.

No less importantly, Mengelberg moulded the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra into what many regarded as the finest symphonic ensemble ever put together. The mans contributions to music are staggering and far exceed the limitations of this newspaper article to describe. Even so, he never joined any National Socialist organisation (Dutch or German), and did not work or he is war effort, save to perform concerts for troops on R&R., German as well as Dutch, and all the other Aryan nationalities who banded together under the Swastika to fight Soviet Communism. He was content to lend the weight of his legendary reputation to support National Socialism and did what he could for it with the thing he knew best -- conducting great music better than anyone else in the world!

For this harmless involvement in the Movement, Willem Mengelberg was sentenced to death in absentia (i.e., condemned without a hearing) by Holland's Allied-dominated supreme court after the war. Fleeing for his life, he found refuge in Spain. It is to Francisco Franco's eternal credit that he refused to turn over the proscribed musician to the Dutch authorities for extradition and execution. Broken in spirit and health, the maestro never again lifted his baton to call forth the incomparably magnificent sounds only he knew how to conjure from an orchestra. He died in exile six years later, condemned and despised by his own countrymen, but cherished and protected by beloved foreigners. The once supreme Amsterdam Concertgebouw he created declined under the mediocrity of more politically correct directors like bland Bernard Haitink, until the orchestra scarcely rated as a world-class organisation. Yet, his ghost is avenging itself on all these post-war no-accounts, who are rapidly being forgotten, while Mengelberg's recordings enjoy a resurgence of unprecedented popularity.

MUSIC'S DEBT TO FASCISM

Mascagni was also a dedicated follower of Benito Mussolini from the early days of the Duce's struggle.

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Pietro Mascagni
one of Western Civilisation's last great creators

A similar tragedy befell Pietro Mascagni. His Cavalleria Rusticana is one of the most often performed staples in the whole repertoire, and, with I Pagliacci, among the best-known operas in existence. Mascagni was also a dedicated follower of Benito Mussolini from the early days of the Duce's struggle. Through the 1920's and 30's and into the war, he held various posts in the Fascist cultural hierarchy and did much to promote the glory of Italian music. His long-time loyalty was proved during adversity, when he joined Mussolini (imprisoned by traitors in 1943, but rescued through the daring heroism of SS commandos) in the north.

With the catastrophic end of the war, Mascagni's name was posted on a death-list circulated by the same Communist partisans who murdered the Duce. Old and alone Italy's greatest living composer died of starvation and exposure to sub-zero temperatures while hiding from his would-be assassins in an unheated garret during the bitter winter of 1945. The death of one of Western Civilisation's last great creators was another legacy that belonged to the Allies' dishonourable triumph of brute force over culture. The legions of opera-lovers who continue, year after year, to applaud Cavalleria Rusticana are ignorant of the Fascist identity and deplorable fate of its composer.

They also applaud regular performances of music by Antonio Vivaldi, whose Seasons, particularly, has become an often-heard concert-piece. Recordings of the 18th Century Venetian's music sell in the millions, and it is recognized throughout the world as a pillar of Western art. Yet, were it not for the diligent research of a famous American Fascist working in Mussolini's Italy, Vivaldi's name and great achievements would be just as unknown today as it was before Ezra Pound made his discovery of the lost compositions. For this incomparable work of rescue, one of the greatest poets the U.S. ever produced was starved and tortured in a so-called 'tiger-cage' by his fellow countrymen after the war. His incarceration consisted of an unheated cell so tiny he could neither stand erect nor lay down full-length, a difficult ordeal even for a man younger than his 61 years. Do the Itzak Pearlmans of this world pay homage to the work of Ezra Pound, without whom they could not perform Vivaldi's music?

Victor de Sabata, a measure of the greatness of the Fascist era.
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Fascist Italy also inspired some of the finest conductors of all time, and the best may have been Victor de Sabata.

Fascist Italy also inspired some of the finest conductors of all time, and the best may have been Victor de Sabata. Like Furtwängler and Mengelberg, recordings of his intelligent, dynamic interpretations, especially of Respighi, Beethoven and Puccini, are highly prized by collectors. As a measure of the greatness of the Fascist era in which he flourished, no Italian conductor since the liberal-Marxist take-over of 1945 has begun to approach de Sabata's achievements. Fascism inspired many extraordinary composers; among the greatest was Gian-Francesco Malipiero, who was also the most important musicologist of the 20th Century, largely because he restored the complete creative output of Claudio Monteverdi, the 16th Century founder of Italian opera. The huge, meticulous edition, nearly twenty years in the making, until its completion in 1942, is still sought after by musicians throughout the world as the most invaluable sourcebook of its kind. Malipiero's own 1936 opera, Julius Caesar, was based on Shakespeare's play and is a triumphant Fascist revival of the Roman origins common to all Western civilisations.

The racial-nationalist Finns, whose blue Swastika flag flew alongside Adolf Hitler's crusade against Soviet Russia, produced the most important composer in the history of their country and one of the finest of the 20th Century, Jean Sibelius. Another comrade-country, Latvia, enjoyed its golden age of composition from its independence in 1918 until its take-over by the Soviets in 1940, then again during the German liberation from 1941 to 1944. With the recent return of Latvian freedom, the splendid works of such composers as Janis Medich, who wrote during the 1930's and early 40's, are being heard with greater frequency by the outside world. Spanish Fascism lasted long after the post-war period with an equivalent endurance of great composition, as evidenced by the extraordinary guitar concertos by Joaquin Rodrigo in the 1950's.

THE UNMUSICAL ALLIES

Meanwhile, in the Allied countries, wracked with capitalist exploitation pitted against communist subversion, all the arts fell into decline. The lamentable condition of American music was examined in Issue #120. The situation was not quite as bad in England, but the country had nothing to look forward to under its increasingly Jew-dominated democracy of cultural sterility. Ralph Vaughn Williams, Arthur Bliss, Arnold Bax, Gustav Holst and their colleagues from the early part of the century were rapidly ageing with no one to match or exceed their monumental genius, save only Benjamin Britten, certainly the last English composer of any importance, who died in 1976. French musical creativity was sustained during the 1930's by one man, Florent Schmitt, a passionate Fascist, whose compositional greatness foreshadowed the Impressionists. Only his old age and status as France's greatest living composer saved him (barely!) from the post-war hangman's noose. His successor, Francis Poulenc, carried on the torch of great Gallic music. But since his death in 1963, the history of French musical composition is blank.

In the Soviet union, that Frankenstein monster of the Jews, their ludicrous efforts to mass-produce 'proletarian art' failed miserably. Having eviscerated Russian music in the 1920's, the Reds were at first alarmed by a strident nationalist style that suddenly burst forth in the work of Gentiles Serge Prokofiev, Rheinhold Gliere, Ipolatov Ivanov and Aram Katchaturian. These outstanding composers were allowed to proceed with their strongly folkish compositions, however, because the Soviet leaders knew that such art could be used to arouse patriotic fervour against the European fascists.

But after 1945, such ethnic sentiments, being no longer needed (indeed, they were dangerous to the Jews), were condemned. The same Russian composers who were honoured for writing 'patriotic' music when it was required to stir up national emotions against Hitler were denounced publicly and hounded personally as 'enemies of the Soviet people.' Some tried to please their masters by composing inoffensive music. those who could not were tossed into stinking Gulags. As in the allegedly 'democratic' societies of England, France and the U.S., serious musical composition died in the ex-USSR with Prokofiev in 1953.

The only bright spots in the musical world were those still illuminated by the sunlight of National Socialism. It is a heritage of which we who carry on in its name can be extraordinarily and justifiably proud. And when our souls are moved as we listen to a Third Reich recording of music heard and enjoyed by Adolf Hitler, we share a living, spiritual kinship with him others cannot understand. Despite the magnitude of the catastrophe that physically destroyed the Third Reich and its heroes, the music of that most glorious epoch survives for us to hear.

And it more than survives! The irrepressible force of its greatness is touching more listeners than ever before. The enduring triumph of the Reich's music represents a sacred sign, an assurance from God, that not far behind the echoing trumpets conducted by Furtwängler and Mengelberg marches just as invincibly our Movement!