Pleasure and Power in Nazi Germany: An Introduction

Although scholars generally (and with good reason) associate the Third Reich above all with pain, fear and violence, we cannot hope to understand its underlying social and cultural dynamics without seriously considering the role of pleasure. After all, one of the most important promises the Nazi movement made, both before but especially after the seizure of power, was ‘Freude’, a term combining a sense of pleasure, happiness and joy. One struggles to find other dictatorial regimes in the twentieth century that made so much of this theme. For the National Socialists, Kraft durch Freude, or ‘strength through joy’, was more than just the name of a leisure organization: it denoted a broader idea, a programme of action, a promise of national fulfilment. In the competitive racial worldview of the Nazis, pleasure and power were inseparable, even mutually reinforcing. Strength came through joy and joy through strength. A contented people was a more productive and thus stronger people; and only a strong people could expect to achieve lasting contentment in the eternal struggle between the races. Pleasure in the Third Reich was both a means and an end.