PARIS, Oct. 24 - When Hitler banned modern and abstract art as degenerate, the style that replaced it in German museums was kitsch neo-Classicism. But in the case of degenerate music, a more convincingly nationalistic alternative was readily available. Reaching back into the 18th and 19th centuries, Hitler mobilized Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Bruckner and Wagner to stir the masses in a musical language that was purely Germanic.

Today, in cultural terms, the Nazis are usually remembered for what they were against. In music, this meant Jewish composers like Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Mahler, Jewish librettists like Stefan Zweig and myriad Jewish musicians. It also meant atonal and avant-garde music by the likes of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Kurt Weill, as well as jazz, swing and anything associated with black American music.

But Hitler also believed that music was the art form closest to the German soul. While Britain had literature and France painting, Germany, in the words of Joseph Goebbels, was "the first musical people on earth." No other country had as many orchestras or opera houses; no people - not even the Italians - could boast so many great classical composers. By the mid-1930's, Germany's musical legacy had become a pillar of the 1,000-year Reich.

The immense power of music as a political tool is at the heart of "The Third Reich and Music," a fascinating show at the Music Museum in the Cité de la Musique, in northeast Paris, through Jan. 9. Along with paintings, posters, photographs, stage designs and sculptures, it presents recordings and film clips of important performances in the Nazi years. Heard on its own, the music is of all ages. In this context, it suddenly places a visitor in a crowded German concert hall six decades ago.

The experience of studying a score of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as annotated by Wilhelm Furtwängler is transformed by a recording of the same conductor leading the Berlin Philharmonic through the "Ode to Joy" in Berlin on March 22, 1942. Similarly, to hear Herbert von Karajan conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam in Beethoven's "Leonore" Overture No. 3 in September 1943 is to recall that the Netherlands was under German occupation at the time.

The music here constantly disturbs. Recordings of "Das Rheingold" and "Götterdämmerung" made in 1933 seem to trumpet Wagner's status as Hitler's favorite composer (although Bruckner, too, was singled out for praise in "Mein Kampf"). And why, one is tempted to ask, is Hitler's much-loved "Meistersinger von Nürnberg" being sung with such gusto under Karajan's baton in 1951? (An original score of this opera is also in the show.)

Hitler evidently appreciated Wagner's anti-Semitism, expressed most blatantly in his notorious 1850 pamphlet, "Judaism in Music." But perhaps more important, Wagner's operas gave voice to Hitler's Romantic identity with an ancient, mystical and eternal Germany. Appropriately, the bronze bust of Wagner on display here is by Hitler's court sculptor, Arno Breker.

Hitler was also a frequent visitor to the Bayreuth Festival, Wagner's musical shrine. One photograph has German soldiers marching under a banner reading, "The city of Richard Wagner welcomes the Führer's guests." Another shows the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth decorated with swastikas and a portrait of Hitler to celebrate his 50th birthday. On that occasion, he was given eight of Wagner's original signed scores, all of which disappeared in 1945.

Hitler's devotion to Wagner as well as the renewed public airing of his anti-Semitism ensured that the composer's reputation would emerge from the war bruised. In time, the argument prevailed that the music can be separated from the man. But when Daniel Barenboim, an Argentine-born Jew, conducted Wagner in Israel in 2001, he provoked a storm. And when Pascal Huynh, this show's curator, was interviewed recently on Radio Judaïque-FM in Paris, he was asked not to play Wagner excerpts.

But the focus of "The Third Reich and Music" is far broader than the regime's exploitation of Germany's classical greats. Through scores, recordings and paintings, including Schoenberg's portraits of Mahler and Zemlinsky, it covers the pre-Nazi burst of musical innovation. But even before coming to power in January 1933, the Nazis were criticizing avant-garde music. Already in 1927, they attacked Ernst Krenek's lively jazz opera, "Jonny Spielt Auf."

One document - Schoenberg's letter, witnessed by Marc Chagall, announcing his reconversion to Judaism in July 1933 - underlines how it was apparent by then that the world had changed. Schoenberg himself chose exile, as did other composers like Krenek, Zemlinsky and Paul Hindemith, conductors like Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter, even the great tenor Richard Tauber. The "Degenerate Music" exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1938 was almost a formality.

Among prominent musicians who stayed were the composers Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Carl Orff and Werner Egk, as well as the conductors Furtwängler, Karajan and Hans Knappertsbusch. All worked under the Nazis and were able to resume their careers after the war, with only Furtwängler singled out for de-Nazification.

Strauss's relationship with the regime was ambivalent. He was forced to resign as president of the Reich's Chamber of Music in 1935 after he protested the hounding of Hindemith and collaborated with Zweig. But he remained one of Hitler's preferred composers. He also conducted his "Hymn" at the opening of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, while several of his greatest operas, including "Arabella" and "Capriccio," were first performed between 1933 and 1945.

A far darker fate awaited Jewish musicians who did not escape Germany, Austria or occupied countries. Many were sent to concentration camps where, if not immediately killed, they were encouraged to form chamber orchestras, some of which were infamously ordered to play outside gas chambers. One photograph in this exhibition shows a prisoner, Hans Bonarewitz, being escorted to his death at Mauthausen in the company of other prisoners playing violins.

No less perversely, beginning in 1941 the Nazis gathered many musicians at Theresienstadt outside Prague, which the regime proclaimed a model camp. Orchestras, quartets and choirs were formed, small operas were produced, and works were composed. Then, after the Nazis made a propaganda film of Theresienstadt's musical life in 1944, the composers Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas and Hans Krasa were sent to die in Auschwitz. (Excerpts from works by Ullmann and Krasa can be heard in the show.)

In November the Cité de la Musique will also present a series of concerts linked to the theme "The Third Reich and Music," including works by Strauss, Webern, Berg, Schoenberg, Zemlinsky, Weill and Wagner. But in the ultramodern setting of the Cité's concert hall, even Wagner is likely to seem distant from his assigned role in the Nazis' cultural propaganda machine.

A more chilling reminder of the regime's identity with music comes at the end of the exhibition: a recording of a Berlin radio broadcast on May 2, 1945, in which one Karl Hanke announced, "The Führer is dead." Hanke's long paean to Hitler then climaxed in music. The chosen work was Schubert's Eighth Symphony, the "Unfinished." For the defeated Nazis, it was a metaphor for Hitler's life work.