Wagner at war

The website Wagner Opera has uploaded to YouTube a scene from the 1941 Nazi propaganda film Stukas, in which a clinically depressed fighter pilot hears Götterdämmerung at Bayreuth, becomes rejuvenated, and merrily goes back to bombing the British. It's hard to know whether to be amused or disgusted by the footage; both reactions seem apt. As I noted in The Rest Is Noise, Hitler had thousands of wounded soldiers shipped to Bayreuth during the war so that they could be spiritually healed by...