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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.
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 exception was Warner Brothers, the lone American production company without a partnership with the Nazis. The company had pulled out of Germany in 1934, after one of its Jewish employees was assaulted in Germany.
The Nazis were very aware of the propagandistic effect of movies and already in 1920 the issues of the Racial Observer included film criticism. The SS-philosopher Walter Julius Bloem published the book The Soul of the Cinema – A Commitment to the Movies in 1922.
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.
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". 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). 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).
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.
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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.
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 exception was Warner Brothers, the lone American production company without a partnership with the Nazis. The company had pulled out of Germany in 1934, after one of its Jewish employees was assaulted in Germany.
The Nazis were very aware of the propagandistic effect of movies and already in 1920 the issues of the Racial Observer included film criticism. The SS-philosopher Walter Julius Bloem published the book The Soul of the Cinema – A Commitment to the Movies in 1922.
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.
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". 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). 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).
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.
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