Movies - National socialist film policy

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Despite its authoritarian core, Nazism was populist, a political movement that courted the masses by the means of slogans that were aimed directly at the instincts and emotions of the people. It is therefore not surprising that the Nazis valued film as a propaganda instrument of enormous power. The interest that Adolf Hitler and his Propagandaminister Joseph Goebbels took in film was not only the result of a personal fascination. The instrumentalization of film for propaganda had been planned by the NSDAP as early as in 1930, when the party first established a film department.

Goals of the Nazi film policy

Goebbels who appointed himself "Patron of the German film" assumed, accurately, that a national cinema which was entertaining and put glamour on the regime would be a more effective propaganda instrument than a national cinema in which the NSDAP and their policy would have been ubiquitous. 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. The open propaganda was reserved to documentary films and newsreels. There are only very few examples of German feature films from the Third Reich that deal with the NSDAP or with party organizations such as Sturmabteilung, Hitler Youth or Reich Labour Service. Even the so called propaganda films that refer directly to the Nazi politics amounted to less than a sixth of the whole national movie production, which mainly consisted of light entertainment films.

Authorities and NSDAP departments

The following authorities and NSDAP departments were in charge of film policy:

the film department of the Propagandaministerium
the Reich Chamber of Culture (‘’Reichskulturkammer’’)
the Reich Chamber of Film (‘’Reichsfilmkammer’’)
the film department of the Party Propaganda Department (‚’Reichspropagandaleitung’’)

Measures of Nazi film policy

The measures to subdue film to the goals of propaganda (“Gleichschaltung”) included:

subordination of the entire film business and administration under Joseph Goebbels’ Propagandaministerium
concentration and gradual nationalization of the film production and distribution industry
mandatory membership of all film actors, filmmakers, film distributors etc. in an official professional organization (‘’Reichsfilmkammer’’)
founding of a film bank (‘’Filmkreditbank GmbH’’) that provided the film industry with reasonable loans for the production of politically welcome films
appointment of a Reich Film Dramaturge (‘’Reichsfilmdramaturg’’) who in the very first stages of production pre-censored all manuscripts and screenplays
increase of the censorship that had already been established during World War I and the Weimar Republic
introduction of film ratings that provided politically welcome films with tax benefits
establishment of a national film award (‘’Deutscher Filmpreis’’)
prohibition of film criticism
foundation of a state-run professional school for politically reliable filmmakers (‘’Deutsche Filmakademie Babelsberg’’)

Film production

In the mid-1930ies, the German film industry suffered the most severe crisis it had ever faced. There were multiple reasons. First of all, many of the most capable actors and filmmakers had left the country after the appointment of the Nazi government; others were banned from their profession by the new professional organization (‘’Reichsfilmkammer’’). These people left a gap that the film industry couldn’t fill easily. Secondly, the remaining actors and filmmakers seized the opportunity to demand higher salaries which considerably increased the production budgets. It became more and more difficult to recover the production costs. Thirdly, the export dramatically dropped due to the boykott of foreign countries. In 1933, export had covered 44% of the film production costs; by 1937, this number had dropped to 7%.

More and more production companys went bankrupt. The number of companies went down from 114 (1933-35) to 79 (1936-38) to 38 (1939-41). This didn’t necessarily lead to a decrease of the number of new films; the surviving companies did better and better and became more and more productive.

The concentration of the film industry was absolutely in the interest of the Nazi government. On the one hand, an ailing and unprofitable film industry would not have been of too much use for the propaganda requirements. And on the other hand, a small number of big film production companies were easier to control than a multitude of small ones.

Goebbels went even further and engaged a holding company – ‘’Cautio Treuhand GmbH’’ – to buy up the stock majorities of the remaining film production companies. In 1937, the ‘’Cautio” acquired the largest German production company, Ufa, and in 1942 merged this company with the remaining companies – Terra Film, Tobis, Bavaria Film, Wien-Film, and Berlin-Film – into the so-called “Ufi-Group”.

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