The Effect Film Had On Wwii Propaganda

Essay, Research Paper

Without the advent of the medium of film to wage a war of propaganda both the Axis and

the Allies of World War II would have found it difficult to gather as much support for

their causes as they did. Guns, tanks and bombs were the principal weapons of World

War II, but there were other, more subtle, forms of warfare as well. Words, posters, and

films waged a constant battle for the hearts and minds of the masses of the world just as

surely as military weapons engaged the enemy. Persuading the public became a wartime

industry, almost as important as the manufacturing of bullets and planes. Both sides

launched an aggressive propaganda campaign to galvanize public support, and some of

these nation’s foremost intellectuals, artists, and filmmakers became warriors on that

front.

Propaganda in the broadest sense is the technique of influencing human action by

the manipulation of representations. These representations may take the spoken, written,

pictorial, or musical form. Since the cinema uses all four of these types of representations,

a filmmaker would seem to wield a lot of power as a propagandist. If he so choosed to

use his power to its fullest potential. The essential distinction lies in the intentions of the

propagandist to persuade an audience to adopt the attitude or action he or she espouses.

This is ever so previlant as Hitler gained support from his nation to exterminate the Jewish

people from Germany and Europe alike. He adopted such support by using his Nazi

propaganda films as a weapon of mass distraction and manipulation of the people of

Germany. The most famous Nazi propaganda film is Der ewige Jude (“The Eternal Jew”).

Der Ewige Jude was engineered by Hitlers Minister of Propaganada. It was

created to legitimize the exclusion, and the ultimately the destruction, of an entire people.

It depicts the Jews of Poland as corrupt, filthy, lazy, ugly, and perverse: they are an alien

people which have taken over the world through their control of banking and commerce,

yet which still live like animals. The narrator tries to depict the Jew’s behavior as rat like,

while showing footage of rats squirming from sewers and leaping at the camera. The

film’s most shocking scene is the slaughter of a cow, shown in bloody detail, by a grinning

Rabbi- and it is followed by, of all things, three innocent (presumably German) lambs

nuzzling each other.

Hitler also provides the emotional climax of the film, with footage of his speech to

the Reichstag from 1939. When preceded by sixty minutes describing the Jewish problem,

and followed by thunderous applause, Hitler’s prophetic warning takes on even greater

significance: “If the international finance-Jewry inside and ouside Europe should succeed

in plunging the nations into a world war yet again, then the outcome will not be the

victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”(Adolph Hitler).

The importance of this groundbreaking propaganda is often underestimated. Someone

might characterize the film as a X-ray of the decisionmaking process that led to the

Holocaust. It can also be argued that the film is seen as the official promulgation of

Hitlers’s decision, and that it – together with the feature film Jud Sub- deliberately was

used to prepare both perpetrators and bystanders for the extermination of the Jews.

Prior to all of this Hitler had to iniate the movement towards this propaganda war

waged on the silver screen. In 1934, 413 English per 1000 went to the movies each week,

343 per 1000 Americans, and 160 per 1000 French. In Germany, only 86 of 1000 went to

the movies, a far cry from the turn out that the English and Americans had. Leaving aside

the cultural and historic differences between Germany and these other nations, it is clear

that increasing German film attendance is among the most important tasks of German film

policy, and that doinog so would increase the effectiveness of film in propaganda and

popular enligtenment. Hitler recognized films effectiveness early. Not only does it

influence popular opinion but films relative great costs “pay off”: film stock, equipment,

studios, the large technical and artistic staffs, et, all cost a lot of money, but the result, the

finished film, may bring in tens of thousands whose admission fees not only cover the

costs, but result in a good profit. Hitler’s answer to the lack of attendence was to

estaiblish the extremly powerful Ministry of Propaganda, and to nationalize the film

making process.

In this propaganda war Germany and its allies seemed to initially have a distinct

advantage. Because their governments controlled all media, they could largely seal off

their peoples from Western propaganda. At the same timve, the highly centralized

government could plan elaborate propaganda campaigns and mobilize resources to carry

out their plans. They could also count on aid from

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