Hitler targeted modern art in his culture wars. A New Orleans exhibit paints the picture.

The must-see New Orleans art exhibit of the fall isn’t where you’d expect it. “Degenerate! Hitler’s War on Modern Art,” a collection of small avant-garde drawings, paintings and sculpture by modern European masters, can be found among the antique airplanes and tanks of the National World War II Museum.

The “Degenerate!” show may not cover war per se, but the exhibit simmers with the historical irony of the early Nazi era that led to the cataclysmic 1939-45 conflict. Specifically, it illuminates the time that Adolf Hitler produced one of the most popular art exhibits in history — a show that was meant to be a propaganda coup, but backfired spectacularly.

It was 1937, and the Nazis were envisioning their conquest of Europe. In the meantime, Der Führer, who’d once been an aspiring landscape