Selling under the Swastika Advertising and Commercial Culture in Nazi Germany [Hardcover]

Selling under the Swastikais the first in-depth study of commercial advertising in the Third Reich. While scholars have focused extensively on the political propaganda that infused daily life in Nazi Germany, they have paid little attention to the role played by commercial ads and sales culture in legitimizing and stabilizing the regime. Historian Pamela Swett explores the extent of the transformation of the German ads industry from the internationally infused republican era that preceded 1933 through the relative calm of the mid-1930s and into the war years. She argues that advertisements helped to normalize the concept of a racial community, and that individual consumption played a larger role in the Nazi worldview than is often assumed. Furthermore,Selling under the Swastikademonstrates that commercial actors at all levels, from traveling sales representatives to company executives and ad designers, enjoyed relative independence as they sought to enhance their professional status and boost profits through the manipulation of National Socialist messages.

Spanning the period from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, the book makes visible important continuities between the commercial culture of the 1930s and the economic miracle of the 1950s ... [This book] offers a refreshing approach to economic, business, and cultural history, which, I should hope, historians of the Third Reich find both inspiring and commendable. Pamela E. Swett is associate professor of history at McMaster University. She is the author ofNeighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin, 19291933(2004). [W]ell-argued and deeply researched . . . Swett has written a nuanced, empirically solid, and analytically acute reconstruction of advertising and commercial culture in the Third Reich. It illuminates both the history of modern Germany and of advertising. Pamela Swett'sSelling Under The Swastikaexamines the issue of consumption from a different angll#