The Absent Swastika: ‘Normal’ Tourist Culture

Abstract

The omnipresent swastika perfectly symbolized the voracious, intrusive nature of National Socialism. It was everywhere — on flags, banners, badges, uniforms, buildings, monuments, letterhead and stamps. For German tourists, however, the swastika, along with other key signs and signifiers of the Hitler dictatorship, was never so ubiquitous. Certainly, it took pride of place in the overtly politicized tourist culture characteristic of cities like Berlin and Munich. There, the swastika typified an explicit ideologization of the tourist landscape. Yet, elsewhere, the swastika was absent from many common tourist experiences. In the Third Reich, a seemingly normal tourist culture persisted, which lacked the distinguishing characteristics of its Nazified counterpart. It was based on traditional sightseeing attractions rather than newly constructed buildings or recently invented sites of Nazi martyrdom. Unlike Nazi tourist culture, which centred on historical rupture, it promoted a vision of timelessness by focusing on seamless, unbroken continuities with the past. The experiences it offered appeared to mirror those from an earlier time. Its language was also surprisingly apolitical: references to the Nazi movement’s leaders, anniversaries and ideological tenets were infrequent.