The German Nazis of the 1930s and 1940s had an explicitly approved form of art. Unlike the other totalitarian regimes of the era, the approved forms of art were firmly integrated into their iconography and ideology and excluded any other art movement, including those that were popular at the time. These approved forms of art held a limited number of themes which were repeated as often as necessary, in order to portray the values the Nazis deemed relevant to their cause. These values were, of course, fundamentally nationalistic, and those themes approved by the government were meant to glorify not only the Aryan race but specifically the German nation.
             The painting Out To Harvest, by Oskar Martin-Amorbach, is a typical, governmentally approved, work of Nazi art. It depicts a family of farmers going out to harvest on what seems to be a summer day in a typical German countryside. It shows three generations of that family, a young boy at about 4-5 years of age, his mother, and what appears to be his father, grandfather, and a young woman who might be his older sister or aunt. As its title implies they are going out to harvest, for they are carrying scythes and rakes for harvesting and a small handheld basket, presumably holding their lunch for the day. In the background is portrayed a typical German landscape, rolling hills as far as the eye could see, symbolizing the Nazis'slogan of "Blood and Soil."
             What makes this painting a typical work of Nazi art is its glorification of the peasantry. Not only is it mere peasantry it glorifies, but German peasantry. Now, while on the surface it may not sound like a very Nazi-esque topic to the layman, it embodies many of the ideals that the Nazis stood for, one of them being the aforementioned Blood and Soil, another being the portrayal of the peasantry as a source of strength and purity. The reason peasantry was held in such high regard by the Nazis, was that the peasant family was seen as a...