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Tracing the Changing Face of Nazi Propaganda Film Book Essay
on: David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945
by Whitney James for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course |
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About Whitney James I am a senior comparative literature major whose focus is on German film and literature of the 20th century. I have taken several classes concerned with German history and literature, including "Satan in German literature" and "The Writings of Nietzsche" with Prof. Lawrence Rickels. I chose to write about Welch's book because it discussed the political influence of films, something of great interest to me as a film buff and student of German film. Abstract (back to top) In Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945, historian David Welch sets out to examine how National Socialist ideology permeated German propaganda film in the Third Reich under the direction of Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. Welch places films into five thematic categories: Comradeship, Heroism and the Party, Blood and Soil (Blut und Boden), The Principle of Leadership (Fuhrerprinzip), War and the Military Image, and The Image of the Enemy. These also correspond in time, each type of film being produced at a different stage in the Third Reich. Thus, Welch also outlines the shifts in motivation of the Nazi Party. I examine both Welch's analysis of films and how he traces the shifts in National Socialist ideology and the goals of the Nazi party as seen in propaganda film. |
Essay (back to top) In Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945, historian David Welch sets out to examine how National Socialist ideology permeated German propaganda film in the Third Reich under the direction of Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. According to Welch, the Third Reich viewed film as the most important form of media for the dissemination of covert and psychological influence of the masses (Welch, 1). Welch gives a brief assessment of the historical context and the environment of the German film industry for each film before citing specific scenes, lines of dialogue, and recurring themes that relate to National Socialist ideology. Welch classifies the films he examines into five major groups that correspond in theme: Comradeship, Heroism and the Party, Blood and Soil (Blut und Boden), The Principle of Leadership (Führerprinzip), War and the Military Image, and The Image of the Enemy. By separating Nazi propaganda films into categories, which are also roughly delineated by years, Welch not only shows the National Socialist ideology presented in films, but also illustrates the changes in the motivation of the Nazi party. Comradeship, Heroism and the Party The first category of propaganda films outlined by Welch is the ‘lie-direct’, meaning a film that overtly displaces propaganda rather, films of 1933: SA-Mann Brand, Hitlerjunge Quex, and Hans Westmar. According to Welch, these films are the only three films “that openly glorified the Party and its martyrs;” those that followed were more subtle (40). Welch gives two main reasons for this more aggressive tactic: first, the Nazi party had not gained complete influence and support from the German public and needed to boost their image; and second, Joseph Goebbels had not yet gained complete control over the film industry. These films about individuals within the party were created to “familiarize the masses with some of the heroes of the regime, and . . . put forward some exemplary martyrs for the public to admire” (41). Typically, a young man is enthralled by the Nazi party and cannot help but take up with a branch of the Nazi regime, during a march or after a meeting, the young man is murdered in cold blood by a Communist; his dying words are in support of the Party and allude to a triumphant future. These are stories of individual sacrifice for the greater good of the party and depict the young martyrs as happy to die. In SA-Mann Brand, Welch examines how a death scene develops the mythology of Hitler as the savior. The young martyr, Erich Lohner’s final words are, “Please don’t cry mother. You yourself have often said: ‘One must be able to die for one’s Fatherland. Like Father’” (49). Welch analyzes these dying words as a “quasi-religious myth of salvation in faith and sacrific” and focuses on the ambiguity of the term Führer (49). Welch believes that the Third Reich audiences would instantly compare Hitler to God in this statement (49). Thus, the very basic domination of the Party over the individual and the family was presented to the German public. Blood and Soil (Blut und Boden) By 1935, Joseph Goebbels had eliminated all competition in the film industry and was producing films as he saw fit. In a speech that year, Goebbels called for films that ‘capture the spirit of the age,’ however this proved difficult as Nazi ideology was riddled with contradictions (79-80). Some concepts, however, were integral to the Nazi party, such as the ideas of Blut und Boden and Volk und Heimat (people and homeland). Thus, the first group of films to follow the martyr films focused on these themes.. Ewiger Wald (The Eternal Forest, 1936) was produced under the NS-Kulturgemeinde (Culture Group) which was “concerned not only with the encouragement and preservation of art [but was also] . . . a group for the promotion of a new heroic art” (87). The film claimed to be a documentary tracing the connection between the German people and its forests back 2,000 years and suggested that the movement for unity must draw strength from the distant past. The main purpose of the film was to awaken German nationalism and stressing the need for living space for ethnic Germans. Welch notes that the film sheds light on future foreign policy and reflects a romanticized version of the National Socialist belief in a pure German race (89-90). This film exemplified Goebbels’ desire to capture the spirit of the new Germany by raising awareness of the völkisch identity. Olympiade (1938), directed by Leni Riefenstahl, is a four-hour documentary of the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin. The film is not only a fine exercise of respectability and propaganda for the National Socialist regime, but exemplifies the concepts of ‘Strength through Joy’ (Kraft durch Freude) and the idealization of the Aryan body (94). Riefenstahl was a master of capturing the pageantry of life in the Third Reich, which depicted each person playing their assigned and inevitable role as a part of the whole. Welch points to highly choreographed shows of physical strength in groups and in unison to show that the “individual is sacrificed for an ordered participation on a mass scale” in the cinematography (97). Ultimately, the film conveyed “something of the mystique that National Socialism claimed to introduce into all spheres of cultural life” (99). With the status of the Aryan body immortalized in film, Goebbels began to concern himself with the mythology of the German leader. The Principle of Leadership (Führerprinzip) Between 1935 and 1942, four films about great leaders in German history, one film about a fictional contemporary, and one about Hitler himself were produced. Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), perhaps the most well-known film produced during the Third Reich was a documentary film of the 1934 Party Rally commissioned by Hitler and directed by Riefenstahl. In Olympiade the individual was marginalized in order to show the mass symmetry of Nazism; in this case, however, it was contrasted by the single figure of Adolf Hitler. The film is significant not only for its great feats of capturing the moments and deftly portraying Hitler in a god-like light, but it is the only film specifically about Hitler in the Nazi film cannon. With its success at placing Hitler at the helm of thousands of willing Germans, there was no need to produce another film directly concerning the Führer. Historical analogy became a main facet in German propaganda film in 1940 with the production of two films. Welch hypothesizes that historical films were only relevant to Nazis if “they exploited contemporary themes in a historical context concentrating on the ‘great men’ in Germany’s history who embodied aspects of the National Socialist Weltanschauung” (139). Audiences were invited to make comparisons between the subjects of the films and the current leader. Friedrich Schiller, about the famous writer when he was a Cadet at the military academy, focuses on the conflict between the young poet and Duke Carl Eugen. Welch points out that the film shows it as “a trial of strength between the genius to whom ordinary laws do not apply and the academy, with its rigid conformity” (139). The comparison between this and Hitler’s rise to power were hardly a stretch for audiences at the time. The film Bismarck worked on the same method of comparison and legacy. Welch contends that the “main intention of the film was to reinforce the message that the Führerprinzip was an essential prerequisite for the unity and greatness of the Reich” (142). During this period of stablization, Goebbels’ idea of reinforcement through propaganda was at its height. However, when war broke out the focus shifted. War and the Military Image By examining newsreels and major films, Welch explores “the changing nature of film propaganda and the manner in which Goebbels justified the war, extolled the invincibility of German military might, romanticized heroes, and, as German’s military position became more desperate, mythologized the nations Götterdämmerung” (160). During this period, where the public was being mentally prepared to die for their country and Hitler found film to be the best medium as it was the most emotionally appealing. Pour le Mérite (For Honor, 1938), made just before the war, focused on the fate of several air-force officers between 1918 and 1933. Typical Nazi fear tactics about the destruction of Germany, such as the stab in the back, the conspiracy of Communists, and the weakness of the Weimar Republic, all led up to the final conclusion of rearmament in the film (162). Pour le Mérite was so obviously a propaganda film, that Welch compares it to the earliest, lie-direct films produced in 1933 (162). While nationalist films like this could inspire emotion and calls for rearmament, when war was finally declared, the German newsreels (Wochenschau) became increasingly important to propagandists. Newsreel offered itself as a topical, periodical, and universal medium of communication. The forty minute newsreels, through continuous and uniform repetition, enabled propagandists to illustrate the fighting of Germans abroad and to reinforce firmly held prejudices at home; a perfect combination of Hitler and Goebbels’ propaganda ideologies (168). Strongly connected with military success, newsreels flourished during the early years and caused rural audiences, who did not usually attend the cinema, to go out. When German troops no longer advanced into new territory, newsreels shifted to themes of ‘heroism’ and ‘sacrifice’ and the idea of surrender was never mentioned (172). Propaganda became more about preserving the ideology of the Nazis than anything else; reality gave way to mythology. Goebbels’ willingness to distort facts and even to create new ones in order to make good propaganda film concluded with Kolberg (1945), which depicted a little known historical incident in 1806. According to Welch, Kolberg combined archetypal themes of the Führerprinzip, national idealism, obedience and sacrifice, and indomitable spirit of the German people (195-196). In the film, the small town of Kolberg is the last fortress town against French invasion; and while government officials want to surrender, the people stand and fight. In reality, the town was eventually defeated, however, Goebbels felt that it was unnecessary to tell of the failure in the film version. This willingness to compromise truth for propaganda and choose fiction over reality is symptomatic of the decline of the Nazi regime in all aspects. The Image of the Enemy Throughout the Nazi period the production of films aimed to inspire different types of nationalism and support for the Reich. Additional, films depicting the enemy were produced to reinforce preconceived prejudices. Bolsheviks were the first to be targeted with the film Friesennot (Frisians in Peril, 1935) that recalls the problems of Volga Germans living in Russia during the Russian Revolution. It reinforces the idea that Russians are responsible for the oppression of German culture and nationalism and warns of the Communist threat against the world as a whole (207-209). When Hitler declared war against Stalin, G.P.U. was made in 1942. The film not only harkens back to earlier prejudices against Communists, but reveals the Jewish influence on Bolsheviks (215). Although there was a short lull in negative portrayal of Bolsheviks, due to the Nazi-Soviet treaty of non-aggression, Nazi film takes a largely pejorative view of Communists and the Soviet Union. Between 1934 and 1936, Nazi cinema displayed signs of both admiration and envy for Britain in films like Ein Mann will nach Deutschland (A Man Must Return to Germany, 1934) and Die Reiter von Deutsch-Ostrafrika (The Raiders of German East Africa, 1934). Both took place during WWI and portrayed the British military as a respected adversary (219). As the German military began to experience defeat in the current war, Britain became a symbol ofweakness and decadence in films like Die englische Krankheit (The English Sickness, 1941). Also focusing on the First World War, this time the British were accused of purposely spreading illness among the German people (221). In 1940, Die Rothschilds Aktien von Waterloo (The Rothschild’s Share in Waterloo) attempted to explain the rise to power and wealth of the Rothschild family and the emergence of the ‘Jewish-British Plutocracy’ (223). Although several films tried to link both British and Soviets with Jews, anti-semetic film propaganda was abundant. Some of the most graphically violent and vehemently racist films ever produced were about Jews in the Third Reich. Jews were depicted as responsible for a fragmentation of German society (Kampfzeit), prompting Poles to commit atrocities against German (Heimkehr) and attempting to assassinate the Iron Chancellor (Bismark) (238). As final solution approached, propaganda films depicting Jews became as vehemently antisemitic as Hitler. One nagging detail remains: throughout his discussions of the state of the film industry and illusions to Goebbels' intentions, Welch states that escapist films were essential (Welch, 37, 67, 191, etc.). Despite his recognition that these films were being produced, Welch never analyses a single one or even mentions them by name. One is left wondering how, perhaps, National Socialist ideology could have found its way into these seemingly light films. The fact the Goebbels wanted propaganda to be something subtle leads one to think that Nazi ideology could be found in the most comical picture commissioned during the Reich. Welch chooses to stay with the more overtly political films. This is probably because Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945 was one of the first books to look at German film in this manner. Despite this shortcoming, Welch significantly contributes to the general understanding of both the propaganda film industry and the ways in which ideology were depicted in film. Welch attempts to explore all facets of each film that he analyzes. Films that relate to or lead up to the concepts explored in a given film are stated and their influence mentioned. Any type of media attention both inside Germany and out that the film received is explored and the interconnectedness of all media communications in Germany at the time is showed. Welch obviously took great pains to categorize films and portray a cross-section of each that he defined. Although some may contest his categorization of some specific films, the way he presents it shows the progression of both film propaganda and the Nazi regime as a whole. |
Bibliography and Links (back to top)(links last checked 3/x/09) Book Reviews Baird, Jay W. “[Untitled Review of] Propaganda and the German Cinema,
1933-1945 by David Welch.” American Historical Review Vol. 89, No.
2 (Apr. 1984): 466-467. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1862651>. Richards, Jeffery. “[Untitled Review of] Propaganda and the German Cinema,
1933-1945 by David Welch.” European History Quarterly. 14 (1984):
377-378. Sage Publications. 22 January 2009. <http://ehq.sagepub.com>. Web Sites Randall Bytewerk, “German Propaganda Archive: Nazi Propaganda (1933-1945)”
(27 January 2009), <http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ww2era.htm>. Florida Center for Instructional Technology, “A Teacher’s Guide to the
Holocaust: Nazi Approved Art” (2005), <http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/ARTS/artReich.htm>. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Holocaust Encyclopedia: Nazi
Propaganda” (7 October 2008), <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article
.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005202>. PzG Inc., “War Movies & Nazi Propaganda Films” (5 March 2009), <http://www.pzg.biz/films_nazi_propaganda.htm>. Books and Articles Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany
(New York and London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 265. UCSB: PN1995.9.P6 T39 1998 Hilmar Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda: Film and National Socialism,
1933-1945 (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1996), 272. UCSB: PN1995.9.N36
H6413 1996 |
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Any student tempted to use this paper for an assignment in another course or school should be aware of the serious consequences for plagiarism. Here is what I write in my syllabi:
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