THE MUSICAL IS often considered a frivolous and even trivial film genre, which audiences do not take seriously because it is unrealistic, promotes cheerfulness over substance, choreographs movement, and caters to escapist fantasies. Yet it is precisely the musical’s emphasis on nostalgia, gaiety, controlled energy, and collective release that makes it an excellent starting point for a study on the social construction of happiness in Nazi Germany. National Socialists recognized that the “low aesthetic tone” of popular culture could intoxicate the masses and fuel political action. The enthusiasm generated from such popular forms of entertainment as the musical could be channeled into the political realm. Adolf Hitler argued that widespread enthusiasm was essential to the Nazi revolution:

Exhilaration for the present can be wrapped up in nostalgia for a simpler time, one filled with music and a preordained happy ending. The feelings generated from such an encounter with the past are redeemable for the present with songs that linger in the audience’s heart and mind after the screen fades to black. Several notable German musicals from the 1930s offer a utopian vision of history, where the turbulent political arena is subdued by light-hearted music and dance. Drawing on Richard Dyer’s argument that the Hollywood musical offers a glimpse at “what utopia would feel like rather than how it would be organized,” this chapter examines how the Nazi musical depicts history as a state driven by emotions with explicit parallels to the present. I will take as my point of departure the 1938 musical Tanz auf dem Vulkan (Dancing on the Volcano), directed by Hans Steinhoff and starring Gustaf Gründgens. What does this film about the July Revolution have to say about civil unrest and political dissent in general?