Cultural History Through a National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich

This collection of essays offers a view of Nazi Germany through ananalysis of twenty films, representing a sampling of the period'sdirectors and reflecting the film medium's major genres. In spite ofthe control that Goebbels's film industry exercised over all aspects offilmmaking in the Third Reich, the films reveal an individuality thatbelies subsuming them under any one rubric or containing them within anyone theory. Films such as Hitlerjunge Quex, Die groe Liebe, andAuf Wiedersehen Franziska represent the Nazi film industry'sefforts to propagandize through entertainment. Others such asImmensee, Kleider machen Leute, and Der Schimmelreiterreveal an attempt to expropriate Germany's rich literary pastfor theregime. These literary adaptations and films like Glückskinder, LaHabanera, and Der Kaiser von Kalifornien today seem void ofNazi ideology if viewed outside the context of Nazism. But another film,Der ewige Jude, shocks us with its virulent anti-Semitism andhateful propaganda almost sixty years after its release. All of the films treated, regardless of their fame or notoriety or the level ofcommitment of their directors to the Nazi cause, played an importantrole in a cinema that not only represents the dreams and lives of thecitizens of the Third Reich, butinfluenced them as well.Robert C.Reimer is professor of German at the University of North Carolina,Charlotte.