The Titanic in Nazi Propaganda

I did an interview with Alex Gallafent from Public Radio International today on Titanic, the 1943 Nazi film on the subject.  It’s the program for April 12, and the interview starts at minute 24.

The text of the story is available.

The Third Reich’s Celluloud War

A while back Ian Garden wrote to me with the request for some high definition scans of images from the GPA for a book he was writing on Nazi cinema.  As usual I asked for a copy of the book when published. The British edition of the The Third Reich’s Celluloid War arrived by mail a month or so back. It now is available in the U.S.

I recommend the book as a good introduction to the subject.  As Garden notes in the introduction, he is writing for a general audience and he does that well.  The book provides interesting information about a wide range of Nazi film.  The book as a particularly good selection of images, some in color.  No other book on the topic can equal it in this regard.

The author has also set up a useful web site to supplement the book.

There are a few matters of fact and interpretation about which I might quibble, but when my students ask me for help on where to start in understanding Nazi film this is the first book to which I will send them.

Nazi Films

I have not had any films on the site before, both because I do not have them in my collection and because the bandwidth requirements can be high.  However, there are many films from the period available on places like archive.com or YouTube.

To help those interested get started, I am adding a page with several embedded videos.  They include excerpts from Nazi propaganda films of the 1927 and 1929 Nuremberg rallies, an edition of Panorama, a late-war series of color features, and a 1943 newsreel.

Anyone interested will have no difficulty finding more.

An Episode of "Tran und Helle"

Tran und Helle was a series of 2-3 minute skits, shown as part of the newsreel before the feature during World War II in Germany. Tran, played by Ludwig Schmitz, was the conniver, always trying to hoard goods, shop on the black market, etc. Helle, played by Jupp Hussels, was the voice of good behavior. I've added a summary of a skit titled "Prisoner of War." The illustration is the cover of the pamphlet from which I take the skit.