Nazi Cinema

With the rise of National Socialism in Germany during the early 1930′s, the film industry became a tool that the Nazis used to exploit the emotions of the German people. Nazis viewed film as a powerful medium for propaganda. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels took a particularly keen interest in their party’s film savvy, creating a film branch of the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1930. Even today, Nazi cinema and the propaganda films it comprised remains the subject of study and intense curiosity for the powerful way Nazism used film to manipulate its audiences.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, guided the Nazi cinema industry to produce movies that were entertaining and glorified the new Nazi government. These Nazi films, which served as the latent layer of Goebbels’ propaganda campaign, were escapist entertainments that were meant to keep the population from thinking too much about what was happening around them. Open propaganda was also produced in the form of documentaries and newsreels that lauded the superhuman achievements of the Aryan race, and the Nazi party. During this era, the main government groups that controlled and regulated the German film industry were the Ministry of Propaganda’s film department, the Chamber of Culture, the Chamber of Film, and the film branch of the Nazi party’s own Propaganda Department. Germany’s entire film industry was completely under the control of Joseph Goebbels. It is because Nazi leaders had this extreme level of control over the film production and viewing that the Nazi cinema became such a powerful political tool.

The Nazis created a state-approved film school to ensure that all films produced in Germany were thematically and ideologically aligned with the goals of the party, and required all actors, filmmakers, distributors, and other personnel in the industry to attend classes. A National Film Dramaturgist, a glorified censor, went over every screenplay and film project from development to the final stages of release in order to cut out anything that wasn’t approved by the state. Finally, film criticism was banned in order to silence detractors in the press. The Nazis also provided loans and tax breaks for companies that produced films whose themes were approved. Using these techniques, the Nazis managed to use a staggering amount of regulations to co-opt the German cinema into a Nazi cinema.

Although the Nazis did not nationalize the German movie theaters, which were, for the most part, privately owned and operated, they did create a large number of rules and regulations in order to limit the freedoms of what could be shown and when. For instance, the law stated that a documentary and a newsreel were required to be shown during every film program. The Nazis also prohibited theaters from presenting foreign films, and promoted the importation of films from other countries altogether. In 1941, it became illegal to present an American film in German theaters.

The Nazis also promoted film viewing as a public event, something to be done in large groups, in order to enhance the effect that their propaganda films had on audiences. They regarded the power of film so highly that, towards the end of World War II, anti-aircraft batteries were instructed to protect local cinemas at all costs in order to protect the Nazi grip on the popular imagination of the German people. Nazi cinema had a profound impact on German morale during the war, one that the party did not wish to jeopardize.