“There's Never Been So Much Hitler” is the approximate translation of the title of Daniel Erk's timely new book, So viel Hitler war selten. Europeans who were alive in the 1930s and 1940s might beg to differ, but at the level of contemporary culture, Erk's point is well taken. Although Adolf Hitler has been dead for nearly 70 years, he enjoys a level of visibility today that is as striking as it is puzzling. Wherever one looks, one finds references to, and representations of, the Nazi dictator: in political discourse, advertisements, popular music, art, film, and television. Some examples are familiar, such as the innumerable YouTube video parodies of Bruno Ganz's performance as the Nazi dictator from the 2004 film, Downfall; others are more obscure, such as advertisements employing Hitler to sell South African eggs, Brazilian wine, and Indian television sets. One point, though, is clear: “in whatever incarnation, Hitler lives” (p. 9).

In trying to determine the significance of this phenomenon, Erk joins the growing list of scholars who have tried to connect trends in contemporary culture, both high and low, to larger shifts in the memory of the Nazi era. Since the work of Saul Friedlander in the early 1980s, recent works have pursued this agenda, such as Marcus Stiglegger's Sadiconazista—Sexualität und Faschismus im Film der siebziger Jahre bis heute (1999); Maartje Abbenhuis and Sara Buttsworth's edited anthology, Monsters in the Mirror: Representations of Nazism in Post-War Popular Culture (2010); and Daniel H. Magilow, Elizabeth Bridges, and Kristin T. Vander Lugt's edited anthology, Nazisploitation! The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture (2011). Erk's perspective is informed by some of these works, but as a journalist (who is based in Berlin and writes a “Hitler blog” for the taz), he is more interested in empirical breadth than analytical depth. Although he offers interesting and insightful observations about present-day trends in remembrance, he does not provide the same degree of contextualization and explanation typical of more academic works of history.

The first several chapters of Erk's book testify to the strengths and weaknesses of his analytical approach. Chapter one, on “Nazi comparisons,” surveys the inflated usage of analogies drawn from the Third Reich in present-day political discourse. Whether in Germany or the United States, comparing one's political opponents to Hitler and the Nazis has become de rigueur in recent decades. Erk shows that in Germany, the practice has existed since the Adenauer era (where Nazi analogies were used to criticize the communist eastern bloc), but has intensified since the rise of the 1968 generation. The practice has always been surrounded by vigorous taboos; anyone who comes close to misusing such analogies (most recently, SPD Justice Minister, Herta Däubler-Gmelin in 2002, who compared George W. Bush to Hitler) can easily pay for them with their careers. In the United States, by contrast, the practice has been more socially acceptable (“salonfähig”) and widespread. It dates back to the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, which gave rise to comparisons to Hitler and appeasement (continued by George W. Bush in the post-9/11 world). Ever since, and especially following the election of Barack Obama in 2008, irresponsible comparisons to the Third Reich have proliferated; yet in America, no one has paid for it with his or her job. Erk is on solid ground in claiming that these claims relativize Nazi evil. But one wishes that instead of appending a nine-page list of examples to the fourteen-page analysis that precedes it, he combined both into a more seamlessly integrated whole.

The same is true of chapter two, on the Nazi era's legacy for contemporary language. Erk correctly points out the enduring awkwardness that surrounds certain words in the German language today, mentioning the preference for “Tourguide” over “Führer” and quoting comedian Harald Schmidt about other words that are similarly burdened: “Volkslied, Kraft, Freude, Wander, Sozialstaat” (p. 53). But this valid point (and the related one that certain Nazi-era words, such as “Volkswagen,” have survived into the present in denazified form) could be more tightly linked analytically to another topic that the chapter fleetingly addresses, the proliferation of puns about the Nazi era, as, for example, on the internet comic strip, Hipster Hitler (mislabeled “Hitler Hipster” in the text), which features a bohemian Hitler wearing T-shirts with Nazi-themed slogans, such as “Back to the Führer.” The fact that this ten-page chapter is followed by an eleven-page annotated list of individual phrases (“Arbeit macht frei,” “Jedem das Seine,” and “Lager,” among others), instead of being integrated into the main body of the text, also keeps the larger analysis from reaching its full synthetic potential.

Subsequent chapters avoid this bifurcation of documentation and analysis and offer intriguing insights about Hitler's presence in other areas of present-day culture. Erk's discussion of Hitler's presence in contemporary advertising is particularly convincing, both for the examples he has unearthed and his interpretation. It is stunning to learn that Hitler has been used to sell pizza, tea, noodles, and condoms in certain (usually non-Western) countries. And it is convincing to read Erk's apt conclusion that Hitler's identity as an internationally known icon of evil that can be easily represented artistically (all you need is a toothbrush moustache and side-parted hair) lends him to easy marketing. A chapter on the appeal and danger of “laughing at Hitler,” whether in film, television, or comic books, offers instructive comparisons between German, British, American, and Israeli culture, concluding that different moral standards in each country provide the basis for appropriateness. A chapter on the Nazi legacy for pop music (mostly from the genre of punk rock) asserts that the short format of radio-friendly songs keeps most from rising above clichés and errors related to the Third Reich (p. 141). And a chapter on art (mostly in Germany) concludes that the effort of painters to exorcise Hitler from German life has paradoxically ended up creating more of him in present-day visual culture (p. 194).

On balance, the many empirical examples documented in So viel Hitler war selten yield a series of important conclusions. The Hitler that exists in present-day culture is a distorted, simplistic Hitler that is geared toward spectacle rather than education. Indeed, it represents a rebellion against education, insofar as it is part of a “defense mechanism” (p. 19) against a moralistic, ritualized, state-sponsored culture of Betroffenheit (in Germany) and Holocaust consciousness (in the United States and Israel) that many skeptical young people see as superficial or hypocritical. In short, the new Hitler Wave that Erk documents may be pointing the way toward the Nazi era's “historicization” (p. 230).

That said, most of these conclusions could be elaborated upon at greater length and systematically grouped into a larger explanatory framework. One possible way of doing this would be to organize them under the conceptual idea of “normalization.” Although Erk speaks of “banalization” and “historicization,” he does not really define either term in depth or explain how they relate to other aspects of normalization, which include relativization, universalization, and aestheticization. To differentiate between these strategies, to show how they are expressed in his individual empirical examples, and to show how they are all part of a larger reaction against moralistic modes of understanding the Nazi era would help to make a strong book even stronger.