Nazism and cinema

Nazism made extensive use of the cinema throughout its history. Though it was a relatively new technology, the Nazi Party established a film department soon after it rose to power in Germany. Both Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, used the many Nazi films to promote the party ideology and show their influence in the burgeoning art form, which was an object of personal fascination for Hitler.^[1] The Nazis valued film as a propaganda instrument of enormous power, courting the masses by means of slogans that were aimed directly at the instincts and emotions of the people. The Department of Film also used the economic power of German moviegoers to influence the international film market. This resulted in almost all Hollywood producers censoring films critical of Nazism during the 1930s, as well as showing news shorts produced by the Nazis in American theaters.

The Nazis were very aware of the propagandistic effect of movies and already in 1920 the issues of the Racial Observer included film criticism.^[2] The SS-philosopher Walter Julius Bloem published the book The Soul of the Cinema – A Commitment to the Movies in 1922.^[3]

In September 1923, Philipp Nickel produced a documentary of the "German Day in Nuremberg" where the "Battle-League" was founded, shortly before the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler wrote about the psychological effect of images in Mein Kampf:

One must also remember that of itself the multitude is mentally inert, that it remains attached to its old habits and that it is not naturally prone to read something which does not conform with its own pre-established beliefs when such writing does not contain what the multitude hopes to find there.

The picture, in all its forms, including the film, has better prospects. In a much shorter time, at one stroke I might say, people will understand a pictorial presentation of something which it would take them a long and laborious effort of reading to understand.^[4]

A comprehensive critique of the film industry was published by the Nazi economist Hans Buchner in 1927 with the title "Spellbound by Movies. The Global Dominance of the Cinema".^[5] Further short Nazi films about party rallies were made in 1927–1929. The first NSDAP film office was established in 1931, and started producing "documentaries" in a larger scale, e.g., in 1932 "Hitlers Kampf um Deutschland" (Hitler's fight for Germany), "Blutendes Deutschland" (Germany is bleeding), "Das junge Deutschland marschiert" (The German Youth is on the March).^[6] Herbert Gerdes directed five Nazi propaganda films: Erbkrank (1936), Alles Leben ist Kampf (1937), Was du Ererbt (1938), Schuld oder Schein (1921), and Das Große Geheimnis (1920).^[7][8]

Nazi propagandist Hans Traub, who had earned his PhD in 1925 with a dissertation on the press and the German revolutions of 1848–49, wrote in the essay "The film as a political instrument" in 1932:

Without any doubt the film is a formidable means of propaganda. Achieving propagandistic influence has always demanded a ‘language’ which forms a memorable and passionate plot with a simple narrative. … In the vast area of such ’language’ that the recipients are directly confronted by in the course of technical and economical processes, the most effective is the moving picture. It demands permanent alertness; it’s full of surprises concerning the change of time, space, and action; it has an unimaginable richness of rhythm for intensifying or dispelling emotions.^[9]

Goebbels, who appointed himself "Patron of the German film", believed that a national cinema which was entertaining and put glamour on the government would be a more effective propaganda instrument than a national cinema in which the NSDAP and their policy would have been ubiquitous. Goebbels emphasized the will to end the "shamelessness and tastelessness" that he thought could be found in the former movie industry.^[10] The main goal of the Nazi film policy was to promote escapism, which was designed to distract the population and to keep everybody in good spirits; Goebbels indeed blamed defeat in World War I on the failure to sustain the morale of the people.^[11]

The open propaganda was reserved for films like Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph des Willens, records of the Nuremberg rallies, and newsreels. There are some examples of Nazi-era feature films that deal with the NSDAP or with party organizations such as the Sturmabteilung, Hitler Youth or the National Labour Service, one example being Hitlerjunge Quex about the Hitler Youth. Another example is the anti-semitic feature film Jew Suss. The propaganda films that refer directly to Nazi politics amounted to less than a sixth of the whole national film production, which mainly consisted of light entertainment films.^{[citation needed]}

For conceiving a Nazi film theory, Goebbels suggested as formative material the Hamburg Dramaturgy and Laokoon, or the Limitations of Poetry by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and also demanded "realistic characters" pointing to Shakespeare.^[12] Goebbels emphasized Lessing's idea that "not only imagining per se, but purposeful imagining, would prove the creative mind".^[13]

Emil Jannings wrote in 1942 in the National Socialist Monthly about the goal of showing men and women who can master their own fate as models for identification.^[14] The authorities and NSDAP departments in charge of film policy were the film department of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer), the Chamber of Film (Reichsfilmkammer), and the film department of the Party Propaganda Department (Reichspropagandaleitung).^{[citation needed]}

A system of "award" was used to encourage self-censorship; awarded for such things as "cultural value" or "value to the people", they remitted part of the heavy taxes on films.^[15] Up to a third of the films in Nazi Germany received such awards.^[15]

A Symphony of the Will to Fight, the first film officially produced by the Nazis, was a coverage of the 1927 Nuremberg rally. Nazi activity was later filmed by UFA GmbH, which was acquired by Alfred Hugenberg in 1927.^[17]

The Nationalist Socialist Film Service was created in November 1928, and local parties were required to have film projectors starting in 1929.^[18] Goebbels established an organization to distribute Nazi films in 1930, but did not receive proper financial backing. Film production and distribution were instead handled by Gauleiters. In 1932, ten Landesfilmstellen (LES) were formed to distribute films created by the Nazi Film Service.^[19] The Hitler Youth started showing films on a monthly basis in Cologne beginning on 20 April 1934, and this expanded nationally to a weekly basis in 1936.^[20]

The Film Credit Bank [de], formed on 1 June 1933, gave the Nazis financial control over film production as independent producers became dependent on its backing. The Reich Chamber of Film was formed on 14 July, and was later included as one of the seven organizations in the Reich Chamber of Culture. The Film Credit Bank was financing over 73% of feature films by 1936.^[21] The Reich Cinema Law, enacted on 1 March 1934, required all film scripts to be approved by a Nazi film advisor.^[22]

Hans Hinkel was tasked by Goebbels with removing all Jewish influence from the film industry.^[23] Weimar-era films which had Jewish people involved in the production were renamed and had those people removed from the credits. Warner Bros. closed its German affiliate rather than follow Nazi policies on Jews and Universal Pictures' German affiliate, Deutsche Universal, was moved to Vienna and then to Budapest.^[24]

German film exports fell as they could not reach screen quotas due to Nazi policies to reduce foreign film imports and widespread censorship inhibiting distributors who wanted to import films.^[25] The international box office accounted for 40% of German film earnings during the silent era and was at 30% in 1932, but fell to 11% for 1934–1935.^[26]

More and more production companies went bankrupt. The number of companies dropped from 114 (1933–35) to 79 (1936–38) to 38 (1939–41). This did not necessarily lead to a decrease in the number of new films, as the remaining production companies produced many more films. Nazi companies went on to produce co-productions with companies of other countries: eight co-productions with the Kingdom of Italy, six co-productions with the French Third Republic, five co-productions with the Kingdom of Hungary, 5 co-productions with Czechoslovakia, 3 co-productions with Switzerland, two co-productions with the Second Polish Republic and the Empire of Japan (e.g., The Daughter of the Samurai), and one each with Francoist Spain, the United States, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and Sweden.^[27]

State subsidies to the film industry resulted in improved production values: average film production costs quintupled from 250,000 ℛℳ in 1933^[28] (equivalent to €1,158,873 in 2021) to 1,380,000 ℛℳ in 1942 (equivalent to €5,785,574 in 2021). Ticket sales within the Reich quadrupled from 250 million in 1933 to more than a billion in 1942.^[28] Box-office sales more than doubled from 441 million ℛℳ in 1938 (equivalent to 2 billion 2021 €) to over 1 billion ℛℳ in 1942 (equivalent to 4 billion 2021 €).

Max Winkler oversaw the elimination of economic roadblocks to the nationalization of the film industry. UFA and Tobis Film, who were financially struggling in 1936, now had the majority of their stock controlled by Cautio Trust Company, created by Winkler. Kautio acquired UFA in March 1937, Tobis in May, Terra Film in August, and Bavaria Film was also acquired. Austria and Czechoslovakia's film industries were nationalized into Wien-Film and Prag Film [de] following their annexations by Germany. On 10 January 1942, UFA-Film GmbH (UFI) was formed as a giant holding company for the entire German film industry.^[29] UFI was a vertically integrated monopoly, covering the entire European film market under German hegemony, with foreign imports cut off.^[28] The company's profits surged, reaching 155 million ℛℳ in 1942 (equivalent to 650 million 2021 €) and 175 million ℛℳ in 1943 (equivalent to 715 million 2021 €).

Fritz Hippler, the director of The Eternal Jew, was placed in charge of the film section of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP).^[30]

Since the period of the Weimar Republic, there had also existed an extensive system of educational film hire services which was extended under the Nazi administration. In 1943, there were 37 regional services and 12,042 city services.^[32] In parallel, the Party Propaganda Department (Reichspropagandaleitung) ran its own network of educational film hire services which included 32 Gaue, 171 district, and 22,357 local services. All film hire services had extensive film collections as well as rental 16 mm film projectors available that made it possible to show films in any class or lecture room and at any group meeting of the Hitler Youth.

One-sixth of the 1,097 feature films produced between 1933 and 1945 were overt propaganda films. The majority of these films were financed by the RMVP's film section. The number of political films produced declined as World War II continued as Goebbels sought to distract the populace from the war.^[33]

The Nazis produced three feature-length propaganda films about the party's rise to power in 1933. These were S.A.-Mann Brand, Hitlerjunge Quex, and Hans Westmar.^[34] Goebbels praised The Rebel as what Nazi filmmakers should aspire to.^[35] Goebbels wanted film propaganda to be done using subtle methods, but Triumph of the Will, which was the opposite of this belief, was produced against Goebbels' wishes.^[36]

Death Over Shanghai, which was released four weeks before the Nazi rise to power, was re-edited into a pro-Japanese film. Another pro-Japanese film, Port Arthur, was made in 1936.^[37]

The United Kingdom's status in Nazi propaganda fluctuated. The Higher Command from 1935 depicted the British and Prussian allied military effort against Napoleon. The Traitor from 1936 depicted British agents as the enemies of German rearmament. The Rothschilds from 1940 had a negative depiction of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. The Nazis made the pro-Irish The Fox of Glenarvon and My Life for Ireland during World War II.^[38]

A law was passed in 1938 which required newsreels to be played before all commercial film showings. All of the newsreel companies were merged into Die Deutsche Wochenschau on 21 November 1940.^[39]

Women Are Better Diplomats, Germany's first feature film in colour, was released in 1941.^[40]

Around 500 films were exported to the United States between 1933 and 1942.^[41] The 79th Street Theater in Yorkville, Manhattan only showed films from Germany.^[42] Casino Film Exchange was one of the largest American importers of German and Austrian films in the 1930s, operated a theatre in Yorkville,^[43] and presented the films to German-Americans across the country.^[44]

Newsreel and film production was hampered by petrol and potassium nitrate shortages in 1944. Goebbels dissolved the departments for theatre, music, and the visual arts in the Propaganda Ministry. Cultural and advertising film production was ended as well.^[45]

The Soviet Union dismantled Ufa within its occupation zone and created the state-owned DEFA to manage a film monopoly in East Germany. East Germany held the major studios of Berlin, such as Babelsberg Studio and Johannisthal Studios, while Geiselgasteig studio in Munich became one of the film centres of West Germany. All Ufa property was liquidated in the American and British occupation zones on 7 September 1949.^[46]

The war had destroyed a large number of Germany's cinemas. Only 10 of Munich's 80 theatres and 100 of Bavaria's 500 theatres were still operating in January 1946. The number of theatres rose to 1,848 in the British zone, 1,268 in the American zone, and 450 in the French zone.^[47]

Anything that hinted at national weakness or promoted democracy were banned in the country along with other studio projects if they portrayed an image of Germany or history that the Nazis did not want the world to see. They also censored films for moral, political and eugenic infractions. This uniquely aggressive and effective suppressive of speech through film left only the small independent art house films where one could find stories critical of the Nazis in the 1930s, not unlike where one might find movies critical of China in the 21st century.^[48]

All Quiet on the Western Front was so upsetting to Nazi officials watching the screening in Berlin in December 1930 that it was stopped mid-screening and many edits had to be made before it could be re-released. Universal scrapped all scenes that portrayed Germans in a negative light, and the Germans agreed to screen the film again only if Universal released the censored version worldwide as well.^[48]

Using the significant economic power of German moviegoers to self-censor films globally, resulting in all but one Hollywood producers censoring films critical of Nazism and even showing news shorts of film produced by the Nazis in American theaters.^[49] No American films that were made between 1933 and 1939 were critical of Nazism, including those released domestically.^[49] Warner Brothers, the lone US production company without a partnership with the Nazis, had pulled out of Germany in 1934 after one of its Jewish employees was assaulted in Germany.^[50] Paramount, MGM and Fox all kept working with the German market, in part because their revenue was often frozen in German banks and not released right away. Fox and Paramount even collaborated on news reels with the Nazis that were shipped all around the world, in the hopes of getting their frozen assets back.^[50]

Warner Brothers released the first film with a plot critical of Nazis, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, in May 1939; the film also fueled unfounded fears of Jewish refugees acting as Nazi spies and contributed to the further restriction of Jewish refugees from Europe.^[51] Hollywood's presence started to come under increasing scrutiny after Kristallnacht in 1938, and a wholesale retreat from the country took place in mid-1940, in part because of declining sales in Germany.^[48]

These new incentives put in place by the Nazis led to Universal scrapping a project about the sinking of the Lusitania and delaying its sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front to 1936. When production started on The Road Back, all the actors received a letter from Goebbels' emissary in Los Angeles, Georg Gyssling, that none of them would be able to work on projects shown in Germany. Despite the uproar that ensued, the production was completed after 21 preemptive cuts were made, including a sanitized ending that made the world, not Germany, seem culpable for militarism. However, Universal was still blacklisted in Germany. The Nazis insisted on edits to the Warner Brothers film Captured! that showed poor treatment of prisoners at the hands of Germans, and further punished the studio even after they acquiesced by blocking subsequent releases that were expected to perform well in Germany. MGM's cancellation of the anti-Nazi movie Are We Civilized? led to a dozen of their films being approved a week later. The Mad Dog of Europe, one of the first attempts to dramatize Hitler, was dissuaded from going further by the MPAA in 1933, who worried that all American films would be banned in Germany in retaliation.^[48]

Goebbels also kept lists of which actors and crew were Jewish or anti-Nazi and refused to import films on which they worked. Georg Gyssling kept an eye on Hollywood scripts and activities, including writing letters to Will H. Hays' office when he found something that he or his bosses did not approve of.^[50]

On 13 May 1936, Goebbels banned critics from writing negative reviews on the same day as the exhibition and later banned all negative reviews in November. Critics were required to obtain a license from the Reich Chamber of Culture.^[52]

Apart from the Ufa-owned cinema chain, the cinemas were not nationalized. The majority of the 5,506 cinemas that existed in 1939 within the so-called Altreich (the "Old Reich", i.e., Germany without Austria and the Sudetenland) were small companies run by private owners. However, a large number of rules and regulations issued by the Reichsfilmkammer limited the entrepreneurial freedom of the cinemas considerably. It was mandatory to include a documentary and a newsreel in every film programme. By a law of 1933 (the Gesetz über die Vorführung ausländischer Bildstreifen vom 23. Juni 1933), the government was also entitled to prohibit the presentation of foreign films. An import quota for foreign films had been set during the Weimar Republic, and during World War II, the import of films from certain foreign countries was completely prohibited. For example, from 1941 onwards, the presentation of American films became illegal.

A quantitative comparison of the percentage of German movies screened vs. foreign movies screened shows the following numbers: in the last year of the Weimar Republic the percentage of German movies was 62%; by 1939 it had risen to 77% while the number of cinema visits increased by the factor 2.5 from 1933 to 1939. On the contrary the percentage of for example American movies screened was reduced from 26% in 1932 to 14% in 1939; from 1933 to 1937 eleven US movies were considered "artistically valuable" by the Nazi authorities (e.g., The Lives of a Bengal Lancer).^[53]

In order to boost the propaganda effect, the Nazis supported film shows in large cinemas with large audiences where the feeling of being part of the crowd was so overwhelming for the individual spectator that critical film perception had little chance. Film shows also took place in military barracks and factories. The Hitler Youth arranged special film programmes (Jugendfilmstunden) where newsreels and propaganda films were shown. In order to supply even rural and remote areas with film shows, the Party Propaganda Department (Reichspropagandaleitung) operated 300 film trucks and two film trains that carried all the necessary equipment for showing films in, for example, village inns. The Nazis intended to use television as a medium for their propaganda once the number of television sets was increased, but television was able initially to reach only a small number of viewers, in contrast to radio. Only a small number of the Einheitsempfänger TV also called People's TV, were produced.

Film propaganda had the highest priority in Germany even under the severe conditions of the last years of World War II. While schools and playhouses stopped working in 1944, cinemas continued to operate until the very end of the war. In Berlin for instance, anti-aircraft units were posted specially to protect the local cinemas in 1944.

On 9 February 1933, Nazi members of the German Cinema Owners' Association demanded that Adolf Engl be appointed leader. The entire board resigned on 18 March, and gave Engl and the Nazis control over the organization.^[54]

There always had been film stars in Germany, but a star system comparable to the star system in Hollywood did not yet exist. Nazi leaders denounced the star system as a Jewish invention.^[55] However, in order to improve the image of Nazi Germany, Goebbels made great efforts to form a star system.^[56] After Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo had gone to Hollywood and could not be persuaded to serve the National Socialist film industry as figureheads, new film stars were promoted.

The best-known example is the Swedish actress Zarah Leander who was hired in 1937 by Ufa and became the most prominent and highest-paid German film star in only a few years. The publicity campaign for Leander was run by the press office of the Ufa, which concealed her past as a film actress already well known in Sweden and put their money right away on her charisma as a singer with an exceptionally deep voice. The Ufa press office provided the newspapers with detailed instructions on how the new star would have to be presented, and even the actress herself had to follow detailed instructions whenever she appeared in public. This kind of star publicity had not existed in Germany before.

Prominent politicians such as Hitler, Goebbels, and Hermann Göring appeared in public flanked by popular German film actors. The female stars in particular were expected to lend some glamour to the dry and male-dominated NSDAP events. Hitler's preferred dinner partners were the actresses Olga Chekhova and Lil Dagover, and from 1935, Hermann Göring was married to the popular actress Emmy Sonnemann. The relationships of Goebbels to several female film stars are also notorious. Magda Goebbels left a screening of the film Die Reise nach Tilsit, because it seemed to her too close a telling of her husband's relationship with Lída Baarová, which had resulted in the actress being sent back to her native Czechoslovakia.^[57]

Personal proximity to the political leaders became a determining factor for the career success of film actors. An informal system of listings decided how frequently an actor would be cast. The five categories extended from "to cast at all costs even without a vacancy" (for instance Zarah Leander, Lil Dagover, Heinz Rühmann) to "casting under no circumstances welcome".

How crucial the film stars were for the image of the National Socialist government is also evident from the tax benefits that Hitler decreed in 1938 for prominent film actors and directors. From that time on, they could deduct 40% of their income as professional expenses.

The Nazi film theorist Fritz Hippler wrote in his 1942 book Contemplations on Film-Making: "Enough has been written as to whether 'celebritism' is beneficial or harmful—but one way or the other, it cannot be denied that throughout the world a main motive of people going to the movies is to see the faces they know and love" and Hippler suggested that the stars to be chosen for Nazi cinema should have "European standard" and at the same time appeal to the "Germans' ideal of beauty", so that Germans could identify with them.^[58] Non-German actors in the Nazi cinema included Zarah Leander, Marika Rökk, Lída Baarová, Pola Negri, Adina Mandlová, Johannes Heesters, Iván Petrovich, Laura Solari, Angelo Ferrari, Germana Paolieri (Italian), Nikolay Fyodorovich Kolin, Boris Alekin (Russian), Igo Sym (Polish), Rosita Serrano (Chilean). The Russian Victor Tourjansky and the Hungarian Géza von Bolváry were popular non-German directors.

In 1944, Joseph Goebbels issued a list with "irreplaceable artists" called the Gottbegnadeten list, which included people such as Arno Breker, Richard Strauss, and Johannes Heesters.^[59]

During World War II, German film stars supported the war effort by performing for the troops or by collecting money for the German Winter Relief Organization (Winterhilfswerk). Although most of the male stars were exempted from military service, some—such as the popular Heinz Rühmann—participated in the war as soldiers, often accompanied by newsreel film crews.

The Bureau for the Promotion of Art worked with sub-divisions of the RMVP to investigate the racial origins of actors. Hans Albers's popularity was able to maintain his acting career despite his relationship with Hansi Burg, a Jewish woman.^[60]

Actors and filmmakers such as Fritz Grünbaum, Hans Behrendt, and Max Ehrlich were murdered in The Holocaust.^[61] Richard Oswald, Reinhold Schünzel, Wolfgang Zilzer, Henry Koster, Curt Alexander, and others fled Germany after the rise of the Nazis.^[62] Liane Haid fled Germany in 1942 stating that "Everything was bombed and because all the good directors had left".^[63]

Officially honored films considered by the Nazis to be "artistically valuable" (German: künstlerisch wertvoll) by the state (* = predicate "special political value" – introduced in 1934, + = predicate "special traditional value" (German: volkstümlich wertvoll), ** = predicate "film of the nation" introduced in 1941):

• List of German films of 1933–1945
• List of Nazi propaganda films
• Cinema of Germany
• Reichsfilmarchiv (an archive for films created under Nazi rule)
• Why We Fight, an American answer to Nazi propaganda films during the World War II years

• (in German) Albrecht, Gerd (1969). Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik. Munich: Hanser.
• Leiser, Erwin (1974). Nazi Cinema. Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 0025702300.
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• Kelson, John (1996). Catalogue of Forbidden German Feature and Short Film Productions held in Zonal Film Archives of Film Section, Information Services Division, Control Commission for Germany, (BE) (2 ed.). Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0948911190.
• Merziger, Patrick (2014). "Americanised, Europeanised or nationalised? The film industry in Europe under the influence of Hollywood, 1927–1968". In Nathaus, Klaus (ed.). Made in Europe: The Production of Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 978-1138794443.
• Niven, Bill (2018). Hitler and Film: The Führer's Hidden Passion. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300200362.
• Orlow, Dietrich (1969). The History of the Nazi Party: 1919–1933. University of Pittsburgh Press. SBN 822931834.
• Waldman, Harry (2008). Nazi Films In America, 1933–1942. McFarland & Company. ISBN 9780786438617.
• Welch, David (1983). Propaganda and the German Cinema: 1933–1945. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 9781860645204.

• 1941 – Heimkehr (1h 28m)