Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity by Michael Munn Page A

Entertainment becamepolicy, and the greatest movie celebrities were advocates for everything Hitler stood for. The extermination of an entire race, played out against the magisterial music of Richard Wagner, whose works were the inspiration for Hitler’s new world, became the backdrop for Hitler’s own reality show, in which his name was above the title and every celebrity in Germany was a guest star.
    The cult of celebrity became the cornerstone of Hitler’s Nazism – and Hitler loved celebrities, as did his publicist Joseph Goebbels, who ran the German film industry. Despite all their assertions and pretensions about art and culture, these arbiters of taste used their cult for their own sexual obsessions. Starlets and beautiful actresses were as much a sexual commodity in Nazi Germany as they were in Hollywood.
    In Aryan Germany, Hitler governed with theatrical tricks. In ancient Rome the emperors gave the people the spectacle of the games to make them love the Caesars, and, taking his cue from them, Hitler gave his people the spectacle of Nazi culture and became their beloved Führer . At the heart of his style of government , backed by military and paramilitary might, was his Nazi cult of celebrity. He had nothing else to offer. In the end his obsession with fame led him into grand illusions that were merely delusions, and resulted in the deaths of around sixty million people.

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