Today’s reception of Wagner and assumptions about the composer’s complicity in inspiring the Holocaust are primarily influenced by events that transpired long after the composer’s death. This chapter analyses Wagner’s own shifting attitudes toward Jews in the context of his life and times and considers the twentieth-century events that have shaped the Wagner legacy: Adolf Hitler’s associations with the Wagner family and Bayreuth, the exploitation of works and musical excerpts for political purposes during the Third Reich, rumours about the use of Wagner’s music in concentration camps, repertoire and staging during the Hitler years, and the troubled and conflicted reception of Wagner’s works in Israel. It also considers how refugees from Nazi Germany initially raised suspicion about the anti-Semitic content of the music dramas and their characters, how post-war scholarship has concentrated on proving these allegations, and how the Wagner family still struggles to come to terms with the past.