German Film under the Nazi Regime (1940-1945)

 Under the Nazi regime, people (namely non-Aryans and those of Jewish descent) lost their lives, jobs, family and freedom and artists and academics, lost their independence. Thomas Mann, author of the 1912 novel "A Death in Venice," and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1929) was exiled from Germany due to his anti-Nazi broadcasts with the BBC, Helen Meyer, one of the best female fencers in the history of the sport and olympian, lost her citizenship because of her Jewish heritage, The German Historian Oswald Spengler devising of "The Decline of the West"theory, which stated "that all civilizations eventually decline" refused to retract his theory and was too exiled from Germany. Albert Einstein, the great Physist & Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1921) was on tour through the U.S. when Hitler came into power; his Jewish heritage led him to seek asylum permenantly. The German Director Henrik Galeen, after the his 1933 thriller "The House of Dora Green" was too exiled from Germany for his refusal to conform to Nazism. German film during the prior era, of the Weimar Republic was taken hostage and eradicated, stalled and eventually retracted from the censored Europenan vision.

 The Nazi propaganda machine was a pivotal part of Hitler's claim to the German nation. This was initiated by his 1925 autobiography "Mein Kampf (My Struggle)," the seizing, theft and destruction of what he labeled "degenerate art," artists and painters of either Jewish descent or those who refused the Nazi ideal. With the success of the Nazi Party in 1933, One of Hitler's close associates, Joseph Goebbels was appointed to head the newly established Die Deutsche Wochenschau "The German Weekly Review," in such, German film was forfeited all other views other than one aimed to promote Nazism. The majority of films that stemmed from this era (1,084 in total) were biographical, meant to lift the spirits of the German nation. Based in Berlin at Universum Film AG it was imperative that one of the greatest emerging arts, especially with the introduction of sound into film in the 1930's, be aimed to inspire the people, not conspire to plant new ideal other than socialism in their minds. This is the first time art has been used as a weapon to Stockholm an entire population.

German directors who conspired with the Nazi's and the Die Deutsche Wocehnschau as Hans Erl and Walter Frentz, cannot be discredited; they were surviving in a mist of a dangerous and radical condition and even under that very threat, under a certain belief, they shot films that accomplished what they were aimed to do, to Stockholm the German nation, even partially, to the point of denial as the allies approached on all fronts. Though soldiers on leave or those returned home due to injuries that rendered them unfit for combat participation frequently listened to Feindsender radio stations, hearing the damage of allied bombings and their unfettered approaches, still, in art, the Nazi attitude maintained its denial until the fall of Berlin in 1945 and the suicide of Adolf Hitler.

In cinematic comparison, we can see the effect that film today has on nations, especially the American people fueled by patriotic films in the face of mass hysteria and terrorism. Film should remain objective if the filmmaker wants to reserve objections. If a patriotic film is made, it should possess both sides of the conflict, not only the simplicity of black and white, but the unknown, unexplored, understudied grey areas, those denied in the past to viewers via censorship and left them with no other options. Film represent the most charismatic, centripetal force known to man, an agent of the few man-made devices meant to reflect life in picturesque, informative, ugly detail rather than derogatory and ethnocentrism.