All authoritative regimes look to dominate and effectively use art, culture, andthe media. Each tool of popular influence is merged together to create and enforce a mythology. But no regime ever went as far as Nazism, nodoubt because the Nazis were the first to understand mass culture. Peter Reichel unveils the unrivaled skill with which they knew how to createa world of illusions that allowed them to drag the Germans to disaster.

Peter Reichel is a professor at the Institute of Political Science in Hamburg.