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Cinema and Society
Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945
This is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Nazi film propaganda in its political, social, and economic contexts, from the pre-war cinema as it fell under the control of the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, through to the end of the Second World War. David Welch studies more than one hundred films of all types, identifying those aspects of Nazi ideology that were concealed in the framework of popular entertainment.
288 pages, Paperback
First published April 7, 1983
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August 29, 2022
The entire book could be reduced to the simple sentence, "Where's your bloody Battleship Potempkin, Goebbels?". Tried to be objective here and consider the possibility of whether they actually had any decent films in this period artistically speaking. Other than the obvious you'd know before reading it there's none here that are particularly good. The book definitely tries to stay away from making sweeping statements such as whether Goebbels time controlling the industry was successful. Instead focusing on the way it was run under a national socialist model (undoubtedly fascinating). As for the question of his success though, well that could be judged on two levels. Either as art films or propaganda films. As art films, there's only really Leni Riefenstahl's that are a success. Propaganda wise that's pretty contentious. Overall though I'm going to go with Goebbels time being a near complete failure based on the fact he never really made his Battleship Potempkin he so dreamed of making.
Lenis got the two big hitters, which are the only two to be remembered in film history. Triumph of the Will is a fantastic art film and this book has made me appreciate it more on that level. If you wanted to learn the nature of nazi art then look no further. What's interesting is how Leni captures that with her camera. The heavily organised and structured units promoting this collective concept. Hitler arriving from the skies in a plane and always been filmed from a low angle making him a towering figure. The fetishising of the uniforms. Yes like Zack Snyder's Watchmen it's uniform porn. When people call him a visual filmmaker, on this film I can see it they would be correct. What's still hilarious is that Zack Snyder literally copied the comic panels so directly like a moron and yet came out with a different story. His becomes accidentally fascist. Perhaps there is a greater link to Triumph of the Will than just the uniform porn. No denying though Lucas was definitely inspired by this for Star Wars (the storm troopers) and Von Trier for House that Jack Built (the rather comedic art of evil in which the self aware Von Trier includes his own films) .
Where Triumph of the Will fails for me though is as a propaganda film. I'm not convinced by it for a second. It does not change me in any way. However, as a documentary capturing everything they're about sure it does the job and is potentially their greatest statement. On the other hand, Leni's Olympia is actually nearly successful as a propaganda film and not just as an artistic achievement. This for me is the closest they got to Battleship Potempkin. The opening segment is Lenis finest work. We see all these great Olympic figures with close ups of their bodies and this time its body porn. Beautifully shot stuff. As a fan of Beau Travail and many body horrors, I was astounded by the brilliance here. Oh no I thought, these nazi bastards might just have sold their nonsense to me. The whole self preservation thing and the glorification of the herrenvolk. I was nervous they'd only convince me further through the documentary. The nazis were winning. What a genius idea converting you to their dodgy beliefs through the fun and innocence of the Olympic games. Why didn't they think about doing this more? It's a clever trap. The key to succeeding in the propaganda game is definitely to never let the person know they're being manipulated. They have to think they arrived at those conclusions naturally. There has to be something of a guise. In this case, the Olympics.
Comedically, all does not go too well for the Germans as the documentary continues. Even though they did win the event, African American Jesse Owens stole the show winning four gold medals and rendering the nazis wicked plot useless. Herrenvolk destroyed. You can't tell me about white dudes with blonde hair being the superior race when a black man is breaking records like this! In the end it remains a great film but not in the way the Germans intended. It showcased a young black athletes talents and there's never been anything more surreal and cartoonish than having this big tournament with Hitler watching from the stands. Honestly, it's like something out of Harry Potter or Wacky Races. Watch out for the bit when Germany drop the baton in the relay race and we get a close up of Hitlers face. Well funny.
Throughout the making of Olympia, Goebbels was off screen screaming at Leni for making all these wild artistic decisions. What a loser. Both losers. Leni should have been shot for her involvement with these cunts I don't separate her at all. I'm not buying this distanced documenter crap. She's a nazi. She can burn with the rest of them. Anyway, goebbels kept saying on multiple occasions that he was striving for artistic success as well as propaganda. Yet, whenever he got close to it he was being a bloody coward. Whilst, he definitely understood the growing cultural significance of film and even the workings of propaganda in art better than Hitler (which is odd because he was an art student) he never fully realised his ambitions. I'd even go as far to say he was so bad in this game that he even illustrated just how far you can go with what is known to work with propaganda. A vital part of it is simplification of the original message. This dude simplified it that much that it became too obvious. Fucked it so badly, I almost want to say fair play for testing the limitations of what simple meant. He had the communists portrayed as something totally unbelievable. Cartoonish alcoholics looking for violence at any moment. Accidentally cooler every time were the commies and the nazis look like nothing other than absolute victims. He never really gave the commies in the films any respect, which would highlight the differences between commies and national socialists. Therefore people couldn't way the arguments up and arrive at the same conclusions. He wanted his audiences to arrive at a conclusion but couldn't do enough with the material for them to understand why you'd get that conclusion. They always knew they were being cheated. I have no idea why he didn't learn from his failures each time and does tickle me that eventually he gave up and explore escapist entertainment.
Stupidly what he should have done is take some influence from the yanks at the time with the monster movies. Combine the escapist entertainment with the propaganda. Pay a ticket for a monster movie and come out believing in the party via a secret contained message. That would have worked better than having characters shouting the ideas out. Actually calling the people in his films characters would be too much of a compliment. They are simply vessels for a blatant message and so you can barely even call the outcomes films at all. The success of the Soviets was in their ability to use propaganda to create a new cinematic language with a strict focus on montage. Obviously, that's difficult as you're improving the medium of the film at the same time massively whilst doing the propaganda. Strive for that but at the bare minimum monster movie with a hidden message should have been the go to. I mean look at King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula and The Invisible man all were popular fun movies with racial, religious and moral subtexts.
About the only success you could really say Goebbels had was with the kids. Says it all to begin with. They liked his historical films. Adults tended to reject these as they were too familiar with the material and couldn't get on board with the nazis reshaping of history to fit their neat little allegories about Hitler. Once again, once you know you're being fucked with this propaganda business doesn't work. He even half acknowledged this with his Titanic film. A movie that seems half interesting because its combining spectacle and ideas which should be successful. He was trying to retell the story to show the British as essentially causing their own fate. However, as the audience know the real ending of the event it doesn't work. So yeah the number of kids cinema visits might be up and they may refer to the historical films as their favourites but do these kids even know what they're identifying with? Plus it's bloody war time. What else are these kids going to be doing? Especially when you lower ticket prices and make more of an effort to distribute these films. So no wonder number of visits to cinemas was increasing for the kids.
Did these films even work on adults? From what I gather a lot didn't for the reasons I've mentioned. You can't argue these films got them in power as they didn't really take over the industry and begin releasing them til after they got in. Did the films keep them in power? Well they kind of scrapped electoral politics didn't they so you can't really prove that either way. So just how successful were these films even as propaganda? I'm gonna guess not so much but we could never really prove it either way could we. Therefore, we can only really fully judge them on artistic merits. I'm not gonna lie I was actually hoping to find some decent movies. There's plenty of decent movies out there that do verge on fascist territory. Back in the day we had the Dirty Harry. Nowadays we've got the films of S. Craig Zahler bordering on it. I tried to be open minded here but to be honest they're all sloppily written garbage. I remain unsure on how successful the film about euthanasia was. On the one hand it was a cheat in hiding the fact it was really testing public reaction to acktion t4. Sneaky in some ways and so a good tactic. They made the film about one thing but really it was about another. I can't understand why you'd be fooled by it now knowing about acktion t4 but without that maybe it's very clever. Or rather stupid but successful. I don't know.
Leni deserves some credit for actually finding ways to express the ideas using camera. The results being cinematic and in some cases convincing. Still even both her films weren't masterpieces by any means. Germany didn't get some good filmmakers wanting to distance themselves from the previous generations idealogies until Fassbinder, Wenders and Herzog. Before 1933 they actually had some incredible films and developed a cinematic style with the Expressionism. Murnau in particular was possibly the greatest of the silent filmmakers because he experimented with minimal intertitles as to not break up the flow and focus on the visual qualities. Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari broke new ground in set design and demonstrated that you could set films in a different reality. Even predicted the dark rise of Hitler. I mentioned the monster movies. They had one of their own they could have copied the formula for but reversed it to show a positive perspective of Hitlers rise. Baffles me. Then you get to Fritz Lang. Dr Mabuse was way more challenging than any of these tame nazi films. Fair play to him for making an anti nazi movie in 1933. Respect chief. You brave man. Yet under the whole Entjudung and Jewish conspiracy nonsense they ended up kicking out a load of decent actors and filmmakers from the industry to make shite and so he was practically booted out the country. Well, he was actually given a chance to stay and continue to direct films because Goebbels recognised his talents.
I half love Goebbels after reading this book you know. Not in like a serious way but rather that he kind of amuses me in being such a pathetic loser of a man. Clearly saw film as the coming culturally dominant art form and got the kids all hooked on it. Hated the Jews but almost continued to support one because he liked his movies. Lang was definitely going to become his I'm not prejudice, I have one Jewish friend! Goebbels had all these ideas and fascinations with film and yet implemented none of them. Fancied himself as this intellectual. The arty type. Couldn't even do anything with the expressionist style or make a new one. Instead, resorting to shit propaganda that was poorly executed. I'm a firmly believer that art and propaganda can go hand in hand. The soviet films proving that and one I saw more recently "z" doing so too. They work best when in order to present the idealogies they have to create a new form of storytelling and style. However, Goebbels films certainly support the argument that propaganda films can't be art. That's not to say they can't be studied purely for historical purposes. The best part of this book was studying the way film works under a semi nationalised industry. I was intrigued by the way its system worked for funding based on the films tackling particular set issues. It was like the more you include the more money you got. Definitely made me want to see how other countries do it outside of Hollywood. Perhaps I'll have to explore Cuba's model after this. Still, this whole period marks a very dull and artistically conservative time for German cinema. I quite liked Goebbels presentation in Inglorious Basterds but I'd love to see a whole movie about him and his involvement in the German film industry. Something cartoony that presents him as a kind of affable idiot trying to achieve success and takes the piss out of his failings at every turn. Got to conclusion of this book and was like, I've done it, there's no more films left to hear about that I didn't know before. Sometimes I guess there's a reason why some films you know the names of and they stay as Canon and some become forgotten about. Where's your bloody Battleship Potempkin, Goebbels?
Lenis got the two big hitters, which are the only two to be remembered in film history. Triumph of the Will is a fantastic art film and this book has made me appreciate it more on that level. If you wanted to learn the nature of nazi art then look no further. What's interesting is how Leni captures that with her camera. The heavily organised and structured units promoting this collective concept. Hitler arriving from the skies in a plane and always been filmed from a low angle making him a towering figure. The fetishising of the uniforms. Yes like Zack Snyder's Watchmen it's uniform porn. When people call him a visual filmmaker, on this film I can see it they would be correct. What's still hilarious is that Zack Snyder literally copied the comic panels so directly like a moron and yet came out with a different story. His becomes accidentally fascist. Perhaps there is a greater link to Triumph of the Will than just the uniform porn. No denying though Lucas was definitely inspired by this for Star Wars (the storm troopers) and Von Trier for House that Jack Built (the rather comedic art of evil in which the self aware Von Trier includes his own films) .
Where Triumph of the Will fails for me though is as a propaganda film. I'm not convinced by it for a second. It does not change me in any way. However, as a documentary capturing everything they're about sure it does the job and is potentially their greatest statement. On the other hand, Leni's Olympia is actually nearly successful as a propaganda film and not just as an artistic achievement. This for me is the closest they got to Battleship Potempkin. The opening segment is Lenis finest work. We see all these great Olympic figures with close ups of their bodies and this time its body porn. Beautifully shot stuff. As a fan of Beau Travail and many body horrors, I was astounded by the brilliance here. Oh no I thought, these nazi bastards might just have sold their nonsense to me. The whole self preservation thing and the glorification of the herrenvolk. I was nervous they'd only convince me further through the documentary. The nazis were winning. What a genius idea converting you to their dodgy beliefs through the fun and innocence of the Olympic games. Why didn't they think about doing this more? It's a clever trap. The key to succeeding in the propaganda game is definitely to never let the person know they're being manipulated. They have to think they arrived at those conclusions naturally. There has to be something of a guise. In this case, the Olympics.
Comedically, all does not go too well for the Germans as the documentary continues. Even though they did win the event, African American Jesse Owens stole the show winning four gold medals and rendering the nazis wicked plot useless. Herrenvolk destroyed. You can't tell me about white dudes with blonde hair being the superior race when a black man is breaking records like this! In the end it remains a great film but not in the way the Germans intended. It showcased a young black athletes talents and there's never been anything more surreal and cartoonish than having this big tournament with Hitler watching from the stands. Honestly, it's like something out of Harry Potter or Wacky Races. Watch out for the bit when Germany drop the baton in the relay race and we get a close up of Hitlers face. Well funny.
Throughout the making of Olympia, Goebbels was off screen screaming at Leni for making all these wild artistic decisions. What a loser. Both losers. Leni should have been shot for her involvement with these cunts I don't separate her at all. I'm not buying this distanced documenter crap. She's a nazi. She can burn with the rest of them. Anyway, goebbels kept saying on multiple occasions that he was striving for artistic success as well as propaganda. Yet, whenever he got close to it he was being a bloody coward. Whilst, he definitely understood the growing cultural significance of film and even the workings of propaganda in art better than Hitler (which is odd because he was an art student) he never fully realised his ambitions. I'd even go as far to say he was so bad in this game that he even illustrated just how far you can go with what is known to work with propaganda. A vital part of it is simplification of the original message. This dude simplified it that much that it became too obvious. Fucked it so badly, I almost want to say fair play for testing the limitations of what simple meant. He had the communists portrayed as something totally unbelievable. Cartoonish alcoholics looking for violence at any moment. Accidentally cooler every time were the commies and the nazis look like nothing other than absolute victims. He never really gave the commies in the films any respect, which would highlight the differences between commies and national socialists. Therefore people couldn't way the arguments up and arrive at the same conclusions. He wanted his audiences to arrive at a conclusion but couldn't do enough with the material for them to understand why you'd get that conclusion. They always knew they were being cheated. I have no idea why he didn't learn from his failures each time and does tickle me that eventually he gave up and explore escapist entertainment.
Stupidly what he should have done is take some influence from the yanks at the time with the monster movies. Combine the escapist entertainment with the propaganda. Pay a ticket for a monster movie and come out believing in the party via a secret contained message. That would have worked better than having characters shouting the ideas out. Actually calling the people in his films characters would be too much of a compliment. They are simply vessels for a blatant message and so you can barely even call the outcomes films at all. The success of the Soviets was in their ability to use propaganda to create a new cinematic language with a strict focus on montage. Obviously, that's difficult as you're improving the medium of the film at the same time massively whilst doing the propaganda. Strive for that but at the bare minimum monster movie with a hidden message should have been the go to. I mean look at King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula and The Invisible man all were popular fun movies with racial, religious and moral subtexts.
About the only success you could really say Goebbels had was with the kids. Says it all to begin with. They liked his historical films. Adults tended to reject these as they were too familiar with the material and couldn't get on board with the nazis reshaping of history to fit their neat little allegories about Hitler. Once again, once you know you're being fucked with this propaganda business doesn't work. He even half acknowledged this with his Titanic film. A movie that seems half interesting because its combining spectacle and ideas which should be successful. He was trying to retell the story to show the British as essentially causing their own fate. However, as the audience know the real ending of the event it doesn't work. So yeah the number of kids cinema visits might be up and they may refer to the historical films as their favourites but do these kids even know what they're identifying with? Plus it's bloody war time. What else are these kids going to be doing? Especially when you lower ticket prices and make more of an effort to distribute these films. So no wonder number of visits to cinemas was increasing for the kids.
Did these films even work on adults? From what I gather a lot didn't for the reasons I've mentioned. You can't argue these films got them in power as they didn't really take over the industry and begin releasing them til after they got in. Did the films keep them in power? Well they kind of scrapped electoral politics didn't they so you can't really prove that either way. So just how successful were these films even as propaganda? I'm gonna guess not so much but we could never really prove it either way could we. Therefore, we can only really fully judge them on artistic merits. I'm not gonna lie I was actually hoping to find some decent movies. There's plenty of decent movies out there that do verge on fascist territory. Back in the day we had the Dirty Harry. Nowadays we've got the films of S. Craig Zahler bordering on it. I tried to be open minded here but to be honest they're all sloppily written garbage. I remain unsure on how successful the film about euthanasia was. On the one hand it was a cheat in hiding the fact it was really testing public reaction to acktion t4. Sneaky in some ways and so a good tactic. They made the film about one thing but really it was about another. I can't understand why you'd be fooled by it now knowing about acktion t4 but without that maybe it's very clever. Or rather stupid but successful. I don't know.
Leni deserves some credit for actually finding ways to express the ideas using camera. The results being cinematic and in some cases convincing. Still even both her films weren't masterpieces by any means. Germany didn't get some good filmmakers wanting to distance themselves from the previous generations idealogies until Fassbinder, Wenders and Herzog. Before 1933 they actually had some incredible films and developed a cinematic style with the Expressionism. Murnau in particular was possibly the greatest of the silent filmmakers because he experimented with minimal intertitles as to not break up the flow and focus on the visual qualities. Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari broke new ground in set design and demonstrated that you could set films in a different reality. Even predicted the dark rise of Hitler. I mentioned the monster movies. They had one of their own they could have copied the formula for but reversed it to show a positive perspective of Hitlers rise. Baffles me. Then you get to Fritz Lang. Dr Mabuse was way more challenging than any of these tame nazi films. Fair play to him for making an anti nazi movie in 1933. Respect chief. You brave man. Yet under the whole Entjudung and Jewish conspiracy nonsense they ended up kicking out a load of decent actors and filmmakers from the industry to make shite and so he was practically booted out the country. Well, he was actually given a chance to stay and continue to direct films because Goebbels recognised his talents.
I half love Goebbels after reading this book you know. Not in like a serious way but rather that he kind of amuses me in being such a pathetic loser of a man. Clearly saw film as the coming culturally dominant art form and got the kids all hooked on it. Hated the Jews but almost continued to support one because he liked his movies. Lang was definitely going to become his I'm not prejudice, I have one Jewish friend! Goebbels had all these ideas and fascinations with film and yet implemented none of them. Fancied himself as this intellectual. The arty type. Couldn't even do anything with the expressionist style or make a new one. Instead, resorting to shit propaganda that was poorly executed. I'm a firmly believer that art and propaganda can go hand in hand. The soviet films proving that and one I saw more recently "z" doing so too. They work best when in order to present the idealogies they have to create a new form of storytelling and style. However, Goebbels films certainly support the argument that propaganda films can't be art. That's not to say they can't be studied purely for historical purposes. The best part of this book was studying the way film works under a semi nationalised industry. I was intrigued by the way its system worked for funding based on the films tackling particular set issues. It was like the more you include the more money you got. Definitely made me want to see how other countries do it outside of Hollywood. Perhaps I'll have to explore Cuba's model after this. Still, this whole period marks a very dull and artistically conservative time for German cinema. I quite liked Goebbels presentation in Inglorious Basterds but I'd love to see a whole movie about him and his involvement in the German film industry. Something cartoony that presents him as a kind of affable idiot trying to achieve success and takes the piss out of his failings at every turn. Got to conclusion of this book and was like, I've done it, there's no more films left to hear about that I didn't know before. Sometimes I guess there's a reason why some films you know the names of and they stay as Canon and some become forgotten about. Where's your bloody Battleship Potempkin, Goebbels?
August 11, 2013
A very interesting book which details the effect that Nazi race politics and propaganda had on the cinema produced within Germany during The Third Reich. The book includes analyses of the better-known pre-war propaganda films like "Triumph des Willens" and "Der Ewige Jude", and also films produced during wartime like "Ohm Kruger". It serves not only as an investiagation into the cinema of the Third Reich, but also illustrates the profound impact that cinema can have on a populace.
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