Is the Baroness in The Sound of Music a Nazi?

A Cinderella story but with Nazis.

When I was a child, I saw this film so often I sometimes joke that I was raised by Julie Andrews. (Mary Poppins, Fantasia, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Sinbad, are a few others that I saw the most.) And yet, when Hollis Robbins (@Anecdotal) posed the question is the Baroness a Nazi sympathiser, I couldn’t decide.

My daughter has recently been asking to watch it, so we did on New Year’s Day. It seems quite obvious that the Baroness is a sympathiser, if only a passive one. She makes a gentle defence of Rolf (O Rolf!). She returns to Vienna knowing Anschluss is coming. She never says anything approving of the Captain’s views, even though she is supposed to be otherwise submitting herself to his approval for marriage. At the ball, others talk about the Austrian flag. She does not.

Her evasions, and the film’s evasions, are a sign that one of the unspoken problems in her relationship with the Captain is that, at best, she is indifferent to Anschluss. Max says he has no politics. The Baroness remains silent.

Simply ask if you can imagine the Baroness escaping over the mountains after the music festival and the answer is clear. At that point, Max does have politics: she is sitting in Vienna. She is not a conspirator, like some, but she is an acceptor.

The Baroness exemplifies the whole culture that the Captain (and Maria) see as the antagonist: the passive sybarites of the ruling class who are not prepared to defend morally their aesthetic and material pleasures.

What I admire is the film’s apology for the old world. The scene I loved most, then and now, is the ball. (I was, for a while, a fairly strong aesthetic reactionary, though I have mellowed just a little since my salad days.) High culture is everywhere: the buildings, fountains, and statues of Salzburg, the clothes, the waltzing, the decor. It’s like an episode of Civilization. The major theme is what is about to be lost. The Baroness shows no concern for this.

It is notable that Maria brings religion to the house, and the Baroness does not. Maria dances a traditional Austrian dance. ‘My Favourite Things’ includes strudel and schnitzel. She sings about the Austrian alps. The Baroness has none of this cultural rootedness. They are opposites, as the ball scene makes quite clear.

“Nothing will come of nothing”, Maria sings to the Captain, which is not just about love and parenting (the line comes from King Lear), but is also about handing on culture and tradition.

The Baroness does nothing. She will reap the consequences.

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As an aside, the reason why the film is so popular, I think, beyond the splendid music, is that it is a perfect Cinderella story—the poor didn’t want Maria’s dress, the Mother Superior is the fairy Godmother, the Captain is the Prince, Maria has to leave in the middle of the ball, the Baroness is the wicked stepmother, and so on.

As Kurt Vonnegut says, every time someone writes a Cinderella story, they make a million dollars. But this is not just Cinderella. It’s also a Nazi movie, another best-selling genre.

You can just hear the writer’s pitch to the executives. It’s Cinderella, but she’s a singing nun who becomes a governess to seven adorable posh children. She marries their father. And then at the end they escape from the Nazis.