In the 1930 German federal election, he became a deputy of the Reichstag and he would continue to serve until the fall of the Nazi regime, representing electoral constituency 3 (Potsdam II, later renamed Berlin-East).

[3] He was also active in the völkisch and antisemitic Militant League for German Culture, founded by Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, and would go one to become its Organisationsleiter (Organizational Leader).

[7] In this capacity, Hinkel was the driving force behind the pressure exerted on the popular theater and film actor Joachim Gottschalk to divorce his Jewish wife.

[9] In the Propaganda Ministry bureaucracy, he was promoted to Ministerialdirigent in October 1940 and rose to Ministerial Director and Generalsekretär (General Secretary) of the Reich Chamber of Culture in July 1941.

As the hardships of the war mounted, Goebbels sought to improve public morale by introducing more entertaining material to German radio broadcasts.

In February 1942, he gave Hinkel overall responsibility for artistic and entertainment programming on German radio, to mainly consist of light orchestral music.

He also had to ensure that during the final phase of the war more than half of the members of the German film industry fulfilled their duty to serve as soldiers in the Wehrmacht or in the Volkssturm, the Nazi Party militia.

[citation needed] After the defeat of Germany in May 1945, Hinkel was first interned by the Americans in Dachau and then transferred to Poland in 1947 to face charges for his involvement in the theft of Polish cultural treasures.

It resulted in Hinkel being classified as a "main offender" and receiving a sentence of two years imprisonment in a labor camp, taking into account his previous time served.

Meanwhile, all of his works, published under the titles Manual of the National Cultural Chamber and Jew Quarter of Europe, were put on the list of proscribed writings in the Soviet zone of occupation.