We tend to think of the relationship between organised religion and totalitarian regimes – as in the Soviet Union – as one in which freedom of religious belief and expression are ruthlessly suppressed in the name of the unity of the state. But if that is the case, what exactly is taking place in our notional Christmas scene – one which could be taking place in any German town from 1933 to 1943? Does the substitution of the swastika for the cross reveal the Nazis’ transformation of a key Christian festival into a pagan rite, an appropriation of a popular tradition for political ends or an uneasy coexistence between the German people’s old-fashioned Christmas pleasures and the imperatives of their new masters?

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