The Völkischer Beobachter did not, of course, limit itself to presenting examples of contemporary art like Arno Breker’s rigid athletes as means of “strengthening the inner life of Germans” before and during the Second World War. Indeed, Nazi propagandists enlisted the whole of the Western cultural tradition, as perceived in National Socialist terms, to serve in their belligerent cause. Just when German armies were invading Poland, Joseph Goebbels addressed an annual joint meeting of the Reich Cultural Chamber (Reichskulturkammer) and the “Strength through Joy” organization on 27 November 1939, with a speech on “Cultural Life in the War” that made the cultural dimension of the conflict, as envisioned by the Nazi leadership, clear. Continued cultural activity for the German Volk was “one of the most important preconditions” for guaranteeing the “steadfastness and perseverance of the whole nation” during its “battle of destiny” (Schicksalskampf). “What,” Goebbels asked “could be more suitable for lifting up the spirit and refreshing the soul of the Volk” – raising “our soldiers, and our workers” to a heightened state of optimism – “than art?” Nazis, he went on, had “never reserved art for peacetime alone: for us, the notion that when the call to arms sounds, the muses go silent, has no validity.” To the contrary, “we have always held the position that it is precisely in such a moment” that the muses “need to deploy their powers.” Because, “the more trying the times, the more people require inner enlivenment and encouragement through art,” and this, Goebbels contended, was “a part of the German Volk character more so than that of any other people.”

The forces that had gathered at this meeting of Third Reich cultural organizations during the earliest stage of the fighting, Goebbels declared, wanted to “demonstrate before all the world that art is no mere peacetime amusement, but a sharp spiritual weapon for war.” Under Hitler’s leadership, the Nazis had placed this “spiritual weapon into the hand of our Volk” to wield as the “German nation was lining up to battle for its very existence.” Thus armed, the arch-propagandist closed, “we Germans are not only protecting our living space [Lebensraum], our daily bread, and our machines against hostile plutocratic powers; we are also protecting our German culture and with it the great blessings that it can bestow on the whole Volk.”