In The Political Orchestra: The Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics during the Third Reich, Fritz Trümpi tells how these two distinguished musical institutions conducted themselves during—and after—the era of Nazi rule. Norman Lebrecht writes in his review:

Neither emerges with any credit. The Berlin Philharmonic musicians surrendered their hard-won self-governance in 1933 in exchange for fat salaries from Joseph Goebbels’s Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, taking Nazi orders on what not to play and which countries to tour as standard-bearers of the new Germany.

Wilhelm Furtwängler, their apolitical chief conductor, was long believed to have intervened to save Jewish players from the death camps. In fact, as Trümpi points out, there were none left in the orchestra for Furtwängler to worry about. After [the orchestra’s leader and violinist Szymon] Goldberg’s dismissal [in 1934], there were two solo cellists, Nikolai Graudan and Joseph Schuster, and a first violinist, Gilbert Back. They were the last Jews in the Berlin Philharmonic. . . .

After the Anschluss of 1938, the Vienna Philharmonic struggled with Hitler’s decree to reduce Austria to a province of the Third Reich. Goebbels refused to fund the orchestra, placing it under the authority of the Vienna Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach, a lover of sentimental music. Schirach, who described the deportation he oversaw of 65,000 Jews to the death camps as a “contribution to European culture,” authorized the New Year’s concerts that became the orchestra’s trademark. It was not until 2013 that the Vienna Philharmonic revoked the Ring of Honor it had bestowed on three leading figures in the Nazi genocide: Schirach, [the Austrian Nazi leader Arthur] Seyss-Inquart (later Reichskommissar of the occupied Netherlands), and the German railways boss Rudolf Toepfer.

A Vienna Philharmonic trumpet player, Helmut Wobisch, trained mass murderers to play marches. After the war, this SS man became the orchestra’s business manager. . . .

The Vienna Philharmonic [also] welcomed old Gauleiters to its concerts the moment they came out of jail. The Berlin Philharmonic, under Herbert von Karajan, stuck to the Nazis’ anti-modernist [musical] agenda [after the war], though the anti-Semitic program was modified slightly with doses of Mendelssohn and Mahler. Both orchestras were valued as prestigious state assets and neither faced much scrutiny or criticism until the present century.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.