If there were such an entity as a first family of anti-Semitic aristocracy, it would arguably be the Wagners of Bayreuth. Richard Wagner, one of Europe's greatest composers, was an anti-Semite whose music and anti-Jewish hatred was an important influence on Adolf Hitler. Following the "master's" death in 1883, Wagner's heirs were determined to perpetuate his legacy by staging his magisterial operas in the German city of Bayreuth. The city quickly became a musical mecca wherein "Wagnerites," including Jews, flocked to his musical dramas, which were staged before packed audiences of the faithful. Among the "pilgrims" who journeyed to Bayreuth was Adolf Hitler, both before and after he became der Fuhrer.

The whole enterprise was initially administered by Cosima Wagner, whose animus toward the Jews was as vitriolic as her husband's. Well-known anti-Semitic nationalist racists — including Hitler — were frequent visitors to the family estate at Wahnfried, where they always found a warm welcome. After Cosima's death, both Wahnfried and responsibility for the Bayreuth festival fell to their son Siegfried.

Siegfried Wagner was, like his father, a composer, but lacked Richard's talent. He did manage to compose a few (forgettable) operas but, more importantly, he continued to produce the Bayreuth festivals. In 1915, he married Winifred Marjorie Williams, a British-born orphan who, after Siegfried's death, became head of the family and one of Hitler's closest personal friends.

Winifred's loyalty to Hitler lasted long after the war's end, and she continued to defend him until her death in 1980. Like many of her kind, following World War I, Winifred blamed the Jews for Germany's loss and viewed the newly formed but hated Weimar Republic as a Jewish creation. After World War II, Winifred acknowledged the Holocaust but blamed the extermination of the Jews and other excesses of the Third Reich on Hitler's subordinates, such as Martin Bormann, who, she claimed, perpetrated crimes in the name of the fuhrer.

For Winifred, Hitler could do no wrong. Long after the war, and having gone through the Allied de-Nazification process, Winifred was asked the question: If Hitler were to walk in through the door now, how would she react to his presence? She responded, "I'd be as happy and glad to see and have him here as ever, and that whole dark side of him, I know it exists, but it doesn't exist for me because I don't know that part of him. You see, the only thing that exists for me in a relationship with somebody is my personal experience." When asked the same question, Hitler's onetime admirer and wartime armaments minister Albert Speer replied, "Here? In Heidelberg? I would call the police."

Winifred Wagner made Hitler and his coterie of Nazi followers welcome at Wahnfried from the early 1920s on to the final days of the Third Reich. In turn, Hitler, who revered the Wagner family, saw to it that the Bayreuth festival had sufficient funding to enable its continuation even during the war.

Although she never hid her resentment of Jews, there was another side to Winifred. During the '30s, when the persecution of the Jews intensified in Germany, and later, when Jews were being deported, she used her friendship with Hitler to intercede in behalf of Jews who were purged from German life; during the war, she even used her influence to release Jews from concentration camps. Like her father-in-law, Richard Wagner, Winifred was an anti-Semite in the abstract; in her personal dealings with Jews, however, she often established friendships and acquaintances, especially in the world of opera. For Winifred, what mattered most was staging the Bayreuth festivals, and if this meant employing Jewish musicians and artists to make it successful, then she used her influence with Hitler to make sure she had the best personnel for the job.

As for Hitler, he treated the Wagner family almost as royalty, awed by their blood lineage. He especially adored the four Wagner children. One of them, Friedelind, who later was estranged from both her mother and Hitler, stated that all the Wagner children loved Hitler, "because we were excited by his stories about his adventures traveling through Germany…. His life was fascinating for us because it was so different — like something out of a fairy tale…. Even the Wagner dogs…who would never go to anybody except the family, immediately made friends with Hitler; he attracted them with no effort through his hypnotic power."

Friedelind eventually made her way to England and then the United States, where she became an outspoken critic of the Third Reich.

Brigette Hamann, whose previous book, Hitler's Vienna, shed light on the tyrant's years in the Austrian capital prior to World War I, has written an important book about the world of anti-Semitic aesthetes. Growing up, I often heard the question: How was it possible for a cultured nation like Germany to produce the Holocaust? The answer may never be satisfactorily answered but Hamann does make an effort to describe a time when educated and cultured individuals, enamored of music and poetry, were at the same time captivated by Hitler's hypnotic rhetoric. Hitler emerges from Hamann's pages as a charismatic and almost messianic figure who appealed to like-minded educated Germans who were inclined to believe his rant that the Jews were responsible for all of the country's problems. He combined nationalism with anti-Semitism, a volatile brew that resonated with upper-class Germans — like Winifred Wagner.

Hamann concludes with her judgment on Winifred: "She was neither a heroine nor a criminal, but one of the great mass of trusting, misguided people who succumbed to the great seducer Hitler. It was in keeping with the spirit of Wahnfried that as a young woman she should have regarded the passionate Wagnerian as the "savior of Germany" as well as the savior of Bayreuth…."