Although the Third Reich famously suppressed what it labeled “degenerate art,” it gave a fair amount of leeway to actors, architects, artists, musicians, and filmmakers—provided they had no Jewish ancestry, weren’t socialists, and were willing to keep any questionable political opinions to themselves. In a new book, Jonathan Petropoulos explores the careers of such artists and the moral compromises they made.  Mark Falcoff writes in his review:

The Nazis welcomed the accommodations [of these artists] because they had settled on no hard-and-fast aesthetic of their own. From the late 1920s, the Nazi-party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg attempted to separate “good” and “bad” art through his Fighting League for German Culture, calling for a kind of “blood and soil” folklorism in the plastic arts and literature. But his efforts came largely to naught, partly because while the Nazis knew what they didn’t like, they weren’t so certain about what they did. Even Expressionism, the quintessential art form of the Weimar Republic, was not ruled out of bounds during the National Socialist period. . . .

[Joseph] Goebbels’s control of German culture operated through a series of “chambers” (literature, film, music, etc.) and also through preexisting “academies,” which he immediately purged of Jews and leftists. But a surprising number of creative people looked past this detail and were happy to work with a regime that, unlike its predecessor, was generous with funding for the arts. The poet Gottfried Benn, a modernist, served for a time as head of the Prussian Academy. Moreover, as Petropoulos writes, “among non-Jewish writers a relatively large number with stronger-than-average talent were accepted by the regime.”

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.