ABSTRACT
The connection between culture and liberty is not rhetorical, as the phrase might suggest, but vital and organic. Culture is, in fact, a slow product of the organic process people call history, and it is very difficult to catch it on the move. For example, contemporary efforts to estimate the greatness of poets and painters are almost invariably wrong. Culture is something wider than art-and something more intangible. When Hitler opened the magnificent new 'Haus der Deutschen Kunst' in Munich, he made a speech of one and a half hours entirely devoted to these questions of art and culture. During the course of this speech Hitler made quite clear the very close connection which exists between the political and artistic concepts of National Socialism. Art, for Hitler, is not a grace or ornament of civilization; it is the very test and proof of nationhood.
