Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler, a psychological history of the German Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947.

“Nazi Views And Measures”

    All films in Nazi Germany were propaganda films.  Newsreels and features were the two forms of propaganda.  Newsreels were a means of propaganda not information.  The purpose of newsreels was to give the German people skewed world views.  The production of newsreels greatly increased at the onset of WWII. While newsreels portrayed falsified messages, the scenes shown were never faked—they were always actual footage taken on site.  This element made these propaganda newsreels more believable.  The Nazis prided themselves on the fact that the cameramen for newsreels were like “regular soldiers, doing a soldier’s full duty, always in the first lines…” (Kracauer 276).  The deaths of these cameramen and reporters at the front lines were emphasized to the public to reiterate the fact that the reporters were, indeed, amongst the soldiers on the war front. These newsreels were considerably long, so that the propaganda techniques could be repeated for increased effectiveness.  While newsreels were long, unlike feature films, newsreels were produced rapidly so that the information was timely and viewed as actual news. 
    While in my thesis I use the broad term film, I only consider the term to describe feature films.  This chapter highlights the importance of the newsreel.  The newsreel is a form of film propaganda that I really should not have ignored.  Because of the newsreel’s entirely different nature, its inclusion would have given my thesis more depth.  The newsreel did not have the same production costs or length of time needed for production because all the footage is filmed live at the scene.  Considering these facts, newsreels as film propaganda were much more cost effective than feature films.  While newsreels directly told Germans what to believe, newsreels still were subtle forms of propaganda because they were being portrayed in documentary style as fact.  In my thesis I argued that film was overvalued by the Nazis at times because of its great cost when resources were needed badly for the war effort.  Newsreels, though, would have served as a good compromise. Still, though, when the situation with the war became very dire, resources should never have been diverted from the war effort.

Citation: Baird, Jay. The Mythical World of Nazi War Propaganda, 1939-1945. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974. 3-11.

In the first chapter entitled “The Mythical World of Nazi Propaganda,” Baird seeks to explain to readers the unique way in which the Nazi propaganda merged the political and practical with the mythical. He describes how Hitler focuses on the irrational, such the use of myths and symbols, to covey Nazi propaganda. The author continues by explain the way Nazi propaganda film merges the themes of traditional German patriotism with Nazi ideological motifs. In the initial part of the chapter, Baird focuses on the way in which films such as The Eternal Jew and Jud Suss contributed to the feelings of anti-Semitism in Germany and help the Nazi regime gain support in their quest for the evacuation of the Jews. Baird goes on to discuss war as an important component in Nazi mythical ideology. He explains that films, such as Morgenrot and Wunschkonzert, help to convey the message that war was the German spirit of life; those who died in battle for their country not only were ensured eternal life but also served as an inspiration for Germans in future centuries. Finally, the author makes note of the importance of the anti-Bolsheviks motif in films that strove to depict the Nazi agenda of conquering Bolshevism and Soviet Russia.

This chapter helps to further explain the way in which Wunschkonzert depicts the positive side of war and, thus, serves as a propaganda film. It explains that, within through the heroic death of Schwarzkopf for Germany, the film conveys to the audience the Nazi idea that fighting for one’s country was an essential part of German life and should be looked at as a gallant and necessary duty by all German citizens.