So horrendous were the manifold atrocities perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and his followers that decades passed before scholars began to address the Nazis’ use of the visual arts in their comprehensive program for domination. This blind spot was attributable to the long-held notion that cultural aspects of the Third Reich must be ignored, because even to acknowledge them was tantamount to approval. Some people decried any attention paid to the Nazis’ unquestionably repellent but also undeniably effective exploitation of mediums as venerable as architecture and urban design and as innovative as photography and filmmaking. Especially suspect were the propaganda “documentaries” of Leni Riefenstahl, which began to be screened again in the US during the late 1960s. Critics felt that these and other works of Nazi art diverted attention from morally weightier matters, most of all accountability for the Holocaust.
