Deutschland, Erwache!

A look at the propaganda content of entertainment films in the Third Reich. Leiser keeps his commentary brief, letting the extracts, plus his arrangement of them, speak for themselves. He identifies a number of themes: Dying for Germany, The Hitler Prototype and No Entitlement to Life (anti-Semitic stories) are some of the labels he uses. The common fantasy though is of noble Us being oppressed by malignant Them. And the appeal - belonging, shared victimhood, the promise of revenge under the great leader - is consistent and chilling. Leiser has done a service by marshalling this stuff so the rest of us don't have to sit through the whole of Hitlerjunge Quex (1935), Jud Süss ('40) or Stukas ('41), with its Luftwaffe pilots harmonising lustily and patriotically as they head for London.