Hitler merely executed a pre-existing tendency to deculture the middle classes.

Evidence

The central thesis of Adorno’s lecture, for example, was that Hitler was only the executor of a tendency which appeared long before him, and which would certainly continue after him: the deculturing of the middle classes, the neutralization of culture in general and of the arts in particular, and their replacement by the culture industry. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 409

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the culture-industry and ‘deculturing’ material in the Frankfurt School institutional history the reader is working through.