This is the first study of mass media in Germany from a social and cultural-historical perspective. Beyond the conventional focus on organizational structures or aesthetic content, it investigates the impact the media has on German society under varying political systems, and how the media is shaped by wider social, political and cultural context.

Few developments in the industrial era have had a greater impact on everyday social life than the explosion of the mass media and commercial entertainments, and none have exerted a more profound influence on the nature of modern politics. Nowhere in Europe were the tensions and controversies surrounding the rise of mass culture more politically charged than in Germany--debates that played fatefully into the hands of the radical right. Corey Ross provides the first general account of the expansion of the mass media in Germany up to the Second World War, examining how the rise of film, radio,...

Few developments in the industrial era have had a greater impact on everyday social life than the explosion of the mass media and commercial entertainments, and none have exerted a more profound influence on the nature of modern politics. Nowhere in Europe were the tensions and controversies surrounding the rise of mass culture more politically charged than in Germany--debates that played fatefully into the hands of the radical right. Corey Ross provides the first general account of the expansion of the mass media in Germany up to the Second World War, examining how the rise of film, radio,...

Although we associate the Third Reich above all with suffering, pain and fear, pleasure played a central role in its social and cultural dynamics. This book explores the relationship between the rationing of pleasures as a means of political stabilization and the pressure on the Nazi regime to cater to popular cultural expectations.