At the end of the war, as much of Germany lay in rubble, musicology could quietly look back on all it had gained in the previous twelve years. Even at the height of the conflict in 1944, one could boast more musicology departments than anywhere else in the world, an uninterrupted flow of productivity in the form of Denkmaler and Gesamtausgaben, the continued proliferation of German folk music, and impressive archives and collections (fortified in no small part by the seizure of materials from occupied and annexed territories). The reason musicology had fared so well cannot simply be attributed to the entire discipline selling its soul to a totalitarian regime. Instead, the beginning of the Third Reich posed an opportunity for musicology to gain recognition for agendas it had long been pursuing. Ever since the First World War, German musicologists had focused much of their energy on the study of German music, on bridging the gap between the academy and the public, and on pursuing folk music research in order to pay serious scholarly attention to its ‘community-building’ power, which many had experienced first-hand in the military and the youth movement.

After failing to exert any significant influence in music policy or educational reform in the Weimar system, musicologists were encouraged to learn that the goals of the National Socialists – to unlock the mysteries of German superiority, to broaden public access to the rich German cultural legacy and to pay greater attention to folk practices – were not very different from their own. Musicologists had not only acquired the means to serve the Nazi state through their earlier endeavours, but also demonstrated a true commitment to the tasks set before them. Ambitious projects initiated in the Weimar Republic and paralysed by the economic crisis were reanimated and expanded by the Nazi Education Ministry and the Propaganda Ministry, while the cultural organisations of Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler’s SS enlisted the services of musicologists in research, education and special wartime plundering actions.