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.
Background
The Nazis were very aware of the propagandistic effect of movies and already in 1920 the issues of the Racial Observer included film criticism.Michaela Rethmeier: Die Funktion und Bedeutung Fritz Hipplers für das Filmschaffen im „Dritten Reich“, p. 25 (dissertation, University of Münster, 2006) The SS-philosopher Walter Julius Bloem published the book The Soul of the Cinema – A Commitment to the Movies in 1922.Original title: Seele des Lichtspiels – ein Bekenntnis zum Film, by Dr Walter Julius Bloem (1898–1945), Verlag Grethlein, Leipzig, 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. 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.Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 526 (Translation by James Vincent Murphy).
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".Original title: "Im Banne des Films. Die Weltherrschaft des Kinos", by Dr. Hans Buchner (1896–1971), Boepple publishing house, Munich, 1927. 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).Geschichte des deutschen Films, edited by Wolfgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes, Berlin, Stuttgart, Weimar, 1993, p. 73. 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).Alles Leben Ist Kampf, cine-holocaust.de; accessed 7 April 2018.Erbkrank, cine-holocaust.de; accessed 7 April 2018.
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.Hans Traub, Der Film als politisches Machtmittel, Munich, 1932, p. 29. Original German text: "Ohne Zweifel ist der Film als Sprache ein vortreffliches Mittel der Propaganda. Die Beeinflussung fordert von jeher solche Spracharten, die in der einfachen Erzählung einprägsame und bewegte Handlung gestalten. … Aus dem weiten Gebiet der Sprache aber, die unmittelbar durch technische und wirtschaftliche Vorgänge an den Empfänger herangetragen wird, ist die wirksamste Art das Laufbild. Es verlangt eine ständige Aufmerksamkeit; es ist voller Überraschungen im Wechsel von Handlung, Zeit und Raum; es ist unausdenkbar reich im Rhythmus der Gefühlssteigerung und der Gefühlsverdrängung."
Goals of the Nazi film policy 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.Klaus Kreimeier: Die Ufa-Story. Geschichte eines Filmkonzerns. S. Fischer Verlag, 2002. , pp. 309–310, Original, Goebbels: "Scham- und Geschmacklosigkeiten". 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.Cinzia Romani, Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich p. 13;
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.Michaela Rethmeier: Die Funktion und Bedeutung Fritz Hipplers für das Filmschaffen im „Dritten Reich“, p. 194 (dissertation, University of Münster, 2006) Goebbels emphasized Lessing's idea that "not only imagining per se, but purposeful imagining, would prove the creative mind".Same source, p. 224. Original in German: "nicht das bloße Erdichten, sondern das zweckmäßige Erdichten einen schöpferischen Geist beweise."
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.Emil Jannings: "Über den Film", „Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte“, Volume 147, June 1942, pp. 342–343. 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).
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.Cinzia Romani, Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich p. 9; Up to a third of the films in Nazi Germany received such awards.
History +Film production and earnings Year Films produced Total RM cost Tickets sold () Gross RM receipts ()1932 238.4 176.41933 114 28.5 244.9 176.31934 129 32.5 259.4 194.61935 92 36.3 303.9 230.91936 112 50.7 361.6 282.11937 94 50.5 394.4 309.21938 93 441.6 353.31939 107 623.7 476.91940 85 834.1 6501941 67 892.3 725.71942 58 1,062.1 894.21943 76 1,116.5 958.61944 60 1,101.7 951.31945 6
Pre-seizure of power 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.
The Nationalist Socialist Film Service was created in November 1928, and local parties were required to have film projectors starting in 1929. 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.
Hugenberg, who controlled UFA, joined the Harzburg Front with the Nazis in 1931. He supported Hitler during his rise to power and was appointed Reich Minister of Economics in 1933. He used his power over UFA to make it produce films aligned with the Nazis.
Takeover The , 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. The Reich Cinema Law, enacted on 1 March 1934, required all film scripts to be approved by a Nazi film advisor.
Jews were banned from the film industry in 1933 under the Aryan paragraph. Hans Hinkel was tasked by Goebbels with removing all Jewish influence from the film industry. 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.
Film trade magazines were restricted and placed under government control. Goebbels replaced the editor of Film-Kurier with Luitpold Nusser, a leader of the film press division in the Nazi's propaganda office, on 5 April 1933. The publisher of Der Film, the oldest weekly trade magazine for film, was replaced by people aligned with the Nazis.
The position of Reichsfilmdramaturg was created in February 1934, with Willi Krause, a film reviewer for Der Angriff, as its inaugural holder; replaced Krause on 1 April 1936. The position was in charge of censoring films in production. A new film degree made on 16 February 1934 made it so that all censors were appointed by Goebbels. 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).
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. 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. On 8 June 1935, all foreign film distribution was centralized within the Propaganda Ministry.
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.Source: filmportal.de