The_Triumph_of_Propaganda_Film_&_National_Socialism_Hilmar_Hoffmann

^RIUMP ROPAGAND. Film and National Socialisi 1933-1945ILMAR HOFFMANN

THE TRIUMPH OF PROPAGANDAFilm and National Socialism, 1933-1945 / Hilmar Hoffmann Translated by John A. Broadwin and V. R. B e r g h a h n 1 Berghahn Books Providence • Oxford

Published in 1996 by CONTENTS Berghahn Books PREFACE 1 © 1996,1997 of the English-language edition, Berghahn Books, Inc. 43© 1988 of the German-language edition, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 1. T H E S Y M B O L I C V A L U E O F F L A G S A N D B A N N E R S 61 2. T H E F L A G IN F E A T U R E F I L M S 74 GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 115Originally published as \"Und die Fahne führt ims in die Ewigkeit\" 3. R E A S O N S FOR THE R I S E OF HITLER 248 All rights reserved. 4. F I L M P R O P A G A N D A IN T H E T H I R D R E I C H 250 No part of this publication may be reproduced 255 in any form or by any means without the written permission 5. T H E NONFICTIONAL G E N R E S O F N A Z I FILM PROPAGANDA of Berghahn Books. The Cultural and Educational Film 115Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Documentary 135 The Compilation Film 161Hoffmann, Hilmar. TheNewsreel 192[Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit. English] SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHYThe triumph of propaganda : film and national socialism, INDEX OF NAMES1933-1945 / by Hilmar Hoffmann, INDEX OF FILM TITLESp. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index,(v. 1 : alk. paper)1. National socialism and motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures inpropaganda-Germany—History. 3. Propaganda, German-History—20th century. 4. Motion pictures—Germany—History. I. Title.PN1995.9.N36H6413 1995 95-36005791.43'658~dc20 CIP ISBN 1-57181-066-8 hardback ISBN 1-57181-122-2 paperback British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data[ A catalogue record for this book is available from •<{ the British Library.Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.

PREFACE Preface In comparison with the other arts, film has a particularly forceful and The optimistic language of the new redeemers promised to inau­ lasting psychological and propagandistic impact because of its effect gurate a new age, to establish a millennial Reich, to lead the way not on the intellect, but principally on the emotions and the visual to an exciting and meaningful future. The National Socialists were sense. [Film] does not aim to influence the views of an elite coterie of skillful in coopting concepts to describe this improved future. art experts. Rather, it seeks to seize the attention of the broad masses. As a result, film can exercise an influence on society that is more It was no mere coincidence that there were six million unem­ enduring than that achieved by church or school or, for that matter, ployed in Germany as the Weimar republic was collapsing in literature, the press or radio. Hence, for reasons that lie outside the 1932. Inevitably, the Depression and the radicalization of domes­ realm of art, it would be negligent and reckless (and not in the inter­ tic politics resulted in new elections that same year (31 July 1932), est of the arts themselves) for a responsible government to relinquish elections in which the Nazis received 13.5 million votes and its leadership role in this important area. emerged the clear winners, their votes having come not only from the army of the socially disadvantaged but mostly from the con­ Fritz Hippler^ servatively minded middle class. Using social demagoguery to t r u m p e t his idea of a future \"national c o m m u n i t y \" {Volksgemein­Film was doubtless the most influential among the mass media in schaft) as a c u r e for G e r m a n y ' s ills, v o w i n g to a v e n g e the s h a m ethe Third Reich. It was also the means of artistic communication of Versailles, and offering a formula for the restoration of order.that Hitler used to greatest effect in bringing his political ideas to Hitler and his tightly organized party proceeded to build a massa mass audience. Compared to the emotional persuasiveness of movement. The artful dialectics of Dr. Goebbels had entered themoving pictures, radio and the press were less successful in con­ homes of the electorate in 1932 through the loudspeakers of 4.25veying and spreading the message of the new ideology. Within million radios. Skilled in the uses of psychology, his voice crack­the context of Goebbels's propaganda strategy, however, they ing, Goebbels instilled in the hearts and minds of the broadwere indispensable factors in any concerted and universal cam­ masses the idea of the Führer as the new messiah. The spokenpaign of indoctrination, particularly in light of the fact that film word and songs substituted for a political program. As Wilhelmlacked the up-to-dateness of radio and the daily newspaper. Frick put it on 19 February 1933 in Dresden: \"They say w e don't have a program; but the name Hitler is program enough.\"^ Pro­ Before Hitler came to power, during the so-called time of strug­ paganda was the program of the NSDAP, and that is where itgle {Kampfzeit), a n d before the N a z i s h a d subordinated the focused its energies.medium of film to their own purposes, they made clever use ofradio to deliver the messages of Dr. Goebbels, the ranting It was this \"program\" that dictated the ceaseless staging ofreporter, and Hitler, the neurotic rhetorician. What distinguished m a s s rallies a n d p a r a d e s , the intoxication with flags, the pylons oftheir delivery from the generally tedious speeches of democratic smoking torches, and the echo of martial music, with all its atten­politicians was their forcefulness, vision, and mesmerizing dant vulgar \"ballyhoo.\" \"The art of propaganda,\" Hitler sensed inemotionalism. The responsiveness to their demagogic language 1924, \"lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the greatamong broad segments of the population was an indication of the masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, thedegree of social alienation prevailing at the time. Against the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses.\"^backdrop of the growing social problems and identity crisesplaguing the Weimar republic, the aggressiveness of the Nazis Immediately after the Nazis came to power on 30 Januarywas a totally new phenomenon. It was a sign of a strong hand at 1933, the newly established Ministry for Popular Enlightenmentthe helm, of an alternative to the uncontrolled proliferation of and Propaganda proceeded to take over the film industry. Withpolitical parties, and of a renewed awareness of German power. the creation of the Reich Film Chamber on 22 September 1933, the NSDAP assumed complete control of the motion-picture indus­ try. The first year of production under the Nazis resulted in a kind of film trilogy on the t h e m e of m a r t y r d o m : SA-Mann Brand (Storm Trooper Brand, 1933), Hitlerjunge Quex (Hitier Youth Quex, 1933), a n d Hans Westmar (1933). The purpose of these films w a s to raise

viii Preface Preface IXthe unknown Storm Trooper and the murdered Nazi heroes Her­ However, Goebbels also regarded historical films about a figurebert Norkus and Horst Wessel to the status of role models. such as Frederick the Great, with an established identity, as a proven way to appropriate some of the Prussian monarch's genius as a But that same year Goebbels realized how counterproductive it leader of the nation and victorious military commander, therebywould be in the long run to have Brown Shirts constantly march­ providing a backdrop for the Hitler cult and making the Führering not only in the streets but across the silver screen as well. appear as the legitimate heir to Prussia's virtues and traditions.\"What w e are seeking is more than a dramatization of the Partyprogram. The ideal that w e have in mind is a profound union of Films about Frederick the Great, such as Der alte und der jungethe spirit of the heroic life and the eternal laws of art,\" said Goeb­ König (The Old King a n d the Y o u n g King, 1930), directed b y H a n sbels in 1933.^ Consequently, Nazis in uniform, swastika flags, and Steinhoff, a n d Der große König (The Great King, 1942), directed bythe obligatory fascist salute were largely banished from the Veit Harlan, had less to do with Prussia's rebirth under Frederickscreen, in any event until the beginning of the war. After the war than with its revival under National Socialism. The actor Ottobroke out, the government, as Goebbels said in a speech delivered Gebühr declaimed the ringing phrases of the Prussian king to anon 12 October 1941, would once again \"decide on the educational audience of nearly 18.6 million moviegoers as though he werea n d ideological [willensmäßigen] message\" of feature films. reciting passages from the Führer's harangues. Reenactments of Frederick's defeats, such as the battle of Kunersdorf, were meant The Nazis never ceased using film for the purpose of mass per­ to show how in the face of a defeat like Stalingrad metaphysicalsuasion. Instead, they shifted direct indoctrination from feature hope could generate expectations of victory and an iron will leadfilms to documentaries and newsreels. According to the subse­ to final victory—if only everyone fervently believed in the Führer!quent implementation statutes of the Reich Cinema Law of 16February 1934, every feature film was to be preceded by the The documentary film in the Third Reich lived up to the expec­showing of a \"supporting program\" consisting of newsreels and tations Nazi propagandists harbored for their message of hate. Todocumentaries. The clear differentiation of propagandistic func­ convey it effectively, the new regime was obliged to seek replace­tion by film genre showed the Nazis' surprising sensitivity to the ments for former Ufa writers who wanted to indulge their tastevarious means for effectively influencing the masses. Even fea­ for pedestrian Kulturfilme filled with spectacular imagery.ture films that were primarily sources of popular entertainmentw e r e n e v e r entirely nonpolitical. Like m a n y of Ufa's {Universum- Leni Riefenstahl's hour-long film of the 1933 Nazi Party con­Film-Aktiengesellschaft) productions, feature films transformed gress, Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith), m a r k e d the beginningentertainment into an artistic event, with an eye to creating the of a new branch of aesthetics that would persist into the future—illusion of normalcy during the darkest of hours. To quote Goeb­ the aesthetic of the fascist film. In time, all art would be measuredbels before the Reich Film Chamber on 15 February 1941: \"Even against the standards she had set. Her standards of aesthetic com­entertainment sometimes has the task of arming the nation to position would govern the presentation in documentaries of thefight for its existence, of providing it with the requisite spiritual P a r t y ' s authoritarian principle of order (Ordnungsprinzip) a n d theuplift, entertainment, and relaxation as the dramatic events of the rigid canon of Nazi beliefs. Documentary filmmaking was guidedday unfold.\" Besides their important function as a diversion, by the mandate that \"the cinema will deal only with subjects ofentertainment films were a particularly effective means for dis­ benefit to the Party.\" Leni Riefenstahl's Party congress films pro­seminating certain topics among the population in a seemingly vided filmmakers with an aesthetic model to guide them inneutral fashion and without being too heavy-handed or using observing the Party's principle of order with maximum vigor.treasonous terms. The Tobis film Ich klage an (I A c c u s e , 1941), Her creative achievement lay in the general stylistic changes she directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner, is a classic example. Popular introduced into the Nazi documentary. She demonstrated in actors of the day whose appearance inspired confidence, such as exemplary fashion how individual \"physiological identity disap­ Heidemarie Hatheyer, Paul Hartmann, Mathias Wiemahn, and pears behind the allure of a technical valorization,\"^ and how the Harald Paulsen, were enlisted to popularize the euthanasia pro­ individual as an element of the mass is reified and absorbed as an gram that was already under way. anonymous part of the greater whole. \"The individual is freed and absorbed into the community of the faithful,\"^ which is kept

Preface Prefacein perpetual motion in Riefenstahl's films. The worship of move­ \"The flag will lead us to eternity\"—Fred Zinnemann's film From Here to Eternity (1953) demythologizes the ideal of \"eternity\"m e n t per se transformed Nazi ideas into [symmetrical] forms, a n d with brutal realism, exposing it as militarist cynicism, hell on earth, the kind of hell that many in the Third Reich suffered inthese forms were in turn endowed with dynamic movement. At much more grisly ways.the same time, Riefenstahl's theory of aesthetics explicitly In presenting a myth to which you have some attachment, you share in that myth, wrote Elias Canetti. In Hitler's case, thisnegated the existence of the social nexus. proved true to the bitter end. Mythic consciousness, using propa­ g a n d a vehicles such as the flag, early seized the attention of theThough only a tiny minority of directors achieved the high \"masses\" and pointed the way to the disaster that ultimately befell the Germans and many other nations.degree of aesthetic quality and controlled scene composition This book is linüted to the study of the documentary film in theattained by Riefenstahl, they generally managed, using a kitsch so-called Third Reich. A number of works dealing with the Nazi feature film h a v e already been published. They include suchaesthetic {trivialisierte Inhaltsästhetik), to generate a cinematic important contributions as Coutarde and Cadars's Histoire du cinema nazi {1972)/ Gerd Albrecht's Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitikapotheosis of Nazi ideas, even if it w a s just by trotting out the (1969),* E r w i n Leiser's Deutschland, erwache! (1968),^ a n d Boguslaw Drewniak's Der deutsche Film 1938-1945: ein Gesamtüberblick (1987).swastika flag as a symbol. Until now, however, there has been no monographic study of the d o c u m e n t a r y film as it relates to that other d o c u m e n t a r y m e d i u m ,Like the Nazis in general, Leni Riefenstahl made the swastika the newsreel. This w o r k seeks to fill the g a p a n d at the s a m e time make a contribution to the history of the genre's popularity.flag her leitmotif. It appears everywhere in her films; she con­ This volume, a survey of the subject matter, aesthetics, andstantly confronts us with swastika flags waving in the wind as d e v e l o p m e n t of the d o c u m e n t a r y film a n d the newsreel u n d e r the Nazi regime, will be supplemented by two additional parts, cur­omnipresent reminders of the Führer. The flag symbolizes the rently in preparation, analyzing individual documentaries pro­ duced during the period 1939-1945. The three volumes areParty program; it is the visual epitome of Nazi ideology. The flag arranged in such a way that the history of the Third Reich and the anatomy and face of the Nazi spirit can be reconstructed from the\"is the n e w age,\" the t h o u s a n d - y e a r Reich. The m y t h of the flag is documentaries and newsreels of the period. For this reason, someUtopia.a substitute for films were included to which little importance was attached at the The flag is the symbol for which there is n o time they w e r e m a d e but which contain i m p o r t a n t details for a study of the Third Reich. Produced under a dictatorship that hadsubstitute. \"Yes, the flag m e a n s m o r e than death\" is a prophetic redefined reality and was pledged to uphold the one and only truth propagated by the Führer, they are an integral part of theverse in the Hitler Youth's marching song. documentary film landscape. When artists forfeit their most important criterion—truth—out of opportunism, fear, or fanati­But it is not only Leni Riefenstahl w h o b o m b a r d s us with flags. cism, they give up their independence. This aspect of cinematic art will be discussed as well.In o v e r 9 0 percent of N a z i d o c u m e n t a r y films, the flag figures I have watched over three hundred documentaries and news-prominently as an icon-like symbol charged with lofty moral val­ reels for this book and the two volumes to follow, and I have ana­ lyzed more than half of them in greater depth in volumes twoues. It is presented either at the beginning of a film to p u t theviewer into the right frame of mind or shown toward the end, bil­l o w i n g in the w i n d as an a n o d y n e for the final apotheosis. Lestanyone forget when a documentary stakes out new territory, theflag also functions as a \"fluttering\" control point (the point u s e dby surveyors for fixing a boundary).The first p a r t of this book will investigate the ideological, e m o ­tional, a n d m o r a l significance of the flag in the Third Reich. W a s ita brightly colored fetish for the masses that was meant to anchorthe Nazi ideology firmly in the deepest recesses of the subcon­scious? Was it a \"psychic infection,\" to borrow Freud's term in hisMassenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (Group P s y c h o l o g y a n d theAnalysis of the Ego). Or an obligatory cliched image, viewed asthe price ambitious directors had to pay in order to be able to bidon the next film contract? Visual incense, a kind of elixir of life, amagic potion to turn one into a hero, to summon up one'sc o u r a g e , to gain confidence? The flag w a s all that a n d more: itwas a myth for which to die.

xii Preface Preface xm(1928-1939) and three (1939-1945). I am deeply grateful to the NotesBundes-Archiv in Koblenz, in particular to Peter Bucher andAnneliese Hoffmann-Thielen of the distribution department, for 1. Fritz Hippler, Film-Kurier (Berlin), 5 April 1944.providing me with copies. I would also like to express m y thanks 2. Quoted in Frankfurter Zeitung (Frankfurt am Main), 21 February 1933.to Enno Patalas of the Filmmuseum in Munich and Dorothea 3. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 2 vols. (Munich, 1925-1927).Gebauer of the Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde for loaning me 4. Joseph Goebbels's speech at the opening of the Reichskulturkammer at Phil­copies. Further, I would like to thank Wolfgang Klaue of the Staat­liches Filmarchiv of the GDR, Jiri Purs of Ceskoslovensky Film in harmonic Hall (Berlin), 15 November 1933, quoted in Gerd Albrecht, ed.. FilmPrague, Tom Johnson of America House in Frankfurt a m Main, im Dritten Reich (Karlsruhe, 1979), p. 267.the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Film 5. Paul Virilio, Die Ästhetik des Verschwindens (Berlin, 1986), p. 98, English trans­Library of the Museum of Modern Art in New York for obtaining lation The Aesthetics of Disappearance (New York, 1991).copies in my behalf. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the direc­ 6. Leif Furhammar and Folke Isaksson, Politik und Film (Ravensburg, 1974), p.tor of the Deutsches Filmmuseum, Walter Schobert, and to Rainer 190, English translation Politics and Film (New York, 1971).Schang of the duplication department for their readiness to help 7. Francis Courtade and Pierre Cadars, Histoire du cinema nazi (Paris, 1972).during my frequent visits to the cutting room, including week­ 8. Gerd Albrecht, Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik (Stuttgart, 1969).ends. I a m grateful to my colleagues Gerd Albrecht and Eberhard 9. Erwin Leiser, Deutschland, erwache! (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1968), EnglishSpieß of the Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde in Frankfurt a m translatignNMi Qinema (New York, 1974).Main for their advice and cormnents and especially for theirreadiness to help at any time in the procurement of documentarymaterials. M y thanks also go to Alain Lance for his comments.The efforts of Monika Zehe and Andrea Wölbing in the compila­tion of the bibliography also deserve mention. I would like tothank m y friends Joachim Gaertner, Willi Köhler, and DieterKramer for critically reviewing my manuscript, and Gudrun Has­selbacher, Anita Jantzer, Edeltraud Kunze, and Elke Ringel forconverting m y manuscript into a well-ordered final copy. The text is based in part on lectures and seminars I deliveredin 1985,1986, and 1987 at the Kunstwissenschaftliches Institut ofPhilipps-Universität in Marburg and the Faculty of Fine Arts ofthe Uiuversity of Tel-Aviv.

-{-1 + THE SYMBOLIC VALUE OF FLAGS AND STANDARDS Flags as Symbols There are many people today who must realize that with the fall of the flag, the flag bearer falls as well.—Those who failed to recognize the [changed] times have no political or cultural or moral right to hoist another flag. The film industry is marked by a general lack of courage, a fear to stand up for one's beließ, and a lack of enthusiasm to make commitments. The movie producers say \"you can clean my plumage, but don't ruffle my feathers,\" mollifying themselves by hoisting a new flag. Most probably some pennant from a bygone era. Intellectual liber­ alism—which in reality means intellectual chaos—is dead and buried. To argue that art has no bias (Tendenz) is foolish, naive, and absurd. Joseph Goebbels, 28 March 1933i\"Flags a r e w i n d m a d e visible,\" w r o t e Elias Canetti in Masse undMachti'- s u m m i n g u p the nature of flags in terms of t w o basic char­acteristics: their exposed position, visible from great distances, asthey w a v e in the breeze above people's heads; and the relationshipbetween the material from which they are made—cloth or, in thecase of weather vanes, metal—and their immateriality, i.e., theirsuitability for expressing abstract ideas, their symbolic function. Originally, though, flags (a cultural history of flags, standards,and banners has yet to be written) likely had a utilitarian function.An encyclopedia of the Middle Ages states that flags were the per­fect means for distinguishing \"one's own troops from those of theenemy\"^ and went on to say that for the medieval soldier (andpresumably for those of antiquity and the early modern period aswell), flags were not merely symbols of sovereignty and loyalty.

The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and StandardsRather—as in the case of armies where the wearing of uniforms of Tristan's faithful retainer Kurwenal, when Kurwenal (Act I,was not practiced—they were used for the purposes of identifica­ Scene 4) informs Isolde, as they sail the Irish Sea, of the upcomingtion and signaling. Serving for the identification of friend or foe landing on \"Cornwall's verdant strand\":and as a rallying point during engagements between units or indi­vidual soldiers, flags afforded protection to those within a unit, On the mast a flag is flying.ultimately ensuring their survival. The fall of the flag of one's own And gaily waves toward the landarmy meant that chaos would ensue, soldiers running heiter skel­ And in King Mark's castleter across the battlefield or directly into the enemy's arms. Albrecht They know the bride is at hand.''Altdorfer's monumental painting \"Battle of Alexander at Issus\"(1529) gives a sense of the vital i m p o r t a n c e of flags in the c o n d u c t F o r ships the flag is a pronüse of rescue from peril in the strug­of war. The various forces portrayed in this vast panorama of sol­ gle with the forces of nature, just as it is [a promise of salvation]diers embroiled in the tumultuous struggle between ancient for soldiers embroiled in hand-to-hand combat. Nevertheless theGreeks a n d Persians are so intertwined that the different flags are p r i m a r y function of the flag is not to act as a pledge of g o o d for-virtually the only w a y for viewers to orient themselves. time but as a symbol of one's own troops that, when captured, lost sight of, or gone unnoticed, inevitably signals a battle's end, or It is probably impossible to determine in which spheres of life death. Unity u n d e r the flag exists only so long as deserting the flagflags first c a m e into use. W h a t has c o m e d o w n to us is a report of poses a threat. This negative function of the flag m a k e s it an instru­the magnificent c e r e m o n y in which the first flag w a s formally con­ ment of repression within the ranks, not the sign of hope thatsecrated when Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor state-controlled propaganda would suggest.in the city of R o m e . Ironically, the flag that P o p e L e o III g r a n t e dthe secular head of Roman Catholic Christendom in the year 800 A flag fluttering in the breeze is a symbol of life in the midst ofA.D. as a sign of his new power was red in color. During war, in the general threat of death. In other words, it is an ideal instru­seafaring, a n d in the case of religion, flags w e r e u s e d chiefly as ment for controlling the masses. The dialectic between theidentification signs and as a means to highlight differences. Dur­ p r o m i s e of g o o d fortune a n d the risk of death m o v e s the flag intoing the crusades, which lasted two hundred years, the number of the r e a l m of religion, w h i c h helps to explain the use of flags in reli­flags w a s m y r i a d . T h e y g a v e c o u r a g e to the knights of one's o w n gious worship. They may appear in the form of the three-tailcountry w h o were obliged to fight on foreign soil, and they intim­ Easter flag representing the resurrection of Christ o r the multi-col­idated the natives. o r e d p r a y e r flags f o u n d in Tibetan m o n a s t e r i e s o r the m a g i c streamers carried by American Indians, but they are always inti­ Flags appeared as identification signs on the world's oceans mately associated with the supernatural and with the notion oflong before Christians took to the sea. The Vikings used them eternal damnation for those who \"fear not God.\"during their sea voyages. With a raven (the symbol of Odin, theirgod of war and death) painted on their standards, the Vikings The symbol outlined at the beginning of this section in cormec-brought a reign of terror to the seas. And with martial insignia on tion with Elias Canetti's definition of the flag is not to be confusedthe flags flying f r o m their t o p m a s t s , W i l l i a m the C o n q u e r o r ' s w i t h the m a g i c a l p o w e r s of the flag in religious w o r s h i p . A s a nships set sail from Normandy in 1066 to invade England at Sussex object of religious veneration, the faithful considered the flag to beand defeat the forces of the successor to the throne, Harold II, at divinely inspired, i.e., sacred. The flag only a s s u m e d its symbolicHastings. The Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidered frieze 230 feet in function in the wake of the secularization that accompanied thelength and a primary cultural and historical document, depicts Enlightenment. Abstract internalized values now gave meaning tothe lovely cross-emblazoned flags that the C h u r c h h a d g r a n t e d life, providing a substitute for religious transcendence. EugeneWilliam in Rome. Delacroix's famous painting \"Liberty Leading the People,\" in which the allegory of Revolution—a woman with bared breast E v e n R i c h a r d W a g n e r w a s c o n v e r s a n t with the role of flags as holding a tricolor and a muzzle-loader—leads a band of fightingsignals. In his 1 8 6 5 o p e r a Tristan and Isolde, set in the M i d d l e men onto the stage of history, gives artistic expression to thisAges, he makes reference to them through the resonant baritone c h a n g e . The flag is n o longer borne by a soldier but by a n abstract

The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standardsallegorical figure, thereby elevating the significance of the scene writer Valentin Kataev, in which he describes partisan warfarebeyond the actual battle depicted to a higher plane of values. against the German army of occupation in Ukraine, contains a major scene centered on the symbolism of the flag. As he lies The flag's transformation from rallying point to revolutionary dying, a young sapper places a flag under his body so that the lib­symbol was rooted in technological change. Since the technologi­ erated citizens of Odessa will later find it, drenched in his blood,cal revolution of the nineteeth century, war was no longer a duel and w a v e it as a sign of victory. This is a desperate attempt to givebetween individual soldiers. It was now conducted by mechanical meaning to \"death in battle\" in a world devoid of religious tran­weapons that delivered death and destruction over immense dis­ scendence where the \"greater good\"—the nation—calls fortances. When a soldier was dying or being killed, he no longer unquestioning obedience under the sign of the flag.looked into the whites of his enemy's eyes; all he saw was themuzzle flash of a gun. The only contact between combatants was In this sense, the words of Elias Canetti cited at the beginning ofthat between the telescopic sights of their artillery pieces. This this section have a numinous and magical aspect that I will relatekind of warfare invalidated the flag's role as a true identification below to the imperialist and militarist function of the flag. Flagssign. Paul Virilio has called modern warfare the \"war of light,\" a \"are like bits cut from clouds, nearer and more varied in color,mechanized scenario in which target acquisition, \"observation,\" is tethered and given permanent shape. In their movement they aremore important than firepower. In other words, it is primarily per­ truly striking. Nations use them to mark the air above them asception and observation that decide the outcome of a war; their own, as though the wind could be partitioned.\"weapons are of secondary importance. In this kind of war sce­nario it is no longer a question of eliminating the object of percep­ Colors and Their Political Significancetion, the raised flag of medieval warfare. Rather, it is a question ofperception itself. The apotheosis of this w a r is the nuclear flash, I promise that we will hold our flag and our ideas high and carry themwhere the weapon and the flash of light combine to blind and with us to our grave. Countless blood witnesses are with us in spirit.annihilate the enemy—the consummation and logical conse­quence of the idea of \"blitzkrieg\" [lightning or lighting war, to use Adolf Hitler^Virilio's play on words—Transl.], a twilight of the gods that givesbirth to a race of mutants and zombies. In this twentieth century Flags can stand for revolution as well as tyranny and totalitarian­scenario the flag has no practical use in affording protection. On ism. They may be associated with festivities, prayers, and fimerals.the contrary, the nerve center of an army—its \"flagship\"—is the Flags—as simple as they are effective—have had an importance inmost likely target for destruction. In modern warfare, deserting history that has been worth fighting for and waging war over.the flag seems to offer the only true chance of survival. \"There isno victory. There are only flags and men w h o fall,\" according to Flags by themselves are impartial (though even a plain whiteJ e a n - L u c G o d a r d ' s Les Carabiniers (1963). flag has a special meaning); and the symbols used in flags are often nothing more than utilitarian. There are whole books written Nevertheless, the myth of victory and the flag as the symbol of for future sea captains and pilots that are devoted to explainingvictory persist to this day. As a symbol of the nation, the flag is still the shape, color, and positioning of the various naval flags.considered inviolable. Insulting it is subject to severe punishmentunder the law. On days of national mourning it stands at half- Seamen introduced the concept of \"flagging\" at the beginningstaff. A t state funerals it is draped over the coffin to show that the of the modern era as a way of differentiating the display of navaldeceased has been accepted into the immortal community of the flags from that of other types. The English have employed navalnation. It is a symbol that is understood throughout the world like flags since 1 6 4 0 . In the G e r m a n - s p e a k i n g states their use datesn o other. In P a o l o a n d Vittorio Taviani's film Padre Padrone back to 1732 when pilots in the Baltic adopted the term \"flagging\"( 1 9 7 6 / 1 9 7 7 ) the hero Gavino Ledda is forced to learn: \"You must to describe the m e s s a g e s c o n v e y e d b y m e a n s of flags.know the name of your flag better than you know your mother'sn a m e . \" E v e n the novel Die Katakomben von Odessa^ by the Russian The complex process of ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore commu­ nication gradually gave rise to the development of a sophisticated

The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standardsand standardized flag \"language\" for the purpose of keeping Beginning in 1828 the landlocked Austrian monarchy dressedships at sea out of harm's way. its ships with red-white-red masthead flags bearing an open A discussion of the makeup of flags becomes a volatile topicwhenever we talk about symbols that represent a political ideol­ crown as the emblem of regal power.ogy or regime. The first documented reference to German flag cus­toms and etiquette dates back to the eighteenth century. The The enormous impact of the black-white-red flag even on Ger­dozens upon dozens of small German states dressed their shipswith masthead flags in the livery colors of their respective rulers. mans living outside of Germany is reflected in this rapturousAfter 1848 the black-red-gold flag waved from the masts of Ger­m a n ships. However, it was not recognized universally on the description written by Gustav Freytag and published in the jour­seven seas as a symbol of sovereignty. The British government, infact, delivered a formal note to the German Confederation stating n a l Die Grenzboten in 1 8 4 0 : \" T h r o u g h o u t the entire inhabitedthat Britain would view the Confederation's ships as pirates ifthey sailed into British waters without flying the sovereign flag of world men of German origin—hard-boiled, unemotional Germanthe respective federation member. businessmen—waved their hats and shouted for joy, embracing In \"Dreaming of a Fleet\" Ferdinand Freiligrath, Germany's poetof freedom, symbolized the unification of these numerous small one another with tears in their eyes, because these colors had beenstates into a single nation-state as black-red-gold storm cloudsgarlanded across the world's oceans: raised over their heads in order to release them from their ancient Wave now free Black Red and Gold from every mast bondage, isolation, and defenselessness and to offer them a shared And flag pole ringing the land! The ocean has festooned itself home away from home and the greatest, most precious masculine In thousands of pennants, oh flag once reviled.^ pride in their distant German fatherland.\"' A single flag embracing all members of the North German Con­federation existed only after 1866. Bismarck decreed it w a s to be In contrast, Heinrich Heine, writing on the occasion of the 1817the Black-White-Red, because this combination of colors \"repre­sented not only the black and white of Prussia but the red and Wartburg festival, used his mordant wit to heap scorn on thewhite of the Hansa cities and Holstein, i.e., the largest number of Ultranationalistshrill declarations issued by members of thenon-Prussian ships:\"^ stu­ The Black-White-Red flies proudly dent associations and their dream of a unified Germany under from our ship's mast. the black-white-red flag: \"While the past croaked out its dark The flag flies in the face of the enemies who threaten it. Who hate its colors. raven song at the Wartburg festival, a sunrise song about the It waves back and forth in the wind modem age was sung at Hambach Castle and toasts were drunk along the side of the ship, and far from the beloved Fatherland to all m a n k i n d . \"10 upon storm-tossed seas. Two weeks after the French established a republic and deposed We pledge our loyalty to it. their king, on 9 March 1848, the National Parliament in Frankfurt faithful unto death. We dedicate our life to the flag, am Main adopted \"the colors of the former German imperial ban­ to the Black and White and Red. ner—Black-Red-Gold—as the tricolor of the Germanic Confeder­ ation.\" Intoxicated by the revolution, the composer Robert Schumann gushed: \"Black stands for [gun] powder, red for blood, and gold for the lambent flame.\" And in his London exile Ferdi­ nand Freiligrath wrote the following bellicose verses on \"The Rev­ olutionary Colors\": Aha, fluttering, billowing, a flash of color! Hurrah, you Black and Red and Gold! It's the former imperial standard. Those are the ancient colors! This is the banner under which we'll fight and Obtain fresh scars. You see, we've just begun The final battle is yet to come!\" The National Assembly that was convened in St. Paul's Church—the most highly educated parliament that ever existed

8 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards(in the words of Golo Marm)—published the following announce­ the Hansa. It was only after I had explained this to old Kaiserment in the Reich Law Gazette of 12 November 1848: \"The German Wilhelm that he accepted the adoption of the new colors.\"^^ Thewar ensign shall consist of three horizontal stripes of equal width, new black-white-red war ensign of the North German Confeder­black at the top, red in the rrüddle, and yellow on the bottom. In the ation combined the Iron Cross of the wars of liberation, designedupper left-hand comer the canton shall bear the imperial coat-of- by Friedrich Schinkel, with the martial traditions of Prussia. Itarms on a rectangular field.... The imperial coat-of-arms consists of was Lützow's legendary free corps, organized within the Pruss­a double-headed eagle displayed sable on a gold field, langued ian army, that gave birth to the idea of \"unifying Germany bygules, gold-beaked, and taloned.\"'^ force of arms.\" The aura of the Black-Red-Gold faded along with the \"unfin­ The squabbling over these tradition-laden symbols of state notished German revolution\" symbolized by St. Paul's Church. The only generated all sorts of farcical intrigue; it also gave rise toyoung Otto von Bismarck, a delegate to the Diet of the reconsti­ other bizarre behavior, ranging from debates over what was trulytuted German Confederation, quickly dissociated himself from German through petty political infighting among the studentthe colors and their symbolic meaning at the parliament of the associations all the way to arguments over the rights of sovereignErfurt Union in 1850. Black-Red-Gold, he said, had never been the states—none of which produced anything positive in the end. Inimperial colors; they were symbols of rebellion and the barricade. his well-researched study titled Die deutschen Farben (1955), PaulReferring to himself in his m e m o i r s Gedanken und Erinnerungen,^^ Wentzcke devoted more than sixty pages to the debates that ragedBismarck cited an assonant poem written in March 1848 as Pruss­ o v e r the question of the n e w flag from the end of the nineteenth toian troops were withdrawing from Berlin: the begirming of the twentieth century. His discussion illuminates the age-old dichotomy between symbol and reality and indicates Those were the Prussians, their colors black and white. the depth of ill-feeling that forms part of the genealogy of the Ger­ Their flag streaming before them once again. m a n flag. Hitler w a n t e d his n e w swastika flag to lead the nation As the king's loyal men lay down their lives for him. away from the discord of party politics and regional interests as For their king, each one cheering. they related to the question of the flag and to stand as an affirma­ As we watched them carry their dead away tion of the unity of the German fatherland. Without so much as a whimper, A shout pierced their loyal hearts. In 1870 Chancellor Bismarck put an end to the farce with a You are Prussians no longer—you are Germans now. touch of sarcasm: \"At any other time color combinations wouldn't make any difference to me. I wouldn't care if it was green, yellow Black-Red-Gold is ablaze in the sunlight. a n d purple, or the flag of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. But the Prussian The desecrated imperial eagle falls; soldier simply wants no part of the Black, Red, and Gold.\" This is the end of your glorious history, HohenzoUems, This is where a king fell, though not in battle. After accepting the Bavarian king Ludwig II's letter offering We take no pleasure him the imperial crown, the Prussian king Wilhelm I was In watching a falling star acknowledged as German Emperor in a ceremony that took place You'll regret what you did. Prince [Bismarck], in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of Versailles on 18 January None there are who are more loyal than Prussians.'^ 1871. Henceforth, the Black-White-Red of the North German Con­ federation w o u l d be the national flag. A reenactment of the cere­ On 9 December 1866 Otto von Bismarck issued the following mony formed the dramatic high point of the second part of Ernstdecree: \"The merchant ships of all Confederation members shall Wendt's silent m o v i e Bismarck (1926)—the quintessential G e r m a nfly the s a m e black-red-white flag.\" N o t until the following y e a r film. The constitution that was ratified that same year madedid he offer an explanation for the choice of colors—a choice that Black-White-Red the official colors of the war ensign and the mer­he had made entirely on his own: \"When we became Prussians, we chant flag, so that \"the black-white-red tricolor n o w flew over theadopted the Black and White; the present Black-White-Red was fortresses of Paris and the palace of Versailles.\"''' This was thethe result of combining the colors of Prussia with the White-Red of atmosphere in which the flag was created. Given the popular

10 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 11m o o d at the time, the flag, b e c a u s e of its ideological claims, h a d of the unrestrained violence of the Revolution of 1848; and—\"become the symbol of political unity and strength for thirty mil­ which was of central importance in the rise of fascism—Black-lion Germans: the black-white-red flag is a permanent fixture Red-Gold became the symbol of the \"humiliation of Versailles.\"among the nations of the world, and it would be pointless, harm­ Because the flag that replaced the Black-White-Red of Greater Ger­ful, and criminal to squander the reserves of respect and patrio­ many was viewed as a symbol of 1848-style democracy, it came totism that it has built up,\" wrote Gustav Freytag in a letter from the represent a \"betrayal of the German people,\" in the same sense asfront. The flag w a s not only a s u p p o r t for soldiers in uncertain German nationalists viewed the Treaty of Versailles. For them, thetimes; it was also ideally suited for subjugating the individual to flag of the W e i m a r republic b e c a m e an onmipresent a g g r a v a t i o nits symbolic power. This alliance of emotions would unite acade­ and a constant goad to erase Germany's \"shame.\" They investedmics and workers, soldiers and housewives. all their enthusiasm and affinity for the irrational in one symbol alone. \"And from time immemorial men have fought with greater After millions of soldiers had died fighting under the Black- ferocity over symbols than over genuine interests. The decision ofWhite-Red in the First World War and after the unification of Ger­ the National Assembly gave the opposition on the right a symbolm a n y u n d e r the s a m e flag—\"which is still r e g a r d e d as a g r e a t that in future would arouse all its demonic instincts.\"^*national treasure\" (MP Dr. Kahl)—the constitutional committee,following months of tedious deliberation, decided in a roll call T h e debate o v e r the flag in the W e i m a r republic h a d symbolicvote on 4 June 1919 to adopt the Black, Red, and Gold. The deci­ significance. It reflected the strife that existed within the fledglingsion was taken in part to ward off the \"threat\" posed by the Inde­ democracy. As history has taught us, the disputes over thependent Socialists' attempt to force the adoption of \"their red national colors and their symbolic meaning was an intermezzoSoviet flag.\" The aversion to the color red was not motivated that ended tragically. Hitler used the debate between the propo­solely by ideology; it had an irrational component as well. At any nents of the Black-White-Red and the supporters of the black-red-rate, the colors Black, Red, and Gold gave rise to a symbiotic love- g o l d flag to incite the m a s s e s that w o u l d s o o n rally a r o u n d him.hate relationship that created the conditions in which the defeatedparties could cultivate the idea of taking revenge. The Flag Pledge The Social Democratic Interior Minister Eduard David called We young people will carry the flag to the front as the youngthe \"tricolor\" the \"symbol of a sense of national community\" and prepare to attack.recommended \"maintaining Greater German unity as a lofty idealand future goal.\" Indignation at the fact \"that our Austrian broth­ May it arise and ascend and shoot like a flame into the sky Iers have been blocked from achieving self-determination and pro­ YJe've sworn an oath to the flag for ever and for all time to cornelhibited from becoming part of the Motherland has burned this Damned he he who desecrates the flag!ideal into the soul of every man who considers himself a Ger­ The flag is our faith in God and people and country!man.\" David expressed the hope that \"the anguish will give birth Rob us of life and limb, if rob us you must, but don't take our flag.to the strength needed to achieve this new, revived ideal of We cherish the flag as dearly as we do our mothers.Greater Germany.\" \"May the black-red-gold banner fly in front of For the flag is our tomorrow, our honor, and our courage.us in all these endeavors.\"'^ In a little less than twenty years Hitlerwould realize the dream of a Greater Germany, but in a form very Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, 1935different from that envisioned by David. W h e n soldiers s w o r e the oath of allegiance to the flag, the flag Under the Weimar republic the old new colors met with dis­ attained the status of a sacred shrine. The flag pledge a s s u m e d theapproval, especially from right-wing groups such as the veterans' function of a religious rite sanctioned by a priest. Enticed by theorganization called the Stahlhelm. They felt that the colors were \"magic implicit in the pledge\" (Peter Dade), untold millions ofa concession to the Social Democrats from whose ranks Reich soldiers have marched to their death throughout history. In mer­President Ebert had come. In the eyes of the right, the Black, Red, c e n a r y armies the flag pledge w a s rendered to the c o m m a n d e r inand Gold stood for a defenseless democracy. They were the colors

12 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 13chief as a symbolic seal on a hireling's contract. The custom of captured an enemy standard had pernussion to use his heroictouching the flag while rendering a pledge did not come into prac­ deed as proof of his martial prowess. It was drummed into thetice until the seventeenth century. head of every member of the Hitler Youth during encampments and field exercises that the loss of even a pennant produced the The question of rendering an o a t h of allegiance to the state and worst possible stain on one's character. The only song included inthe military has been an issue of controversy in Germany for cen­ the official publication Pimpf im Dienst—required reading for theturies. In 1834 the members of the German Confederation agreed German Jungvolk [the group between the ages of ten and fourteenthat the military should not be forced also to swear an oath to the in the Hitler Youth—TransL]—was dedicated to the flag:constitution. The Reich Constitution of 1848, however, did requirethat an oath to the constitution become part of the flag pledge. Let the flags wave far and wide, ^Then after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) the flag pledge we're going over to the attack,became strictly an oath of loyalty to the Emperor as Supreme War true to the mercenary way.Lord. Following World War II the political component was watereddown and the flag pledge divided into a military loyalty oath and Let those desperadoesa specially devised pledge of allegiance to the constitution. lead the charge, we'll follow in close order formation.^\" After the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, theNazis enacted a law on 20 August 1934 transforming the flag The flag as the imperative! Songs sung together under the flagpledge into an oath of personal loyalty to the Führer: \"I swear heightened the sense of fellowship. Psychologists teach us howbefore God this sacred oath, that I will yield unconditional obedi­ e a s y it is to fill an emotional v a c u u m b y forming a powerful affec­ence to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, tive bond with a leadership figure or a fetish (flag). Refusing tothe Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and, as a brave identify with the Weimar republic as their country, many peoplesoldier, will be ready at any time to lay down m y life for this felt a similar void within themselves—until Hitler offered them aoath.\"^' In contrast to the military, t h e SS swore an oath of fealty to new way of bonding—his way. After relinquishing his individu­the \"Führer and Chancellor of the Reich,\" not to the \"Führer of the ality, the Nazi Party member was vulnerable to every suggestionGerman Reich and people.\" put forward by the person \"who robbed him of his conscious per­ sonality\" (Sigmund Freud). The wearing of the national emblem (the Eagle and theSwastika) on their Wehrmacht tunics obliged ordinary soldiers to The process of integrating an individual such as the youngpledge life and limb to the Führer. The SS—the men with the Quex into the Hitler movement (which shared every attribute ofDeath's Head insignia on their caps—were a volunteer force Le Bon's \"psychological crowd\") would eventually shape the feel­(before the war) that pledged, if need be, to die for Hitler \"with ings, outlook, and actions of all members of the Hitler Youth, thefaith in their hearts.\" \"We march for Hitler through night and B D M (Bund Deutscher Mädel or L e a g u e of G e r m a n Girls), the SA,through need ... Yes, the flag means more than death\" was the and the SS.marching song of the Hitler Youth. Professional soldiers and conscripts in the Bundeswehr today From at least 20 July 1944—^when military officers opted for no longer swear an oath to an individual or an office. Rather, theymoral responsibility in the conflict between their conscience and render a pledge to the state and the people: \"I swear to serve thetheir oath to Hitler—to the present, the flag pledge has been a sub­ Federal Republic of Germany loyally and to bravely defend theject of debate in the German military. rights and freedoms of the German People, so help me God.\" Arti­ cle 12 of the G e r m a n C o n s t i t u t i o n (Grundgesetz) specifically In the Prusso-German armies and most especially in Hitler's includes protection of the flag as a fundamental obligation.army, defending the flag, even to the point of sacrificing one's life,was considered the ultimate duty imposed on a soldier by his oath The oath sworn by soldiers of the former German Democraticof loyalty. Surrendering the flag was tantamount to losing one's Republic's Nationale Volksarmee w a s similar to that of the Bundeswehr:honor and brought shame upon the entire regiment. When a unit \"1 s w e a r to serve the G e r m a n Democratic Republic, m y Father­lost its standard, it lost its soul. On the other hand, a soldier w h o . land, loyally at all times and at the conunand of the Workers' and

14 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 15 Peasants' Government to defend it against all enemies. Should I m e a n s \"great g o o d luck\"; in Greece it w a s called hemera a n d w a s ever violate this m y solemn pledge to the flag, m a y I suffer theharsh punishment provided by the laws of our Republic and be the symbol of the sun.s p u m e d by the working class.\"^^ The swastika has taken on a number of meanings over time: The Swastika Flag Thor's hammer, a sun wheel, a wolf trap, a mill wheel. It has been depicted as crossed lightning bolts, the four \"Fs\" of Turnvater The entry of the flags and standards. Down below, starting at the far [father of gymnastics] Jahn (frisch = lively, fromm = devout, fröh­ end of the Sportpalast, the standards representing Berlin, followed by lich = cheerful, frei = free), and as a fertility sign. In the twentieth hundreds of Party flags from Berlin, are moving forward. Little by lit­ century Kerensky's provisional government in Russia used the tle the flags are coming up out of the basement vault of the Sport­ swastika on its bank notes as a symbol of independence. palast. To the sound of \"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles\" the flags are borne through the immense hall. The flags are coming closer Wilhelm Reich in his Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus (Mass and closer, the lead flag has just reached the gallery. At the back of the Psychology of Fascism, 1971) added yet another facet to the sym­ gigantic hall a section has been left unoccupied for the march-past of bolism of the swastika: the swastika as a copulating couple. In his the flags. The four standards are just beginning to move up to the interpretation of the swastika as a sexual symbol, Reich relied on podium. The flags are moving to the rear, the end section of the hall. the representation of a swastika discovered by Bilman and Pegerot Flag after flag keeps coming up out of the basement vault. Every side dating back to Indo-Germanic times and containing the following corridor is packed with bright red swastika flags. The audience inscription: \"Hail earth, mother of man. Grow great in the embrace throughout the entire Sportpalast has stood up and, with arm raised of God, fruitful to nourish mankind.\" Fertility was represented as in the Hitler salute, has joined in the singing of the national anthem. the sexual act of Mother-Earth and God-Father. Interviews with people of various backgrounds and of either sex showed \"that very Joseph Goebbels^^ few people fail to recognize the meaning of the swastika.\" Wilhelm Reich concluded that \"this symbol depicting two interlocked per­T h e s w a s t i k a that a d o r n e d the flags of the \" m a s t e r r a c e \" a n d sons acts as a powerful stimulus on deep layers of the organism, awould ultimately terrorize the world is a symbol enveloped in stimulus that proves to be that much more powerful, the more dis­mystery. Its earliest recorded use dates back to the Indus civiliza­ satisfied, the m o r e burning with sexual desire, a person is.\"^^tion around 2500 B.C. Apparently persuaded by what he consid­ered to be the symbolic power of the swastika, the Hindu monk In the context of propaganda, in which the Nazi PartyAgehananda Bharatis openly expressed his adnuration for Hitler informed the swastika with the symbolism of honor and loyalty,in a \"forum\" held at the 1986 Frankfurt Book Fair, which had cho­ the symbol was also used to make allowances for \"the defensivesen India as its theme that year. Not thinking of the inhumanity strivings of the moralistic ego,\" making it correspondingly easierthat the concept of the master race symbolized to nations forced to for people to accept. Reich did not, however, feel that this aspectlive under colonial rule, he claimed that the mass of India's people of the swastika's effect on unconscious emotionality accountedheld views that were very different from those shared by the west­ for the success of Hitler's mass propaganda; it was \"merely\" aernized Indian elite. Hitler, he said, was an \"avatar,\" a deity that \"powerful aid.\"had descended to the earth in incarnate form. The swastika, theIndian symbol of salvation, steeped in tradition, had sanctified his The völkisch chauvinist Guido v o n List in his book Die Bilder­mythic mission.^^ schrift der Ario-Germanen (The Characters of the A r y o - G e r m a n s , 1910)^^ was one of the first to endow the swastika with an ideology T h e w o r d swastika is derived from the Sanskrit svastika, m e a n ­ and prepare the way for its eventual appropriation by racist ideo­ing \" s a l u t a r y sign.\" Wan, the C h i n e s e c h a r a c t e r for s w a s t i k a . logues. Various anti-Semitic organizations and Free Corps units soon used the swastika on their battle standards. The swastika became a symbol of reactionary opinion and a sign of race identity directed against Jews and Gypsies, Marxists and intellectuals, the mentally ill and pacifists—against all the outsiders w h o m Marcel Proust had labeled \"la race maudite.\"

16 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 17In the cinematic portrait of a city titled Eger—eine alte deutsche r e a c h e d r e g a r d i n g the national colors\" the black-white-red flag a n d the swastika flag w e r e to be flown side b y side. The decreeStadt ( E g e r — a n Ancient G e r m a n City, 1938), directed b y Rudolf stated that the traditional symbol represented \"the glorious past of the German Reich,\" while the new flag stood for \"the mightyGutscher, the camera focuses in on swastika motifs in a church rebirth of the G e r m a n nation\": \"Together they e m b o d y the power of the state a n d the inner b o n d s [linking] all the national forces ofdating back to the year 1310 as proof of the claim that Eger [the the German people.\"^^present-day city of Cheb in the Czech Republic—Transl.] had Once before, after having succeeded Friedrich Ebert to the pres­ idency, Hindenburg had taken a similar decision in similar sib­always been a German city and that the time was long overdue for ylline fashion: at the height of the debate over Black-Red-Gold versus Black-White-Red, he enacted a law ordering that the black,its return to the Reich. w h i t e , a n d r e d m e r c h a n t flag be flown n e x t to the \"still valid national colors.\"In his t h o u g h t s on \"our flag—our p r o g r a m \" in his b o o k Mein The haste with which the Reichstag passed a n e w flag l a w on 16KampfHitler wrote in 1925 that he saw in red the social idea of September 1935, just one year after Hindenburg's death, suggests the importance the Nazi regime attached to mobilizing publicthe movement and in the white disk the national component. In opinion under the symbol of the new movement. Reichstag presi­ dent Hermann Goring desired \"a true symbol of the race.\" In histhe black swastika he saw \"the mission of the struggle for the address to the Reichstag he supported the law in the following grandiose terms:victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of Like a magnet. National Socialism attracted to itself whateverthe idea of creative work, which as such always has been and resources of iron and steel the German people had within them­ selves. Similarly, it was our battle standard under which these fight­always will be anti-Semitic.\" Hitler himself designed the future ers were assembled, under which they struggled, fought, and, in many cases, died. We must not forget that at decisive moments itnational flag as far back as 1919. Two years later he also was this battle standard that time and again made the weak strong. We must not forget that so long as our Führer held our battle stan­designed the Party standard. As a \"special symbol of victory\" he dard—the swastika [flag] with its glorious ancient colors—in his grip, he also held the destiny of the German people in his hands.included it \"among the symbols and battle signs of the National The swastika has become a sacred symbol for us—the symbol around which all our hopes and dreams revolve, under which weSocialist struggle.\" have endured suffermg, under which we have fought, sacrificed, and ultimately, for the benefit of the German people, triumphed.The Nazis appropriated the black, white, and red colors fromthe former Imperial flag in order to establish a link with Ger­many's great past and, especially in the early years of the Nazimovement, to win over nationalist groups who considered theBlack-Red-Gold nothing but a thorn in their side. Manfred vonKillinger stressed this idea of continuity in Männer und Mächte:Die SA in Wort und Bild (Men a n d Powers: the S A in W o r d a n d Pic­ture, 1933): \"The swastika flag and the war flag were created as aresult of [the decision] to continue the use of black and red, whichis doubtless the most beautiful color combination ever created.\"^''Hitler's new symbol of the Nazi movement was not to escapethe shadows of the past. Although the black, white, and red flagunder which he had fought in the war—\"these uniquely beautifulcolors, in their fresh, youthful combination\"—was \"sacred andbeloved\" to him, he was nevertheless adamantly opposed to let­ting it stand \"as a symbol for the struggle for the future.\" But so The day before, on 15 September 1935, Hitler issued an order m a k i n g the swastika flag G e r m a n y ' s official national flag. W h e nlong as the venerable old Reich President Paul von Hindenburg he presented the armed forces with their new battle standard, the war ensign, he did not neglect to use the Iron Cross insignia on thecontinued as the living legend personifying the Battle of Tannen­ swastika flag as an occasion to hark back to the traditions of the World War I Imperial Army:berg, the new regime delayed adoption of the swastika banner asthe country's national flag. Thus, on 10 March 1933, the Day ofNational M o u r n i n g , g o v e r n m e n t offices flew only flags with theblack, white, and red colors of Prussia. May the Swastika be a symbol for you of the unity and purity of the . nation, a symbol of the National Socialist world-view (Weltanschau- -jNJust two days later, however, Hindenburg relented and issued ung), a token of the freedom and strength of the Reich. ,1 want the t-Aa decree on the flag ordering that \"until a final settlement is

18 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbohc Value of Flags and Standards 19 Iron Cross to stand as a renunder to you of the matchless tradition m o v e m e n t : the optical o p i u m of the people, forests of flags as a of the former Imperial Army, of the virtues it embodied, of the psychological field of force. example it set for you. You are under an obligation to the black- white-red colors of the Reich to perform your duty loyally while The fluttering flag h a d , of course, already been e m p l o y e d ear­ you live and while you die. lier as a symbol of change and freedom, of the resolve to achieve victory. The Nazis exploited it for their own purposes: Until the beginning of the v^ar in 1939, the old war ensign of the Bismarck era w a s officially perrrütted to b e flown once a y e a r o n We are the army of the Swastika, the anniversary of the 1916 Battle of Jutland, since it had report­ Raise the red banners high. edly stood up so magnificently in this naval battle against the For the German worker British. Though there was no victor in this senseless and destruc­ The way to freedom we shall pave. tive encounter between the British and German fleets, many sailors were killed in action. A painting of a sinking cruiser, tifled The Nazis made skillful use of the emotional content of left-wing \"Skagerrak,\" was the focal point of the 1937 Berlin Art Exhibition. revolutionary songs to create their own melodies for the march It s h o w e d a sailor p r o u d l y holding u p the flag: \"The flag m e a n s \"into eternity\"—with different lyrics, of course. more than death\"—the Nazis wanted all Germans to inscribe this slogan on their hearts. Roland Barthes in his book Mythologies presented the following graphic e x a m p l e of the symbolic significance of the national flag The swastika that Hitler called \"a token of freedom\" would as an illustration of his theory of semiology: \"I a m at the barber's, s o o n b e c o m e a s y m b o l of s l a v e r y for all E u r o p e . T h e flag w a s a n d a c o p y o f Paris-Match is h a n d e d to m e . O n the cover, a y o u n g o m n i p r e s e n t in the T h i r d R e i c h — o n the streets, flying f r o m Black in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, prob­ houses, in d o c u m e n t a r i e s a n d newsreels. T h e flag h a d , as it w e r e , ably fixed on a fold of the tricolor. All of this is the m e a n i n g of the gotten into the blood of the Germans. picture. But whether naively or not, I see very well what it signi­ fies to me: that F r a n c e is a great E m p i r e , that all her sons, without T h e swastika flag w a s m e a n t to c o m m u n i c a t e all the virtues regard to color, faithfully serve under her flag, a n d that there is no a n d sjmibolic values o f the N a z i m o v e m e n t . T h e blood-red flag better answer to the opponents of an alleged coloniahsm than the with the mystical swastika emblazoned on a pure white circle was zeal shown by this Black in serving his so-called oppressors.\"^' like no other with regard to its manifold symbolic meanings. It represented all the amorphous ideas and second-rate virtues in The Black African's identification with the tricolor in this visual the N a z i catechism: the Führer, the national c o m m u n i t y (Volksge- portrayal was meant to suggest an identification, obvious even to meinschafl), the fatherland, the nation; fealty, obedience, a readi­ the simplest mind, with the ideology it symbolized. Nazi myth- ness to make sacrifices; race, faith, hope, victory. making worked in a similar fashion—albeit with one fundamental difference. Whereas the tricolor is apparently an unknown nation­ T h e flag w a s also a sign of the N a z i ideology's irreconcilable alist quantity to the African, a sacred myth lacking \"flesh and hatreds: anti-Semitism, anti-communism, anti-clericalism, and blood,\" to the a v e r a g e N a z i P a r t y m e m b e r the swastika flag w a s later, as the regime prepared for war, its anti-plutocratic cam­ equated directly with the Führer w h o was, as it were, present in paign. T h e swastika flag reflected m a n y of the irrational beliefs every fold. The myth of the nation was not an abstraction; it was that were foisted on millions of Germans through the multipher- palpably present in words and in pictures. It was not beyond the effect of the weekly newsreels and Party congress films. m a s s e s ' comprehension. The flag w a s Hitler's ubiquitous deputy.' Leni Riefenstahl u s e d the flag as an emotional a n d sentimental Identifying with the flag w a s s y n o n y m o u s to identifying with the prop with which to orchestrate a dizzying symphony of flags Führer. Nazi p r o p a g a n d a w a s largely effective because it suc­ which disseminated the Nazi world-view in staged aesthetic ceeded in identifying the masses with the Hitler myth. And it was e v e n t s that indicated the \"correct\" w a y to r e g a r d art. In films s u c h to Leni Riefenstahl that Nazi propaganda owed a debt of gratitude as Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith, 1933) and Triumph des Willens for developing a workable aesthetic formula to elevate the mun­ (Triumph of the Will, 1934), she transformed the flag into a fetish. dane into an apotheosis of the nation. Riefenstahl liked to s h o w the flag blowing in the wind, as a sign of

20 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 21 D u r i n g the m a r c h - p a s t of the flags, a n y o n e attending a rally \"Look at this barmer ... It is woven from the same thread as m a d eh a d to rise from his seat a n d salute, since flags w e r e v i e w e d as the doublet of the last rider w h o follows it; and one day it will fallproxies for the Führer. Even when a squad of troopers marched apart and turn to dust before the wind in the same fashion! But thed o w n the street c a r r y i n g a single flag, passers-by w e r e obliged to German folk has triumphed under it in a thousand baffles, andh o n o r it b y giving the N a z i salute. \"The flag arrives: take off y o u r therefore only a cur can pluck it to pieces, only a fool try to patchhat! We will be true till death to that!\" was a verse in a ballad sung it, instead of shedding his blood for it and keeping every shred oflong before by Detlev von Liliencron. At the beginning and end of it'holy!\"^'school holidays, students and teachers had to stand in line forinspection in the schoolyard as the flag w a s being raised a n d the The N a z i s b o r r o w e d the idea of the blood flag from the histor­Horst Wessel song sung. Starting at an early age, young people ical past. The concept dated back to the days of the Hohenstaufenw e r e forced to internalize the values represented b y the flag: dynasty. According to the account in the Song of the Nibelungs, the Burgundians set out from the Rhine along ancient military At the beginning of school following the end of vacation and at the roads and marched south by way of the Danube under a \"blood end of the term before the begiiming of the school holiday, the flag banner.\"''* A s the flag of the \"holy empire,\" they b o r e it in the v a n must be honored in front of the entire student body, by in the first of the pennants carried by individual knights. The \"fiery banner\" case raising and in the second lowering the Reich flags while one m a d e of red silk w a s a shared symbol valid for all.^^ one verse from \"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles\" and one from the Horst Wessel song are sung.*' What was generally referred to as a blood banner was the (usu­ ally) unembellished red flag that until 1806 symbolized the seal onThe ritual presentation of the ideas associated with the swastika an enfeoffment of imperial land that was tied to a grant of theflag w a s designed to p r o m o t e \"the training of y o u t h for service to right to exercise \"high justice\" [called Blutbann or \"blood justice\"the nation a n d state in the spirit of National Socialism.\" The flag in German, i.e., criminal justice involving capital punishment ordeprived people of their individuality and made them into the mutilation—Transl.]. The blood flag w a s thus an i m p o r t a n t sym­object of another's will. Before the introduction of the Youth Ser­ bol in public law. Having been granted the right to exercise highvice Ordinance, schools with a 90 percent membership rate in the justice, the recipient of a fief w a s pledged under ancient GermanicJungvolk, the Hitler Youth or the corresponding girls' o r g a n i z a ­ law to render unswerving fealty to the lord from whom \"justice\"tions, received a Hitler Youth flag.^^ was held and to perform unlimited military service on his behalf. Originally, kings alone had the privilege of granting justice. It was ^ The Blood Flag not until the expansion of the territorial supremacy of the state in the thirteenth century that this right was also granted to princes When it comes to marching many do not know a n d dukes directly subject to the e m p e r o r {reichsunmittelbar) in That their enemy is marching at the head. their capacity as lords holding lordship over the land, who passed The voice that gives them their orders sentence of d e a t h in the n a m e of the king.^* Is their enemy's voice and The man who speaks of the enemy The right to exercise high justice was later granted as a benefice Is the enemy himself to the large, free imperial cities as well, at the same time as it was an expression of the juridical authority reserved exclusively for Bertolt Brecht (German War Primer 1936-1938)32 feudal lords. Since the High Middle Ages, the secular \"advocates\" {Vögte), or protectors of churches a n d monasteries, also functionedThe association of the flag with blood can create a powerful s y m ­ as feudal lords, since ecclesiastics with fiefs w e r e precluded frombol. E r n e s t , Duke of B a v a r i a in F r i e d r i c h Hebbel's p l a y Agnes performing secular judicial duties that involved killing or theBernauer creates just such a symbol when, in a thundering m o n o ­ d e a t h sentence {\"ecclesia non sitit sanguinem\").logue, he invokes not the flag of peace, but the banner of war: The Nazis invested the concept of the \"blood flag\" with a decidedly emotional coloration. \"Blood flag\" w a s their n a m e for the swastika flag that h a d allegedly been drenched with the blood

22 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 23of Andreas Bauriedl who had carried it on 9 November 1923 dur­ T h e personal s t a n d a r d w a s a sign of the F ü h r e r ' s physical pres­ing the l e g e n d a r y m a r c h to the Feldherrnhalle, at the time of the ence. Ordinary flags sufficed to demonstrate his merelyHitler Putsch. At the second Nazi Party congress in Weimar on 4 metaphorical omnipresence; they carried the semantic i m a g e of theJuly 1926, Hitler \"bestowed\" the flag of this \"blood witness\" on Führer—to the point of fiction. \"This fiction exists in actualitythe then Reichsführer of the SS, Berchtold. only because it has been invested with a symbolic presence in the form of the Swastika and because the symbol is revered as the Henceforth, the new standards and flags of the NSDAP and its sign of a higher purpose. In this way the actual power of govern­associated organizations would be consecrated by being ceremo­ ment has been duplicated—in the person of the 'Führer' standingniously touched with the blood flag—always in the presence of a at its h e a d a n d in a notional leader w h o fits in neatly with Hitier'ss w o r n witness to the Hitler Putsch. The Feldherrnhalle w a s turned political decisions and the coercive measures at his disposal tointo an altar to the fallen of the movement, where their names enforce them.\"^'were in\mortalized: J u s t in time for the c a m p a i g n in R u s s i a , the M u n i c h - b a s e d We are building the eternal Feldhermhallen of the Reich, F r a n z E h e r Verlag published a book titled Die Fahne ist mehr als der The steps leading into eternity. Tod (The Flag M e a n s M o r e Than Death, 1940), a n d subtitied Das Until the hammers drop from our hands. deutsche Fahnenbuch ( T h e G e r m a n F l a g B o o k ) . T h e first of the Then wall us into the breast of these altars.^^ eleven vignettes dealing with the flag w a s d e v o t e d to Frederick the Great —\"A King Bears the Flag\": The Führer's Personal Standard [Against all odds] a man stays [at his post] on the front line. He's a The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the member of the Prince Henry Regiment and is clutching the regi­ great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the mental colors. His eyes seek out the king and speak without talk­ way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. ing: I've held on to the flag you entrusted me with, but I'm at the end of my tether. Frederick bends low over him. Gently but firmly Adolf Hitler^« he wrests the barmer from the man's grip. The standard bearer looks into the face of the kiag, then collapses without making aThe \"Führer's personal standard\" derived from the national ser­ sound. The king sits up straight in his saddle, swings the flag upvice flag a n d w a s used for g o v e r n m e n t offices. It w a s a square over his head, and calls out amidst the tiimult of battle and thecontaining a large swastika of the cotised and upright variety shouts of pain: \"To the flag and for the flag! Those of you who arewithin a golden Wr'eafli a n d displaying golden eagles in the c a n ­ brave soldiers, follow me!\" The soldiers' eyes are riveted on thetons: two Party badges,,a spread eagle in the Art Deco style with king, the regal standard bearerheads pointing to the sinister and grasping a wreath containing aswastika and two Army badges, more Roman-style eagles with A n d as the baffle is in the process of being lost—despite the presenceheads pointing to the dexter and no wreaths. It did not w a v e or of the regal standard bearer—the king, high atop Mühl Mountainflutter, since it w a s m a d e of stiffened linen a n d w a s similar to apanel painting or, more properly, an icon. The standard was an casts one more long glance across the vast field already wrapped ina d a p t a t i o n of the R o m a n vexilla. \"Vexilla regis prodeunt\" m e a n s lit­ the veil of dusk. He moimts his horse. Beaten but tinbowed, heerally, \"The king's banners go in front,\" i.e., show the way. Since turns to his hussars and speaks: \"Messieurs, we've held on to thethe s e c o n d half of the first millennium, this p h r a s e has been the flag. Brave is he who stands the test, and victory goes only to thetitle of a hymn to the Holy Cross written by the most famous Latin brave. There it is: With the flag and for the flag.\"'\"'poet in Merovingian Gaul, Venantius Fortunatus. Until 1955, itw a s regularly sung in Good Friday processions; it lives on uni­ Predictably, the last contribution is titled: \"A Nation Bears theversally in the recitation of the Divine Office. Flag.\" Here the analogy to Hitler and the reversals of fortune in war is forced upon the reader while at the same time communi­ cating the one certainty that had been drummed into every schoolboy's head: from every defeat Frederick ultimately emerged

24 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 25the victor. The flag w a s u s e d as a metaphorical instrument to gen­ w a s the first to develop in a systematic fashion c a m e as he strodeerate confidence of victory. down a broad avenue between hundreds of thousands to honor the dead on the Königsplatz in Munich or the grounds of the \"The Flag Means More than Death\" Nuremberg Party congress. In scenes such as these out of a Good Friday celebration—scenes, as was said of Richard Wagner's Death is always bitter and one only accepts it courageously and with­ music, in which magnificence was used to sell death—Hitler's out protest when one goes to die for a purpose that is worth giving idea of aesthetic politics matches the concept.\"*^ one's life for. Beyond the grave, the fallen continued to live in the commu­ Joseph Goebbels nity, which availed itself of any opportunity solemnly to invoke their martyrdom. The three martyrs who comprised the 1933 NaziQuex the Hitler Youth, Hans Westmar, and Erich Lohner the Hitler triumvirate of death were all young heroes, the myths surround­Youth in SA-Mann Brand a r e the first deaths p o r t r a y e d in N a z i ing them well suited to the production of uniquely captivatingfilms after Hitler a s s u m e d p o w e r (in the films they w e r e killed propaganda. Unvanquished until death, they were transfiguredbefore 1933) that were used to justify the myth of dying for Führer into supernatural beings and lived on in the medium of film:a n d flag. \"It is the first death,\" w r o t e Elias Canetti, \"which infects \"Only those pure souls enter Hitler's heaven that are, so to speak,everyone with the feeling of being threatened. It is impossible to too p u r e to r e m a i n o n this e a r t h for long,\"^^ w r o t e Saul F r i e d ­o v e r r a t e the p a r t played b y the first d e a d m a n in the kindling of länder. Thus, he said, the young doomed hero was surrounded bywars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they a nimbus of complex emotions: \"He is the bearer of either one ofm u s t p r o c u r e or invent a first victim.... Nothing matters except his two banners, one proclaiming an implicit religious tradition, thedeath; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for other that of a cult of primitive a n d archaic values,\" a n d he fightsthis. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: for all the values that his flag symbolizes.his membership of the group to which one belongs oneself ...everyone else who feels the same threat attaches himself to the In Hitler's w a r films the flag served as a symbolic relief fromgroup. Its spirit changes into that of a w a r pack.\"^^ the landscape of war and, more rarely, as a shroud. Contempo­ raries folded this paradox into the seemingly cynical observation The ritual that the Nazis practiced with the movement's dead that \"after a few marvelous words by Baldur von Schirach [headw a s closely tied to the ritual of the flag. Hitler's annual consecra­ of the Nazi youth movement—Transl.], nothing seems more alivetion of the flag w a s the high point of every Party Day. The cere­ in Germany than death.\"** The heroic German soul would cele­mony, which Leni Riefenstahl extolled in her films Sieg des Glaubens brate its apocalyptic triumph in Stalingrad.a n d Triumph des Willens, w a s always accompanied by the singing ofthe Horst Wessel song: ... One for all and all for one: Bondage has an end! Hold high the banner! Close the ranks hard serried! Let wave, let wave, whatever can. The Storm Troops march with cabn and steady pace. Standard and banner wave! Comrades killed by Red Front and Reaction are buried. Here will we purpose, man for man. But in spirit keep their place. To grace a hero's grave. Advance, ye brave ranks, hardily— In his biography of Hitler, Joachim C. Fest emphasizes Hitler's Your banners wave on high;\"talents as stage manager,\" which reached their climax when the We'll gain freedom's victory.movement's celebrations of death created a mood of hypnotic Or freedom's death we'll die!fascination among the masses: \"His pessimistic temperamenttirelessly [derived] new lighting effects from the ceremony of Ernst Moritz Amdt, 1813death, and the real high points of the artistic demagoguery that he The pre-Nazi U-boat film Morgenrot (Dawn, 1 9 3 2 / 3 3 ) , w h i c h was directed by Gustav Ucicky and premiered just after the Nazis

26 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 27came to power, was dedicated to the six thousand sailors who This story, related by cameraman turned director Piel Jutzi,went down to the bottom in their 199 steel coffins: \"We Germans took place during the filming of one of the most important motiondon't know much about living, but in death, yes in death, we're pictures to b e set in a w o r k i n g class milieu. Mutter Krausens Fahrtfantastic,\" the U-boat commander said in glowing heroic terms. ins Glück (Mother Krause's J o u r n e y to Happiness, 1929) in w h i c hIllustrierter Film-Kurier e n d e d its review of Morgenrot in the fol­ Jutzi used extracts from his d o c u m e n t a r y 100,000 unter roten Fah­lowing inflated terms: \"Liers, the major's elderly wife, embraces nen ( 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 u n d e r R e d F l a g s , 1 9 2 9 ) . T h e d e m o n s t r a t i o n h eher last son knowing he will go to sea again and knowing too that referred to is one of the most impressive scenes in the film. It is nothe cannot help being the person he is. Losses have to be borne difficult to find additional e x a m p l e s of the (red) flag in leftist films.a n d — e v e n fifty years of night can't blind a German!—again they In Brüder (Brothers), a Social D e m o c r a t i c film that deals with aare off to fight England, the naval ensign fluttering proudly in the strike b y H a m b u r g d o c k w o r k e r s , the flag forms part of the finalsea breeze, for G e r m a n y m u s t live. E v e n if w e m u s t die!\"*^ apotheosis, appearing to the incarcerated workers through prison walls. Art and kitsch, simple straightforward symbolism and A n d on 19 M a y 1933, Goebbels had this to say: \"In those days I phony emotionalism, were not far removed from each other inalso tried to clarify the c o n c e p t of the general line (Tendenz), rais­ scenes such as these.ing objections to the idea that right thinking alone rather than abil­ity should be the decisive factor. We all understood that the word To be sure, it is as wrong here as it is in other instances to'art' (Kunst) comes from the word 'can' (können), that not every­ speak in pejorative terms about the superficial parallels betweenone can do what he wants to do. The general line must be viewed Nazi symbols and those used by the labor movement. Evenin this context insofar as it is not directly related to presenting the when we quantify the use of identical symbols or compare theevents of the day, that is, as I have said elsewhere, w e don't want results with parallels in other areas, we still find that the mostto see our Storm Troopers marching across the screen or the stage. important sources of the symbols used by the Nazis were mili­Their job is to march in the streets. This is but one means of giving tary and nationalist conservative groups. Of course, the Nazisexpression to political life, and this form of expression will be also intentionally borrowed symbolic and iconographic objectsused when it is artistically imperative to do so or, alternatively, used by the labor movement—which art historians have shownwhen one cannot think of anything better. For as everyone knows, us even included those representing labor itself and \"Laborthis is the easy w a y out. Lacking greater skill, people feel obliged Day\"—^just as they did in their n u m e r o u s contrafacta, in w h i c hto use National Socialist symbols to demonstrate the strength of they retained the melody of labor songs but replaced the texttheir convictions.\" with completely new words. The reason for this was not simply that these things were relatively public, susceptible to corrup­ The Red Flag and the Labor Movement— tion or reinterpretation (which prompted Hanns Eisler's fruitful Excursus on the Indispensability of Symbols but by no means convincing attempts to invent an incorruptible musical language). There was another equally important reason. Lift our flags into the wind; In order to be politically successful and maintain the goodwill of Bright as the blazing sun their financial backers in big business, the Nazis had to neutral­ They bear witness to our faith in ize the political power of important segments of the working THE GOODNESS OF hAANKIND! class or win them over to their side. It was not enough to terror­ ize the labor m o v e m e n t or, after 1933, to crush it. Rather, they Song of the Young Socialist Workers in the early 1920s mobilized their entire ideological apparatus—from the dema­ gogic linkage of crucial concepts, as, for example, in \"National\"We filmed a demonstration. The color red came out black in the Socialist G e r m a n Workers' Party,\" to the exploitation of signs a n dfilm. It would have been better to use green flags to get the right s y m b o l s , including the flag.shade for red. Our demonstrators—real proletarians from Wedding[a working class district in Berlin—Transl.]—refused to march Flags clearly played a significant role in the history of the laborimder green flags. So we had to come up with a different solution.\"^ movement. But how did a piece of colored cloth acquire such

28 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 29importance? Scholarly research evaded this question for quite supreme confidence with which workers have dealt with thesome time after 1945. The German public also dissociated itself legacy of the national culture and the culture of the ruling class.from the issue by choosing, as it were, to repress it. The result, asso often in the past, was that they drew upon conservative myths Viewed from the perspective of political revolution, the earlyor mystical and irrational explanations. Today, however, there are history of the red flag provides sporadic e x a m p l e s of its a p p e a r ­signs of an attempt to arrive at an understanding of the issue that ance d u r i n g p e a s a n t uprisings. The red flag led the w a y to vic­goes beyond mere ideological criticism. tory for the bourgeoisie during the French Revolution of 1789. And the Social Democrat Friedrich Wendel*^ attempted to trace Historical symbol research and social historical analyses of the red flag directly back to G e r m a n i c a n d early medieval s y m ­symbols can bring us closer to an understanding of that need for bols of communal ownership. At the court of Charlemagne thesjnnbols which Robert Michels long ago perceived in the labor flag was considered \"the sacred symbol of suzerainty\" andmovement.*'' Because of their \"sensory expressivity and emotive henceforth became a symbol which the emperor used when hequality,\" hardly anyone can deny the \"significance and influence granted the right to exercise \"high justice\" and pronounce sen­of symbolic forms of communication\" or the constant reemer- tence of d e a t h (Blutbann). A c c o r d i n g to Wendel's interpretationgence of the archetypal symbolic imagery to which Ernst Bloch (more programmatic than analytical), it represented the \"affir­drew our attention when he used the example of the dance around mation of a social order that was founded on a free people free tothe liberty tree on the ruins of the Bastille. work in its own behalf.\" Today it is chiefly advertising and the omnipresence of its So far as w e are concerned, all this can remain in the murkyessentially frivolous but highly developed imagery that are con­ past. In 1848 the red flag became an identification sign and atinual reminders of the effect of iconographic symbolism. symbol that provoked protest in both France and Germany at theStrangely, postmodern trendsetters incorporate these empty man­ same time. Henceforth, it became the symbol of the \"Red Repub­nerist symbols into their Rococo-like culture. lic,\" of the socialist and communist movement. Prior to that time, around 1830, it had appeared only sporadically—perhaps more There is in all human beings a considerable \"number of affec­ by chance—during a riot of textile workers in Aachen and thetive factors that go to make up experience.\" In the history of the revolt of the Silesian weavers in 1844. In the summer of 1848labor movement, as in every other area of political life, \"signs, w o r k e r s b r o u g h t out the red flag during d e m o n s t r a t i o n s , on bar­symbols, and rituals play an important part in structuring politi­ ricades, at political parades, etc., to set it apart from and competecal experience, especially in establishing collective identities.\" with the Black-Red-Gold of the bourgeois revolutionaries: \"Red is now the color of the revolutionary workers' groups.\" Condi­ We must, of course, deal with these things, but we need have tions in France followed a similar pattern after the June Revolu­no fear of abandoning reason in the process. In fact, there is tion of 1848.greater peril if w e close our eyes to these phenomena. \"To refer tothe communicative competence of symbolic imagery in the labor Often—for e x a m p l e , in M a y 1849 in W u p p e r t a l — t h e red flagmovement is not to argue for a 'paradigm shift.'\" It is simply an a p p e a r e d beside the black-red-gold tricolor as a sign of the contin­indication of a way to broaden our perspective. In the past, greater uing rivalry between workers and the bourgeoisie. According toimportance was attached to the subtle meanings in the written an anecdote, Friedrich Engels was supposed to have been respon­and spoken language used in the labor movement. N o w it would sible for making sure at night that there w e r e e n o u g h red flags inseem appropriate to give increased attention to sensory and sym­ Wuppertal for maximum visual effect the next day. Consequently,bolic forms of orientation. the red flag b e c a m e a symbol in the chaotic year 1 8 4 8 that both accompanied protesters and set them apart—over and above any One of the most important symbols in the labor movement is the possible inherent properties of the color:red flag w h i c h a p p e a r e d on everything from the logo of the K F D(Corrununist Party of Germany) newspaper during the Weimar Thus red acquires historical significance only as a result of politicalrepublic to the barmers carried in the strikes of the 1970s. The his­ conflict, of its establishment as the symbolic color of the socialisttory of the red flag is closely tied to the social history of the pasttwo hundred years, and it is also important as an example of the

30 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 31 and communist workers' political movement. Its symbolic meaning r e g a r d , flag symbolism c a n n o t b e v i e w e d in isolation; it m u s t b e does not derive from an emotional association with aggression that, understood within the context of fascist propaganda. like a genetic trait, is inherent in the color itself, as suggested by the symbol theory of Otto Koenig. Rather, the \"aggressive element\" in The aesthetic of the Nazi movement that encompassed all the color red (as in the expressive properties of any color) is the spheres of public c o m m u n i c a t i o n a n d culminated in the films of result of its historical and cultural development.*' Leni Riefenstahl h a d a single objective a n d a single method: the integration and total absorption of the individual into a mighty Confidence in dealing with the outward forms of culture gives collective. This aesthetic depicted the collective, the crowd, in everrise over time to new symbols that suit the needs of the move­ new and rigorous forms of art, shifting and channeling it into aments that use them: movement that was to lead the way out of the narrow confines of bourgeois life toward noble and all-embracing goals aimed at The formulation of a proletarian response to prevailing public opin­ achieving a glorious future. It thus channeled the dreams of power ion called for different forms of sensory orientation and commimi- and revenge harbored by the humiliated German soldiers who cation from those used at political gatherings or discussions in returned from the First World War, realizing that they had been workers' clubs. The red flag was of great importance in the process cheated out of their youth, their health, and their lives. They of developing a public identity. It gave coherence to political acquired a sense of security in a movement in which they felt demonstrations and laid out limits with regard to other goals and themselves to be part of a rising tide that gave new meaning, new strategies. To quote Georg Simmel, it acted as both a \"cause and direction, new incentives to men who were living in the past, fix­ effect of cohesion.\"™ ated on their wartime experiences. The aesthetic of fascism—with its c h a n n e l i n g of the m a s s e s , its a p o t h e o s e s of m e n a n d flags The flag continued to be a vehicle for nonverbal communica­ marching u p w a r d toward the light—^was not merely a medium, ation during periods when the labor movement was banned, at \"package\" for fascist ideas and the fascist message. Rather, thefunerals, and on other occasions. After 1878 the practice of plant­ medium was the message. It completely subordinated the indi­ing flags in the highest possible and most inaccessible locations vidual to the collective and gave the moviegoer, the radio listener,was one of the most popular rituals in the proscribed labor move­ the reader, and the participant in Nazi mass rallies a sense ofment. During the Nazi era such exercises were also a frequent power, of being one with the collective. In this state of intoxica­occurrence. They were always accompanied by a feeling of pride tion, the meaning or content of ideas was no longer important.that only workers were capable of mustering the strength, dexter­ Meaning was submerged in a state of total self-abnegation. Bio­ity, and imagination to perform such feats. The same w a s true of graphical descriptions of the Nazi leadership show that the strate­the \"tableaux vivants\" w h o s e techniques w e r e especially in keeping gists behind the stage-managing of the masses were themselvesw i t h the \"condition ouvriere.\" unable to remain emotionally detached from the aesthetic. They were part of it, addicted to the masses, just as they would later be The kind of symbolic c o m m u n i c a t i o n that is a sine qua non for increasingly addicted to other drugs.all social processes and movements involving large numbers ofpeople developed in a three-step process—\"accept, select, mod­ It is precisely the surrender of one's individuality that distin­ify.\" E v e n the Lasalle cult fulfilled an \"integrative political func­ guishes the fascist aesthetic from the contemporaneous socialisttion\" in holding the socialist m o v e m e n t t o g e t h e r — a n d , of c o u r s e , aesthetic. For example, if w e compare crowd scenes in Bertoltin serving as a \"transitional ideology\" that led to more mature Brecht's a n d Slatan D u d o w ' s Kuhle Wampe (1933) with N a z i p r o ­political institutions. p a g a n d a films, w e are struck b y the contrast between the s t r e a m ­ lined choreography of Leni Riefenstahl's Party congress films and Initially, symbols are neutral—it is only the part they play in the m o v e m e n t s of w o r k e r s in Kuhle Wampe. In the B r e c h t / D u d o whistory and ideology that changes them into signs of liberation or film, the w o r k e r s almost never m o v e in unison. Instead, they p r o ­of totalitarianism. Democratic states also have their symbols. ceed in a disorderly and confused manner with some individualsWhat was significant and historically catastrophic about the staying behind, some standing still, and others moving againstNazis' debasement of flag symbolism was that it responded tolatent revanchist and totalitarian fantasies and needs. In this

32 The Triumph of Propaganda SymboUc Value of Flags and Standards 33the crowd. The most famous and impressive example of the con­ As Hitler's flags inundated Germany on 30 January 1933 in atrast between the totalitarian and the subversive proletarian aes­ torrent of red, the Nazi bard Leopold von Schenckendorf wrotethetic is the Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei M. Eisenstein's the following piece of doggerel:Battleship Potemkin (1925) with its r h y t h m i c m o n t a g e a n d richlydeveloped choreographic details, where the Tsar's soldiers walk Germany must truly understand;down the staircase in lockstep and begin firing at the crowd of We intend to raise our bannerdemonstrators. Anybody standing in the way of their massed Over German sea and German land.momentum, even a mother holding a child in her arms, is shotdown mercilessly. Flag Miscellany The influence of symbolic and emotive imagery (which is pre­ A march struck up, columns stretching to infinity,sumably always available for the taking) during a particular his­ A nation is marching toward its destiny.torical period is variable. Because of the Germans' experience with Oh how the brilliant rays of suns never before seenfascism, it is not surprising that they have tended to belittle or dis­ Beat down upon our flag! The mysterious forcemiss this kind of imagery throughout the entire postwar period Of a single will welding aspiration, suffering and actiondown to the present day. However, when we realize that the Nazis Together to create a state.did not reinvent these symbols but simply exploited them for theirown purposes, albeit with the utmost cunning and ruthlessness, Gerhard Schumann, 1955^^w e may perhaps arrive at a more impartial approach to flag sym­bolism and become sensitive to the rapid change in flags. In Sep­ Even today flags are linked to the act of taking possession. We cantember 1850 authorities prohibited the flying of the German colors find examples of this from around the world. I am thinking of thefrom the tower of St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt a m Main. The prize-winning World W a r II p h o t o g r a p h of U.S. Marines takenpoet Franz Hoffmann considered this action such an affront that against the light at the precise moment they planted the Stars andhe was moved to write the following poem (later set to music by Stripes on Iwo Jima after their conquest of that Pacific island.the Dessau choirmaster and organist Seelmarm) with its surprise Even a photograph showing a reenactment of the event that wastwist at the end: taken several days later and is clearly a simulation is symboli­ cally powerful. Tattered and torn By storm and snow and rain. I am also thinking of the space race between the two superpow­ Thus the German flag ers: the Apollo 11 crew planting the Stars and Stripes on the m o o n , Flutters sadly in front of us; and in December 1971 a Soviet space probe sending pictures from Even the staff is split. Mars to earth of red flags with the hammer and sickle—flags that So that the pieces of cloth carry the promise of the galactic expeditions' glorious achievements. Are barely held together. To m y knowledge, the first film in which the motif of the flag was Tattered and torn— used dramaturgically as a political metaphor was Sergei M. Eisen­ And the staff is still there stein's Battleship Potemkin. After their successful m u t i n y in the To put a piece of iron on. Black Sea, the sailors hoisted the banner of the new age—the red The flag—so pathetically flag of the Soviets. Since color film did not exist at the time, Eisen­ Blown to shreds. stein used red paint to hand-color the celluloid frames in which Yet—^how quickly the flag appeared. The revolution was given sensory and emblem­ will another flag be woven! atic expressivity that went beyond the technical limitations ofToday we know: this too was but an episode.

34 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbohc Value of Flags and Standards 35black and white film and was imaged onto the viewer's retina The trumpet blows its shrill and final blast,w i t h i n c o m p a r a b l y greater effectiveness b e c a u s e Rote Fahnen sieht prepared for war and battle they no longer stand;man besser (Red Flags A r e Easier To See)—the title of a 1 9 7 0 d o c u ­ soon other banners will wave unchecked at last.mentary directed by Rolf Schübel and Theo Gallehr. Too long has slavery lasted in our land. » And when they've had their fill of strutting, lying, and when their sacks are full of loot,Flags also fulfilled a very important dramaturgical function in they'll do what other desperadoes did before them,Wolfgang Liebeneiner's film Bismarck (1940) w h e r e the transition and head for the border, fleet of foot.from one emperor to another was symbolized by the dipping and Yes, then you'll stand there, betrayed and sighing,raising of the flag. just trying to keep yourselves alive.^^ On 24 January 1934, the anniversary of the birthday of Freder­ In the Nevada desert GIs trained for the greatest threat imaginableick the Great and the death of the Nazi martyr Herbert Norkus, a to American freedom: the power of the Soviet Union. The giganticm a s s rally took p l a c e in front of the Invalidendom in P o t s d a m . \"practice range,\" specially built to support ongoing maneuvers inThree-hundred forty-two Hitler Youth colors were handed over to the desert sands and simulate a real war, is appropriately namedHitler Youth units.^^ \"Red Flag.\" For the Marines w h o train here the name is similar to a warning signal, triggering Pavlovian responses and creating a • combat-ready attitude in every soldier. The enemy defense area is equipped with surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft defenses, radar,At the same time every year Nazi Party offices would be deluged and electronic communication systems—whether Israeli warwith suggestions for organizing the festivities connected with booty or old supplies to Egypt. The range creates \"a perfectly real­Hitler's birthday. The recommendations regarding Hitler's fiftieth istic electronic environment which the American crews are trainedbirthday are typical. Given the atmosphere surrounding these cel­ to recognize and neutralize. The aerial force participating in suchebrations, it is impossible to imagine them taking place in the exercises includes an AWACS flying command post and anabsence of the flag (following is an excerpt): Aggressor Squadron made up of aircraft whose features are simi­ lar to those of the Mig-21 and Mig-23.\"^*Speaker: \"Above us the flag and in front of us the Führer!\"Refrain: \"Line up your flags on the pole ...\"Speaker: \"There are thousands of you behind me, and you are me, and I am you, and we all believe in you, Germany.I have never in my life had a thoughtthat has not resonated in your hearts ... \"'^ i, , ...A 1 9 3 6 anti-fascist sticker: \"The times are g r e a t / b u t the portions The U.S. A r m y will place a soldier under arrest if he allows theare s m a l l / w h a t does it avail us that Hitier's banners flutter! / i f sacred Stars and Stripes to touch the ground while it is being low­here and now millions under these banners/have no freedom and ered and removed from the flag pole.even less bread and butter.\"^ \"Hito Hata—Raise the Banner\" (1980) is Robert A. N a k a m u r a ' s bio­ Flyer graphical semi-documentary about Oda Sok who emigrated to Take down the flag, the S.A.'s beer halls are no more, America when he was a child and now lives in the \"Little Tokyo\" the Storm Troops no longer march in lock-step pace; section of Los Angeles. The climax of this touching film is Oda's comrades killed by Heini Himmler's black-clad corps desperate struggle to survive after he learns that his house is in spirit keep their place. going to be torn down. The film's title refers to an old Japanese parable w h o s e m o r a l is: if you raise a banner, you will prevail. Oda raises the banner.

36 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 37 In A k i r a K u r o s a w a ' s m o v i e Ran ( 1 9 8 2 - 8 5 ) , the G r a n d L o r d against fixed vertical backgrounds such as forests, buildings, etc.Hidetora has just abdicated when Lady Kaede, the ambitious wife Carefully calibrated countermovements and regular closeups ofof his first son Taro, reminds her spouse of the king's standard— horses, flags, falling riders a n d the b a n n e r s they c a r r y with t h e mwithin the very first minute of his newly acquired power. Until to their d e a t h a r e edited into the flow of m o v e m e n t to increase thethat moment, the standard had been displayed on a wall in the momentum. The naturalistic mix of colors produced by the riversroyal castle, a decorative symbol of power. \"Where is the stan­ of blood a n d the host of brightly colored flags is attenuated by thedard? I do not care about the armor, but the standard!\" Conse­ rapid pace of the visuals, blurring what would otherwise be grislyquently, Taro and his retainers rush to reclaim the symbol from the scenes and transforming them into expressive effects—\"It was aold man. \"The standard! ... Give it to us!\" However, since the stan­ slaughter, not a battle.\" The aesthetic components of the filmdard represents the last vestige of his faded glory, the Grand Lord derive principally from the myriad colorful banners that haverefuses to surrender it and, standing at the top of the castle's stair­ b e e n w o v e n into a kind of gigantic fluttering r a g rug, a m o n u ­case, he shoots an arrow into the chest of Taro's most zealous mental period piece made accessible to the senses by the brilliantretainer, killing him. use of the camera. The standard, the fetish of sovereignty and unconditional loy­ Earlier in Kagemusha: the Shadow Warrior (1979) K u r o s a w a usedalty, would cost the lives of many thousands of Japanese in the flags as aesthetic props which seemed to spread like wildfirewild melee that follows. The very spot where Lady Kaede noticed through the entire film. He also used the colors red and green inthe absence of the standard would later be adorned with her noble battle scenes to distinguish friend from foe. Every rider and everyblood, a crimson embellishment bearing witness to the sword foot soldier carries a flag. In the J a p a n of the sixteenth c e n t u r ystroke that kills her. depicted here, soldiers employed them as lances. The modern filmmaker used them like a brush to add delicate strokes to his In this Kurosawa's last colossal epic, the wide screen is filled historical painting. Filmed in slow motion, the onrushing flagswith myriad standards, banners, and pennants. From the first have an emotional impact as they are carried into battle or disap­sequence to the last, they dominate the film. Soldiers (and extras) pear in clouds of gun powder.numbering in the thousands use red or yellow banners (andtoward the end of the film black standards as well), depending on Flags are \"in\" again. Ever since the first closeup of the Germanwhose side they are on, to identify themselves in the total confu­ presidential standard on the ZDF television channel on 23 Maysion of battle. The banners also serve as visual markers for the 1977, the national flag has been w a v i n g on G e r m a n y ' s TV screensalternating sympathies of the moviegoers. In addition, the ban­ at the end of each broadcast day, to the symphonic strains of theners have symbolic significance. When they are in a vertical posi­ national anthem, as a good night wish from the broadcasters to us.tion they stand for confidence of victory, and when they are in a Culture for the soul, or for something else?horizontal position they symbolize retreat. Red banners that havebeen dropped are the signs of the vanquished. In the m e a n t i m e , flags h a v e once again b e c o m e the favored p r o p for o u r clubs a n d organizations. W h y does the flag h a v e to be The main function of these fluttering pennants attached to long there at all?bamboo poles is dramaturgic and aesthetic. In contrast to thecolumns and forests of flags in Leni Riefenstahl's Party congress \"Now we have a calling card—now we don't have to runfilms and her film of the Olympic games, Kurosawa's flags rush a r o u n d a n y m o r e like a b u n c h of nobodies ...\" Or: \"A flag a l w a y spast the camera, carried by soldiers on horseback as they gallop shows you where to go, and that's particularly important for usfuriously across seemingly endless fields to attack or to flee for w h o live in the country.\" Or \"When you're talking about flags.their lives. Kurosawa pushes to the limit the dynamic motif ofstandard-bearing formations, using overhead shots of ridersarranged in parallel lines but moving at varying rates of speed tocreate an impression of movement within the flow of movement.The effect is heightened since most of these sequences are filmed

Symbohc Value of Flags and Standards 39 38 The Triumph of Propaganda their mind's eye, superimposed the white stripes of their red- white-red flag on the N a z i banner, envisioning an untainted flag.you're talking about honor.\" These are just a few of the opinions They then added the white circle with the black swastika. Thisvoiced by people interviewed for the 1977 ZDF program titled was their private way of affirming the hope that the Nazi dicta­ \"With Unswerving Loyalty—Clubs and Their Flags.\" In Warten­ torship would be just a brief interlude.^^fels near Kulmbach, the mayor and the parish council, the boardof the local athletic club, maids and maidens of honor all gathered The Fighting Song of the Sappersin church for the consecration of the club's flag. As it had done inWartenfels, the church bestowed its blessings on flags in the towns Men under black standardsof Pottenstein, Eschenbach, Lindenhardt, Ottenhof, and Nitzl- That wave after every victory.buch, among others. The objectives symbolized in a club's flag are Fighters who clear a path.myriad, but loyalty is always part of the symbolic weave. The When the front no longer moves;characteristic title of a 1 9 3 5 Nazi film w a s Unsere Fahne ist die Treue We must blow up the enemy's bridges.(Our Flag is Our Pledge of Loyalty). Block the area with bunkers—, When we arrive, everything'U be fine:At the convent of Michelfeld near Auerbach in the Upper Palati­ You must break through, sapper!nate, Head Nurse Peregrina, a member of the Franciscan order,runs a workshop for making flags. She has more orders than she Men under black standards.can handle. The many busy hands doing the embroidering belong Nothing's too tough or too much for us.to deaf-mute w o m e n a n d girls for w h o m flag making is a form of Before the enemy has an inkling.occupational therapy. Flags thus had a social function before they We'll have reached our objective;were assigned a political role. \"Many people are upset when they Flamethrowers, hand grenades,see all these old a n d n e w flags. They r e m i n d t h e m of the time Get a move on, men! We're coming—,w h e n flags w e r e u s e d for unscrupulous p u r p o s e s in the past.\" The Wherever daring counts:narrator of the television documentary asks, \"Are societies that You must break through, sapper!rally a r o u n d the flag m o r e p r o n e to being misled?\" The question isleft unanswered.^'' \"Always practice loyalty and honesty—until Men under black standardsyou come to the cold grave!\" is a motto stitched in golden letters That wave after every victory.on one of the flags. Our comrades—seeds sown by Death— Remind us: The sad history of flags teaches us that those w h o c a r r y national In struggle alone lies God's bountyand party standards see them only as symbols of their ideas and And life's greatest virtue—,ideals; whereas their opponents view them in exactly the opposite Even if the whole world is against us:way, namely as symbols of the enemy, which in Hitler's case You must break through, sapper!meant hatred of and death for Jews, Poles, Russians, and others.The title of a collection of war poems tried to counter the negativei m a g e associated with the flag b y suggesting, in the w o r d s of theoriginal (Sans haine et sans drapeau—no hatred a n d n o flag), thatsongs and poems which dispensed with the usual repertoire offlag s y m b o l i s m w o u l d not erupt into outpourings of hate.^^Hitler's Germany annexed Austria in 1938, replacing the Austriannational colors with the swastika flag. However, m a n y Austrians, in

40 The Triumph of Propaganda Symbolic Value of Flags and Standards 41 Notes1 23. Hermann Kurzke, \"Mafia-Kultur und Yogi Hitler\" in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 October 1986. 1. Joseph Goebbels on 28 March 1933, quoted in Helmut Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1971). 24. Wilhelm Reich, Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus (Köln, 1971), p. 106, Eng­ lish translation Mass Psychology of Fascism (New York, 1970). 2. Elias Canetti, Masse und Macht (Frankfurt am Main, 1960), p. 95, English trans­ lation Crowds and Power (New York, 1963). 25. Guido von List, Die Bilderschrift der Ario-Germanen (Leipzig, 1910). 3. J. S. Ersch and J. G. Grube, eds.. Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und 26. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf pp. 551 ff. Künste in alphabetischer Reihenfolge von bekannten Schriftstellern (Leipzig, 1845), 27. Manfred von Killinger, Die SA in Wort und Bild (Leipzig, 1934). p. 119. 28. Paul Wentzcke, Die deutschen Farben, p. 158. 4. Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde: vollständiges Buch (Leipzig, 1941), act 1, 29. Roland Barthes, Mythen des Alltags, 4th ed. (Frankhjrt am Main, 1976), p. 95, scene 4, p. 30. English translation Mythologies (New York, 1972). 5. Hoffmann is referring to Valentin Kataev's novel Za vlast' sovetov (For the Power of the Soviets) (Moscow, 1950). In 1961 a revised version appeared 30. Decree of the Reich Interior Minister (1934) in Wolfgang Niess, Machtergreifung under the title Katakomby (The Catacombs). In 1945 Kataev published a non- '33 (Stuttgart, 1982), p. 127. fictional account of the underground resistance in Odessa titled The Cata­ combs.—Transl. 31. Hannsjoachim Wolfgang Koch, Geschichte der Hitlerjugend (Percha, 1975), p. 81, English translation The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development, 1922-1945 (Lon­ 6. Adolf Hitler, quoted in Horst Kerutt and Wolfgang M. Wegener, Die Fahne ist don, 1975). mehr als der Tod: ein deutsches Fahnenbuch (Munich, 1940; 2d. ed., 1943), p. 143. 32. Bertolt Brecht, Kriegsfibel, ed. by Ruth Berlau (Berlin, 1955). 7. Ferdinand Feiligrath, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by L. Schröder, 10 vols., (Leipzig, 1907). 8. Paul Wentzcke, Die deutschen Farben (Heidelberg, 1955), p. 126. 33. Friedrich Hebbel, Agnes Bernauer, act V, scene 10; cf. Peter Schneider, ... ein 9. Gustav Freytag, Politische Außätze (Leipzig, 1888), p. 437. einzig Volk von Brüdern: Recht und Staat in der deutschen Literatur (Frankfurt am10. Heinrich Heine, Sämtliche Schriften, ed. by K. Brigleb (Munich, 1971), vol. 4, p. Main, 1987), p. 144. 88 [Ludwig Börne, eine DerJcschrift]. 34. Paul Wentzcke, Die deutschen Farben, p. 27.11. Freiligrath, Sämtliche Werke, ibid.12. Reichsgesetzblatt (Berlin), 12 November 1848. 35. Ibid., p. 36. 36. Johann Fr. Böhmer, \"Die Rothe Thüre zu Frankfurt am Main\" in Archiv für13. Otto von Bismarck, Gedanken und Erinnerungen (Stuttgart, 1898), vol. 1, pp. 38f., English translation The Memoirs, Being the Reflections and Reminiscences of Frankfurter Geschichte und Kunst (Frankfurt am Main), no. 3,1844, pp. 114f. Otto, Prince von Bismarck, 2 vols. (New York, 1966). 37. Klaus Vondung, Magie und Manipulation: ideologischer Kult und politische Reli­14. Paul Wentzcke, Die deutschen Farben, pp. 113f. gion des Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen, 1971), p. 160.15. Ibid, pp. 125f.16. Ibid., pp. 132f. 38. Adolf Hitler, Man Kampf, p. 198. 39. Martin Loiperdinger, \"Nationalsozialistische Gelöbnisrituale im Parteitags­17. Eduard David, quoted in Die Geschichte von Schwarz-Rot-Gold: Beiträge zur deutschen Flaggenfrage (Berlin, 1922). film\" in Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Jakob Schissler, eds.. Politische Kultur in Deutschland (Opladen, 1987), p. 142.18. Friedrich C. Seil, Die Tragödie des deutschen Liberalismus (Stuttgart, 1953), p. 393. 40. Horst Kerutt and Wolfram M. Wegener, Die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod, pp. 9-11.19. Reichsgesetzblatt (Berlin), pt. 1 (Berlin, 1934), p. 785.20. Pimpf im Dienst (Potsdam, 1934), p. 8. 41. Elias Canetti, Masse und Macht, p. 156.21. Das neue Fischer-Uxikon in Farbe (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), vol. 3, p. 1712. 42. Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main, 1973), pp. 699f.,22. Radio report by Joseph Goebbels on a government-sponsored rally in the English translation Hitler (New York, 1974). Berlin Sportpalast on 10 February 1933, quoted in H. Heiber, ed., Goebbels 43. Saul Friedländer, Kitsch und Tod (Munich, 1984), p. 28, English translation Reden, vol. 1, pp. 68f. Reflections on Nazism: an Essay on Kitsch and Death (New York, 1984). 44. Günther Kaufmann, Das kommende Deutschland (Berlin, 1940), quoted in Hans Christian Brandenburg, Die Geschichte der HJ (Köln, 1968), p. 227. 45. Illustrierter Film-Kurier (Berlin), no. 1920,1933. 46. Film und revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland 1918-1932,2 vols. (Berlin [GDR], 1975), vol. 2, p. 107.

42 The Triumph of Propaganda 2-i-47. Gottfried Korff, \"Rote Fahnen und Tableaux Vivants: zum Symbolverständnis THE FLAG IN FEATURE FILMS der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung im 19. Jahrhundert\" in Albrecht Lehmann, ed., Studien zur Arbeiterbewegung (Münster, 1984), (Beiträge zur Volkskultur in The Flag in Historical Feature Films Nordwestdeutschland, 44), pp. 103-40; quoted text is on p. 104. Man in the abstract has a need for larger-than-life monuments, in pro­48. Friedrich Wendel, Die rote Fahne: ein Entwurf ihrer Geschichte als Beitrag zur portion to his feelings and actions, even when he is made to look very deutschen Flaggenfrage (Berlin, 1925?), p. 7. small and very pitiful by comparison. As in centuries past, he needs a pedestal on which tofashion himself. Monuments are not built on flat49. Gottfried Korff, \"Rote Fahnen und Tableaux Vivants,\" p. 114. surfaces. To make them look more imposing, they are elevated over the heads of those who pass by them.50. Ibid., p. 117. Fritz Lang^51. Gerhard Schumann in Die Lieder vom Reich (Munich, 1935), p. 34. A s we will see b e l o w f r o m the m a n y e x a m p l e s of N a z i d o c u ­52. Hannsjoachim Wolfgang Koch, Geschichte der Hitlerjugend, p. 80. m e n t a r i e s , Kulturfilme, a n d n e w s r e e l s , t h e s w a s t i k a flag w a s n o t an e m p t y symbol. Rather, it breathed life into events and cre­53. Baidur von Schirach in Völkische Musikerziehung (Berlin, 1938), pp. 146-8. ated memorable images. It indicated the degree of emotional fervor that w a s intended. It was like wallpaper that is used to54. Renzo Vespignani über den Faschismus, ed. by Arbeitsgruppe Ausstellungsüber­ set a mood. nahme der Neuen Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst and the Kunstamt Kreuzberg (Berlin, 1976), p. 131. Flags had aesthetic appeal, but only to the extent they did not become mere works of art, and only when, beyond any dramatur­55. Peter Dohms, Flugschriften in Gestapo-Akten: Nachweis und Analyse der Flug­ gical effects, they were the focus of attention. Flags, of course, schriften in den Gestapo-Akten des Hauptstaatsarchivs Düsseldorf (Siegburg, 1977), were also used time and again as symbols in feature films. In those (Veröffentlichungen der Staatlichen Archive des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen. instances, they fulfilled a dramatic rather than a decorative func­ Reihe: Quellen und Forschungen, 3), pp. 552f. tion. They helped to transform dramatic scenes into national myths and make historical figures into almost superhuman56. Paul Virilio, Krieg und Kino: Logistik der Wahrnehmung (Munich, 1986), p. 186, shapers of destiny. The historical subject matter of films directed English translation War and Cinema: the Logistics of Perception (New York, 1989). after the beginning of the war by Veit Harlan, Karl Ritter, Wolf­ gang Liebeneiner, and Arthur Maria Rabenalt seemed to dictate57. \"In Treue fest—der Verein und seine Fahne,\" film report by Ursula Scheider. this approach, because war, \"being the most profound challenge Ed.: Karl J. Joeressen. Broadcast by the ZDF, 23 July 1982. to the emotions\" (Alexander Kluge), called for the use of clever techniques to compensate for shattered hopes, especially as the58. Ernesto Grassi, ed.. Ohne Haß und ohne Fahne: Kriegsgedichte des 20. Jahrhundert military situation moved ever closer to catastrophe. (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1959).59. \"Diagonal,\" a program broadcast on Austrian Radio's channel 1,5 March 1988.

44 The Triumph of Propaganda The Flag in Feature Films j 45 Credible portrayals of historical analogies to Hitler became his baroque summer palace, he nonchalantly reads a note on hisincreasingly necessary as the military situation deteriorated. Aside music stand that contains the following bad news: \"The Alliedfrom Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, the historical figure most often powers will be fully armed within four weeks. They will attackused was Frederick the Great. In films he was \"made up,\" to the simultaneously from France, Austria, Russia, and Saxony.\"very depths of his soul, to conform to the image of Hitler. Cheered Between two movements of the sonata, the king issues a terseby millions, the leader was never allowed to become a mere mor­ order to General Seydlitz, prompting one of the guests to remarktal. Nor was the victor ever permitted to become a loser. \"[Film­ euphorically: \"History will take note of this concert.\"makers] would first draw an analogy to the present on the basis ofa distorted depiction of Frederick's Prussia, projecting the features Military action follows directly on the heels of the musical per­that typified Hitler and the Nazi state back to the past. In drawing formance. After walking down the 315-foot-long hall of a wing invarious individual parallels, they sought to persuade viewers to the palace and meditating deeply, the king informs his adjutant ofextend the analogy to everything else. They forced audiences to his decision: \"Send declarations of war immediately to theaccept the perfect congruity between Frederick's Prussia and the embassies of Austria and France.\" Then turning to his generals, heNazi state, between the Prussian leader and the \"Führer.\" Film­ outdoes even himself: \"Contrary to every rule of war I will attackmakers felt that audiences would automatically ascribe to the new an enemy five times stronger than myself. I must do this or all willstate all the achievements, successes, and values connected with be lost. The glory of my country and the welfare of my people bidFrederick's Prussia. They credited the values of a state that had me to act or they will follow me to my grave.\" Viewed in hind­met the test of history to a state that had yet to prove itself. The sight, these cinematic phrases will become maxims of Nazi per­analogy went as follows: a man who acts like Frederick the Great versity. Knowledge that is of immediate relevance will bewill rise to the same heights as Prussia did in the past.\"^ In other communicated by means of contrived historical causality.words, every time a new film about Frederick appeared. Hitlerappropriated a little more of the Prussian king's legacy. \"Old Fritz\" (as the Prussians called Frederick the Great) strides solemnly down the colonnaded terrace of Sanssouci to review hisDas Flötenkonzert von Sanssouci fusiliers. (Even before the Nazi regime came to power. Otto(The Flute Concert of Sanssouci, 1930) Gebühr's portrayal of Frederick had become an unintentional car­ icature.) Following the review, Frederick's \"Longfellows,\" his My aim was to achieve feats of eternal glory. I never gave a damn Potsdam Grenadier Guards who were made over into a body of about those idiots in the field. giants, none under six feet tall and not a few approaching seven feet, file past the monarch, their Prussian standards blowing stiffly Frederick II on 22 October 1776 in the breeze as they parade to the strains of the Hohenfriedberg March, a not-so-subtle reminder of the victory that is yet to beIn this film, the same \"menuet galant\" that lends a certain musical won over the Austrians and Saxons on 4 June 1745 in Lower Sile­spice to the masked ball that is being held in the splendid palace sia during the Second Silesian War. The march-past of the gleam­of Count Heinrich von Brühl, ruling minister of Electoral Saxony, ing white Prussian standards appears all the more beautiful asis also the code word to gain entry to a meeting at which a plot is they are illuminated by the light of a haunting gray dawn andbeing hatched against Frederick in one of the back rooms of world blown by a wind machine to form an emotion-charged backdrop,history, in the very same palace. The conspirators have not, how­ with heroic overtones that caused spectators' hearts to race.ever, counted on the cunning of the wily Prussian king. For hispart, Frederick is secretly mobilizing for a preventive strike By 1942 Goebbels realized that it was becoming increasinglyagainst the Saxons, Austrians, Russians, and French which he necessary \"to possess what the great Prussian monarch Frederickhopes will totally surprise his enemies. While calmly playing his always considered the decisive factor in waging a victorious war:transverse flute for an audience of illustrious guests at Sanssouci, a heart of steel to weather the storms of time.\" These were the final dramatic words of Joseph Goebbels's speech on the fourth anniversary of Austria's Anschluss with Germany, delivered on 15 March. 1942 in the main hall of the South Station in Linz.^ He

46 The Triumph of Propaganda The Flag in Feature Films \ 47decided to use the figure of Old Fritz, the king who had tri­ the aim being to link the idea of the Führer and the figure of theumphed over fate, as a call to arms and a source of inspiration great king. Goebbels subsequently found astounding \"parallels with the present in the words uttered by the great king, in the psy­d u r i n g the h a r s h w i n t e r of the 1 9 4 2 c a m p a i g n in R u s s i a . Das chological crises he went through together with his people as they fought and suffered.\"*Flötenkonzert produced in 1930, and other successful films The p r o l o g u e to Der große König states that the film adheresabout Frederick were re-released to combat defeatism, for \"... we \"strictly to the facts of history\" and then goes on to say that the bulk of the film depicts the agonies of the Seven Years' War, dur­live in a time when we need the spirit of Frederick the Great. We ing which Frederick's great character was put to the test. \"The most important statements of the king have been taken from hiswill only master the problems facing us when we exert ourselves o w n writings.\" In other words, Ufa films don't lie! \"All that mat­to the utmost. If we do overcome them, they will only bolster our ters in historical films is whether the 'big picture' has been cor­ rectly presented. To be successful, historical films must dealendurance. Here as elsewhere Nietzsche's aphorism proves true exclusively with events and personalities that are fanüliar to peo­ ple today and with which they can empathize or that interest themthat what does not kill us makes us stronger.\"* and that they consider important.\"^ G u s t a v Ucicky, the director of such chauvinistic films as Das During the fade-in, the Prussian king's standard seems to fillFlötenkonzert von Sanssouci ( 1 9 3 0 ) , York ( 1 9 3 1 ) , a n d Morgenrot the screen. The name \"Kunersdorf,\" the traumatic reminder of a lost battle, is projected onto the standard. Stooped, his back to the(Dawn, 1932-33), helped pave the way for Nazi ideology. The camera, the old king delivers a monologue to his commanders before the beginning of the battle, a monologue that alsoextreme nationalist films he subsequently churned out, for exam­ addresses the conditions obtaining in the third year of Hitler'sple, Flüchtlinge (Refugees, 1 9 3 3 ) , Das Mädchen Johanna ( T h e war: \"We live in an age that will decide everything and will change the face of Europe. Before decisions are taken, we will beM a i d e n Joan, 1935), and Heimkehr ( H o m e c o m i n g , 1941), predes­ obliged to withstand frightful encounters with fortime [sic]. But afterwards the sky will turn bright and cheery. Regardless of howtined the former ad man to become one of the most aggressive m a n y enemies I have, I trust in the justice of m y cause and thepropagandists in the Third Reich. laudable courage of m y troops—from my field marshals to the rawest recruit. The army will attack!\" Standard-bearers rush for­ The first filmmaker to be inspired by the theme of \"Old Fritz ward toward Kunersdorf in advance of Prussian Army troopsthe musician\" was Oskar Messter, who produced a 98-foot film in marching three to four abreast. The enemy enters the field without any standards.1 8 9 8 titled Fridericus Rex beim Flötenspiel (Fridericus R e x Playing After the battle against the Austrians and Russians was lost atthe Flute). Many variations on this theme followed in later years. Kunersdorf [on 12 August 1759], the Bemburg regiment attemptsMesster's effort represents the successful launching of Frederick to escape to Brandenburg. \"At least we still have our standard,\" says standard-bearer Niehoff, seeking to console himself as hethe Great's posthumous career as a movie star. The mistaken retires from the field with the soiled colors tucked beneath his belt. The collective symbol of the regiment had not fallen into enemynotion that \"the stability of the throne rests on poetry\" comes from hands. When the standard-bearer pauses to take a breather, heNapoleon's opponent Gneisenau. pulls the colors out from under his great coat and holds it up to the camera for the fade-over. The actress Kristina Söderbaum is thenDer große König (The Great King, 1942) shown holding the standard in her hands, using the cloth to make In the past few weeks a film titled Der große König has been playing in the movie theaters of the Reich. Basically, the film deals with the dif­ ficult trials and historic tribulations that Frederick II experienced dur­ ing a critical phase of the Seven Years' YJar, before leading his forces to final victory over his enemies. Goebbels, 19 April 1942^The flag occasionally epitonüzed Destiny in period films dealingwith Prussia's various w a r s , one e x a m p l e being Veit Harlan's Dergroße König. H a r l a n used the historical element in the film to createa source of knowledge for Hitler's generals. Set in the period ofthe Seven Years' War, the film brought Old Fritz, the militarygenius, out of the cellar of Sanssouci to serve as Hitler's precursor.

48 The Triumph of Propaganda The Flag in Feature Films ' 49bandages: \"Yes, the standard almost cost you your life ...\" And: Goebbels used the techniques of propaganda to force Old Fritz \"So long as w e have our standard, all is not lost.\" and Hitler—two totally antithetical figures—into a symbiosis that would be accepted by the politically naive. On the one hand, there Cameraman Bruno Mondi used standard-bearer Niehoff's limp was the prince destined by an accident of birth to occupy the high­piece of cloth for another dissolve: \"They can't start without us.\" est position in the land, and on the other, the painter manque andThe sacred standard, still pressed under Niehoff's arm as he rides corporal Adolf Hitler who was catapulted to power through ain a one-horse cart, suddenly begins to flutter in all its glory. And campaign of propaganda. Whereas Frederick was an exponent ofthen we hear, \"Take the colors down!\" as Frederick castigates the the French Enlightenment and French philosophy, a free thinker, aBernburgers and orders them to remove their stripes and rosettes Freemason, sensitive to the arts and highly educated, what char­and, most serious of all, never again to bear the standard. \"The acterized the autodidact Hitler was his opposition to the ideas thatdrummer will never again be allowed to lead the regiment and inspired the Enlightenment and Freemasonry and his contemptdirect its movements on the march. Henceforth, a crosscut piece of for humanistic ideals. And, in contrast to Frederick, Hitler was wwood suspended over a drum will set the pace and announce to devoid of any aesthetic sensibilities. In the course of the war, how- |the whole world 'Here come men w h o prefer life to victory.'\" At ever, it w a s possible to discern certain similarities in their mono- Ithat moment. Count Bemburg, sitting on horseback, puts a bullet maniacal personalities: their harshness and brutality to their ownthrough his noble temple in full view of his troops. The dead troops and the enemy, their reversals of fortune in war, their mis­count and, by implication, the shame and humiliation are covered calculations regarding the enemy's strategy, and, above all, theirover by a dissolve of the Prussian flag. \"He abandoned life, just as C2ntempt for death.he abandoned the battlefield\" is the king's laconic comment. Hitler always had Anton Graff's oil painting of Frederick the Under the command of Colonel Rochow (Otto Wernicke) the Great hanging above the desk in his bunker. Heinz Guderian,Bernburgers finally attack and defeat the enemy. Once again the Chief of the General Staff, quoted him as saying that he. Hitler,white standard with the black eagle of Prussia flutters at the head always derived new strength from the portrait \"when bad newsof the regiment. Even after the standard-bearer's best friend. threatens to crush m y spirit.\"^ When it came to his military idol'sSergeant Paul Treskow (Gustav Fröhlich) dies at his side and defeats. Hitler consoled himself by noting that Frederick II hadNiehoff experiences a brief feeling of exasperation, he charges gone down in the annals of Prussian history as Prussia's greatestahead with the standard blowing in the wind. \"Stick your bayonet king in spite of Kunersdorf and Leuthen.between the enemy's ribs. In three days we'll march into Korbachas victors—or die in the attempt,\" Old Fritz exhorts his men. After •y{\t-tall, \"a g o o d c r y is half the battle,\" w r o t e Shaw.** W h e n the regimentreassembles after their victory at Torgau, Colonel Rochow reports Apotheoses of the Flag in Feature Filmswith evident emotion: \"The victorious standards. Your Majesty.The ancient standards of Prussia.\" The final apotheosis shows the Our flag is fluttering before us. ^Prussian flag waving proudly in the wind, filling the screen like a Our flag is the new age,full sail—the symbol of Prussia's glory. The filmmaker projected And the flag leads us into eternity!this symbol, with its promise of victory, onto Hitler's flag in order Yes, the flag means more than death!to generate a feeling of hope among the audience. Baldur von Schirach This combination of flags is a reminder of similar configura­tions that appeared during the film industry's 1942 production The refrain of the Hitler Youth's baffle song resounded like ayear and that were designed to radiate confidence in the regime's revivalist hymn: \"Forward! The young are oblivious to danger!\"ability to resolve victoriously the crisis on the eastern front. In the Rising to number one on the Hitler Youth's \"hit parade,\" the songend, the small group of individuals who made up the elite of Nazi b e c a m e the leitmotif of the first original N a z i p r o p a g a n d a filmfilm directors found themselves and their heroic historical epicsstranded in an artistic no-man's land.

50 The Triumph of Propaganda The Flag in Feature Films I 51 m a d e after Hitler c a m e to power. Ufa h a d dedicated Hitlerjunge and file, solemnly hoisting their flag. The film uses picture and Quex to the F ü h r e r ' s d e v o t e d y o u n g followers. P r o d u c e d in 1 9 3 3 soimd to link Heini's longing for security, a surrogate father, and b y H a n s Steinhoff, the film w a s set in Berlin. The subtitle of Hitler­ comradeship to the attitude toward life exemplified by this ideal­junge Quex w a s \"a film about y o u n g people's spirit of sacrifice.\" ized community of young people. The blazing campfire and flut­ Transforming the so-called \"time of struggle\" (Kampfzeit) a n d the tering flags at the center of the group give the cinematic scene an yoimg martyr Quex (Herbert Norkus in real life) into legends, the emotional appeal. He would like to be part of the group and is pre­ film sought to make young moviegoers more susceptible to the pared, in the spirit of the battle song, to \"march for Hitler, freedom, lure of N a z i s m . Matinee idols w h o h a d been b o x office hits before and bread through night and through need with the flag of youth.\" 1933 (e.g., Berta Drews, Heinrich George, and Hermann Speel-mans) were enlisted to give respectability to the Nazi ideology Next morning, with the melody still echoing in his head anddepicted in this film based on real-life events. having comnutted the lyrics to memory, he quietly hums the song while standing in the bleak family kitchen: \"Our flag is fluttering The m a i n p u r p o s e of Hitler junge Quex w a s to fill the m i n d s of before us.\" In an adjacent room, Heini's father hears him singing,the young with Nazi ideas, especially young people growing up explodes, a n d starts to sing the Internationale, forcing little Heini toin households in which attitudes had not changed quickly enough repeat each line after him: \"Arise, you wretched of the earth ...\"in favor of the Nazis. Dependent on the loyalty of the masses, theregime hoped to win over parents by exploiting their more After Heiru's mother commits suicide, the Hitler Youth becomesimpressionable sons and daughters. The regime presupposed that his surrogate mother But Heini, who in the meantime has becomeyoung people would be susceptible to values such as conu-ade- the devoted Hitler Youth Quex, is soon to meet his fate. Alone andship, courage, and idealism. unprotected, he distributes Nazi flyers in the \"Red\" Beussel-Kiez section of Berlin when Communist \"cutthroats,\" sheltered by the The dramatic turning point in this the first film made under darkness, surround him on the grounds of an amusement parkofficial Nazi Party sponsorship is introduced in an atmosphere and stab him repeatedly. When his Hitler Youth friends arrive thecharged with emotion. Heini Völker is an apprentice in a small next morning and find him dying, the bright eyes of the martyrprinter's shop in Berlin. Later in the film he earns the honorable are transfigured as they look past earthly friends and upward tonickname \"Quex\"^° from his Hitler Youth friends. H e is fourteen heaven. Then as his comrades hold him in their arms and with ayears old and the son of an unemployed proletarian who has h a p p y smile o n his face, Heini w h i s p e r s haltingly: \"Unsere ...become a Communist because of his bitterness toward society. The Fahne ...flattert... uns ... voran.\"film's director has Heini go on a hike in the woods with C o m m u ­nists. Disgusted by the promiscuity and dissoluteness of the The following passage from a speech by the Nazi poet E. W.young Communists, who are portrayed in the film as noisy and Möller on the murdered Hitler Youth Herbert Norkus (Hitlerunkempt, Heini manages to slip away in the dark and comes upon Youth Quex in the film) illustrates the powerful symbolism of uni­a company of Hitler Y o u t h . H e a r i n g them sing their battle song, forms, colors, a n d flags: \"Herbert N o r k u s w a s m u r d e r e d while\"Forward! Forward!\", he is mesmerized and starts tapping his wearing a white shirt. When the shirt was exarrüned later, how­foot to the rhythm of the song. ever, the blood had turned brown. So the boy was wearing a brown shirt after all when he died. How unbelievably marvelous In the novel by Karl Aloys Schenzinger on which the film is for such a thing to happen! \"^^based, the author describes Heini watching the sacred fellowshipof the Hitler Youth as they celebrate the summer solstice: \"He A s if this were not enough, the director Hans Steinhoff takes thewanted to join in the singing, but his voice failed him. This was film to a final ecstatic apotheosis. A s Heini lies dying, a visionGerman soil, a German forest, these were German boys, and he grows within him of an army of brown-shirted Hitler Youth andrealized that he was an outsider, alone, helpless, that he did not behind them the swastika which gradually changes into a monu­know where to direct his overpowering emotions.\"^^ mental emblem of salvation engulfing the entire screen. In a series of dissolves, the m a r c h i n g c o l u m n s , flags, a n d the d e a d Q u e x , Standing on an embankment, Heini Völker gazes at the disci­ with the sound track taking up the Hitler Youth's marching song,plined brown-shirted youths. A long shot shows t h e m lined u p rank merge into a single heroic image. The masterly use of fade-overs

52 The Triumph of Propaganda The Flag in Feature Films | 53 and editing heighten the mythical effect of this vision of a collec­ that Hitlerjunge Quex anticipates w h a t w a s implied in the m u c h - tive identity, which was supposed to leap from the screen to the publicized longing to die a heroic death: \"Every enterprise carries audience below and capture the psyche of the spectators. The doc­ the seeds of its own destruction.\" trine of salvation through the sacrifice of one's life w a s linked to the flag in an effort to provide the Nazi movement with the requi­ This was Baldur von Schirach's vision: \"Where once the little site energy to achieve its goals. Hitler Youth fell, there now stands a youth movement that includes one and a half million fighters, each one of whom The brave young soldier died a hero's death. He died for a cause he believes in the spirit of sacrifice a n d c o m r a d e s h i p . . . . W e will fight believed in, for his conu-ades, the flag he so dearly loved, and above on in his unwavering spirit.\"'^ all for his Führer. Now other young Germans are once again hoisting the flag consecrated by the blood of one of their finest.'* The Quex film h a d set the standard for w h a t Nietzsche in a dif­ ferent (bourgeois) c o n t e x t called a \"dual perspective\" {doppelte T h e j o u r n a l Kinematograph p u b l i s h e d the following article Optik), w h i c h in this i n s t a n c e referred to a d u a l artistic a n dunder the title \"The Flag Is the N e w Age\":'^ \"The movement is off National Socialist perspective that enabled filnunakers to c a p t u r eto a running start. The spirit that lives in the young is manifest in and hold an audience's attention. Reflecting on the psychologicalthe ranks of youth on the march. The flags rustle in the wind. The effect of the techniques u s e d in Hitlerjunge Quex, Dr. Goebbelss o n g 'Unsere F a h n e ist die neue Zeit' r e s o u n d s . . . \" A n d : \"Hitler­ wrote that \"when art and character are combined and a lofty ide­junge Quex is a G e r m a n film that w a s not p r o d u c e d with the idea alism avails itself of the most vital and m o d e m cinematic means ofof making money, but rather with genuine feeling and profound expression, G e r m a n film art h a s a nearly unbeatable a d v a n t a g esensitivity. It is a trumpet call to Germany's young people and over the rest of the world.\"'''thus to the future of Germany.\" The t w o other Party-sponsored feature films produced that same Having lulled the audience into a sense of security, Schirach's year—SA-Mann Brand (1933), directed by Franz Seitz, and Hansflag-song is juxtaposed in Hitlerjunge Quex to the less beguiling Westmar (1933), directed b y Franz Wenzler—likewise depicted self-melodies of the Internationale a n d the Marseillaise. The film creates sacrifice in images that were both horrifying and beautiful at thethe impression that after being played time and again, the battle s a m e time. \"I g o n o w to the Führer,\" the dying Hitier Youth Erichsong about the flag \"gave direction to young people bound Lohner whispers to his friend Fritz Brand in SA-Mann Brand.together by a common destiny,\" and that as early as 1931, the yeardepicted in the film, it was making young people happy. In fact, Brand pledges \"at the poor lad's deathbed that his young blood,the Nazi bard Baldur von Schirachhad written the song especially having been spilled for the great cause of Germany, will befor the film. Hitlerjunge Quex w a s a personal, poetic, a n d political avenged.\" Even the Communists listen to Hitler's \"passionatelyexpression of devotion to the Führer who, in the words of patriotic\" speeches \"with fists clenched and a sense of the enor­Schirach, \"aimed for the stars but was still a down-to-earth person m o u s sacred wave\" pouring out of the loudspeaker, for he islike you and me.\" speaking direcfly to the \"hearts of the German people.\" Finally, \"National Socialist Germany has triumphed. The Storm Troops The flag followed in the wake of the marching song and was march, and Storm Trooper Brand stands tall and proud in theirsupposed to lead the w a y to a glorious future. At the same time, it ranks. A thousand voices resound with a thunderous 'Hold highwas a symbol of faith and hope that young people could easily the banner, the Storm Troops march with calm and steady pace...'understand. Riding a wave of popular enthusiasm, the flag was There is great rejoicing everywhere in Germany. A new era issupposed to lead to the goals embodied in the alliterative slogan dawning ... Germany has awakened.\"'*\"For Führer, Folk, and Fatherland.\" Ironically, though, the firstpropaganda film produced in the Third Reich already anticipated F r a n z Wenzler's feature-length film Hans Westmar (1933), sub­its demise. \"The movie starts off in the style of the Soviet montage titled One of Many—the Fate of a German in 1929, tells the story offilms, only to end in an apotheosis of martyrdom engulfed in a Horst Wessel, the \"most glorious blood-witness to Germany's lib­flood of m u s i c a n d flags.\" Karsten Witte c o m e s to the conclusion eration m o v e m e n t . \" T h e film w a s \"so true to history\" that e v e n the c a p t u r e d \" C o m m u n i s t posters, flags, banners, etc., w e r e the 'real McCoy.'\"'' Faithful to the book on which it was based. Harms

54 The Triumph of Propaganda The Flag in Feature Films | 55 E w e r s ' s Horst Wessel, the film c o n v e y e d the last thoughts of the In that sense [the film] threatens the vital interests of the state andmurdered Hans Westmar alias Horst Wessel in the one word that the G e r m a n people.\"^^stood for the whole ideology—\"Germany ...\" As the young war­rior's soul leaves his body, it marches with the Flag into Eternity. Der Rebell (The Rebel, 1 9 3 2 ) anticipated the Nazis' ritualizedThe workers' clenched fists open symbolically in the Hitler salute. cult of death. This is clearly reflected in Joseph Goebbels's remarkThen there are the echoes coming from the funeral oration for that the film would leave a lasting impression on \"even non-Hans Westmar: \"Die Fahne hoch! That is, the flag will rise from National Socialists.\" A c c o r d i n g to Luis Trenker, Hitler s a w Derthe dead to new and glowing life and together with his [Hans Rebell four times a n d each time with n e w enthusiasm. \"Besides,\"Westmar's] ghost, risen from the grave, enter into us and march in mentioned the Führer, \"the film is now playing at the Luitpoldspirit in our ranks, when we one day seize power [to fashion] the Cinemas in Munich.\" Trenker was greatly surprised that theglorious and magnificent new Reich.\" The funeral procession F ü h r e r w a s so well informed. H e himself did not k n o w it.\"^^ Theincludes actual footage of the historic torchlight parade of the SA manner in which the three triumphant final scenes were preparedthrough the Brandenburg Gate on 30 January 1933. for the N a z i p s y c h e in early political films such as Hitlerjunge Quex, Hans Westmar, a n d SA-Mann Brand follows the pattern of Taking place on a cold and windy day in March, the cemetery film symbolism laid down in Luis Trenker and Kurt Bernhardt'sscene in Hanns Heinz Ewers's book also ends on a religious note: Der Rebell. Sepp Allgeier, w h o w a s later to b e c o m e Leni Riefen­\"And hearts were filled with a feeling that it—the body lying stahl's chief cameraman, used this \"mountain film about [thethere—^was not dead at all; that like us he was alive, living in our struggle for] freedom\" to perfect the skills he had acquired in hismidst\"—Yes: \"Comrades killed by Red Front and Reaction in so-called pre-fascist works. In this lavish national epic about thespirit keep their place.\"^° The literary form shared by the three Tyrol's revolt against the Napoleonic occupation army, French sol­films was the allegory, and it was used to embody the Nazi ideol­ diers execute the revolutionary student Severin Anderlan (Luisogy in mythic structures. The final apotheoses in all three were Trenker) and two of his comrades in the courtyard of the fortressexamples of the semiotics of film as reflected in Nazi hagiography. at Kufstein \"for rebelling and organizing gangs.\" As martyrs, theyThey contained not only modifications of the allegorical mode; die standing up, with the pathos and personae of heroes but with­they also represented practical attempts to transform the tenets of out any expressions of suffering that might be viewed as icono-the ideology into goals and to make people aware of them through graphic allusions to the crucifixion.the use of graphic imagery. \"But they can't murder the will of these dying men! And all those In the figure of the prototypical young Nazi, audiences would who sacrificed themselves for freedom will appear, their shadesderive a feeling for the kind of moral strength that would soon marching in an endless colunm. With flags waving, they will marchdwindle in importance under Hitler's regime. Quex, for example, t o w a r d a n e w day, toward the future. \"^^ Indeed, this w a s n o naturalserved as the dramaturgical motif in a documentary style of rep­ death, for after the initial shock the student-hero rises from the deadresentation that was designed to add a touch of realism to fiction­ and with undiminished patriotic ardor picks up the white flagalized events. emblazoned with the Red Eagle (which was not there before the execution). As if by magic, the two Tyrolean peasants w h o had been Background material on the \"martyr\" that had initially been shot along with \"the rebel\" also rise up. A veritable army of Sev-drawn from the so-called \"time of struggle\" was not considered of erin's peasant freedom fighters ascend above the billowing flagssufficiently high caliber to reflect the true stature of the hero. Con­ that proliferate miraculously among the menacing clouds above.sequently, Goebbels ordered the immediate postponement of the The living and the dead are shown floating away on clouds into thepicture's premiere, scheduled for 9 October 1933, so that it could ether, guided by a myriad of flags to the eternal light.be revised accordingly. The reason given was \"that the film doesjustice neither to the figure of Horst Wessel, because the inade­ The devoutly religious Trenker probably borrowed thisquacy of the portrayal detracts from his heroic life, nor to the metaphor from the field of art. A flag emblazoned with the sign ofNational Socialist movement which is today the pillar of the state. the cross to enhance the pathos of the Resurrection was often used in Christian iconography as a symbol of victory over death.

56 The Triumph of Propaganda The Flag in Feature Films ] 57 The Proletarian Feature Film two countries and extol the fraternity between the two peoples. In the concluding scene, Pabst inserted a biting epilogue. A German There must no longer be any classes. We work too, with our heads, and a French official, separated by a new iron fence in the shafts, and our place is next to our brother, who works with his hands. exchange protocols ratifying the re-establishment of the frontier: \"The strictiy symmetrical gestures of both officials satirize the vic­ H a n s Westmar, in Hans Westmar, 1 9 3 3 tory of bureaucratic w i s d o m . \"^^The Nazis knew well how to exploit the traditional values The subject of these films was the 6.5 million unemployedreflected in the genealogy of the flag a n d h o w to reinterpret t h e m workers of the Weimar period who were living in conditions offor their o w n purposes. In judging the aesthetics of Hitlerjunge p o v e r t y a n d social deprivation. Like Piel Jutzi in Mutter KrausensQuex, e v e n n o n - G e r m a n w r i t e r s a g r e e that it is a w e l l - m a d e Fahrt ins Glück (1929), leftist m o v i e p r o d u c e r s did not c o n d e m nm o t i o n picture in the finest tradition of G e r m a n proletarian films, individual proletarians who committed criminal acts as a result ofincluding those of the silent film era, such as Piel Jutzi's Mutter their economic situation. Rather, they blamed the \"environment\"Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (1929), G. W. Pabst's Die Dreigroschenoper in which proletarians were forced to live—run-down housing and(The T h r e e p e n n y O p e r a , 1931), a n d Slatan D u d o w ' s Kuhle Wampe the poverty of the slums. Heinrich Zille, who helped inspire Jutzi(1932). In his essay \"The Banner of the Proletarian Cult,\"^* V. Poli- to produce the film, hit the nail on the head when he wrote thatanskij postulates that proletarian art, in contrast to that of the \"you can kill someone as easily by where you house them as youmoribund bourgeoisie, stressed content over form. In addition to can with an ax.\" The state was identified as the murderer. Directorthe three films mentioned above, his thesis applies to most other Jutzi shot a closeup of an ominous official summons with the greatproletarian pictures as well. seal of Prussia on it. He then faded over to the frightening outline of the German eagle on Mother JCrause's wall clock. G. W. P a b s t ' s pessimistic a n t i - w a r film Westfront 1918 (TheWestern Front 1 9 1 8 , 1 9 3 0 ) a n d Kameradschaft ( C o m r a d e s h i p , 1931), In the W e i m a r republic these films w e r e considered politicallyhis paean to international workers' solidarity, argue in favor of and artistically progressive. The power of their visuals corre­this thesis. Committed to opposing reactionary and chauvinistic sponded to the vigor of their attempt to arouse public feeling.trends in the cinema and to promoting the progressive left, Pabst, Clearly siding with the proletarians, these films intended totogether with Erwin Piscator and Heinrich Mann, founded the awaken their class consciousness by portraying their hardships inVolksverbund ßr Filmkunst (National Association for Film A r t ) in the starkest possible terms. Their common denominator was the1930, with an eye to representing society realistically, as it really tmconcealed sympathy they had for the proletarian milieu and itsw a s . E x c e p t for three actors, the entire cast of Kameradschaft w a s human inhabitants.made up of nonprofessional performers recruited directly fromthe mines. The film w a s based on an actual F r e n c h mining disas­ E r w i n Piscator's m o t i o n picture Der Aufstand der Fischer von St.ter that took place in 1906 in Courrieres, near the German border. Barbara (Revolt of the Fishermen of St. Barbara, 1934), filmed inGerman miners had come to the aid of their French comrades. In Soviet Russia, was a latecomer, but, given its style and its message,the movie, Pabst heightened the significance of the story by mak­ it c a n b e considered p a r t of the proletarian film genre. The pictureing it take place shortiy \"after Versailles.\" The film begins with a was based on the novel of the same name by Anna Seghers.newsreel-like report on the brutal working conditions in the min­ing district and an actual introduction to the cramped living quar­ B y studying the aesthetics of film, w e c a n s h o w h o w the Nazisters of the proletariat. The film's message, reinforced by its tried to weaken the left by appropriating some of its ideas andrealism, is that if working class solidarity can overcome borders, stylistic techniques. The Nazis would change plots, but maintainthere is also hope for eliminating borders between nations. a similar structure. F o r instance, the Nazis replaced the red flag with the swastika flag as the \"colorful sign visible over long dis­ Following this \"miraculous event,\" spokesmen for the two tances\" (Tucholsky) that signaled the dawn of a new era. Theyminers' groups meet in the open air on the border separating the made a promise—which they superficially kept—that workers would be allowed under the new banner of solidarity to continue identifying with one another and their class as they had done

58 The Triumph of Propaganda The Flag in Feature Films j 59before. \"So where do I belong? I belong with m y friends, from m y the last\" {Kolberg). H a r l a n tried t o p e r s u a d e his v i e w e r s t h a t theown class,\" says Heini Völker's father, the unemployed C o m m u ­ decision to go to w a r or \"to eliminate life that is no longer w o r t hnist played not unsympathetically by the well-known actor Hein­ living,\" i.e., to interfere with people's personal happiness, w a srich George. U s i n g films s u c h as Quex, N a z i p r o p a g a n d i s t s h o p e d actually made by those most directly affected by those decisions,to facilitate the integration of the senior Herr Völker's impover­ that is, by the particular figure in the film with w h o m the audienceished comrades into the National Socialist movement. And by was supposed to identify.promising that \"everyone has to have a job and bread,\" StormTrooper Brand made himself a champion of the unemployed Perhaps the best indicator of the subtle effectiveness of Naziworkers of the left. However, this classless new class of National propaganda films is the fact that for the past several years, downSocialists did not end the class system as such; it simply put an to the present, a Munich cinema has shown them every Sunday,end to proletarian class consciousness as symbolized by the red hyping them as smash hits and effectively marketing them underflag. The color red of the socialist movement would eventually be the series title \"Stars That N e v e r Die.\" Opfergang is p r o m o t e d astransmuted into the red of National Socialism, made brighter still \"one of Veit H a r l a n ' s best a n d m o s t beautiful color films.\" J o h a n ­by the white solar disk with the swastika in the middle symboliz­ n e s M e y e r ' s Männerwirtschaft (The O d d C o u p l e , 1 9 4 1 ) is \"a hilari­ing strength and the future. At the same time, the swastika repre­ ous film about love that will make you forget all your cares\"sented the demise of the red star of the Soviets which the Nazis —^which, of course, w a s precisely the point during the war. A p p a r ­regarded as a proletarian fetish. ently, the ideology that was insinuated into the film is no more dis­ tracting today than it was then. After 1933 overtly ideological Nazi feature films with columnsof marching Hitler Youth or Storm Troopers were no longer pro­ Notesduced. The Propaganda Ministry was afraid that showing a lot ofbrown uniforms on the screen might be counterproductive. 1. Fritz Lang, quoted in E. Beyfuss and A. Kosowsky, eds.. Das KulturfilmbuchGoebbels u s e d SA-Mann Brand (1933) to illustrate his criticism of (Berlin, 1924), p. 31.motion pictures that adhered too rigidly to Nazi ideology: \"Wedon't want to see our Storm Troopers marching across the screen 2. Helmut Regel, \"Historische Stoffe als Propagandaträger\" in Der Spielfilm inor the stage. They're supposed to march in the streets.\"^* After all, Dritten Reich: Dokumentation des 1. Arbeitsseminars der Westdeutschen Kurzfilm­he wrote, the National Socialist regime \"never ordered anybody to tage Oberhausen. Leitung: Hilmar Hoffmann, Manfred Dammeyer, Willmake films about the SA. On the contrary... it considers too many Wehling (Oberhausen, 1966).such films a threat.\"^'' Of the approximately 1,150 feature filmsproduced in Nazi Germany, five percent at most were explicitly 3. Helmut Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, vol. 2, p. III.propaganda films, and of these the majority were either historical 4. Louis Lochner, ed., Goebbels Tagebücher aus den Jahren 1942-43, mit anderenfilms or war movies. This does not mean, however, that other fea­ture-length films did not serve the needs of propaganda. The pro­ Dokumenten (Zürich, 1948), English translation The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943paganda was simply more subtle. Stylistically instructive in this (New York, 1948).r e g a r d is the m o s t successful of all N a z i films B o r s o d y ' s Wunsch­ 5. Joseph Goebbels on 19 April 1942 at a ceremony on the eve of Hitler's fifty-konzert (Request Concert, 1940), as well as Liebeneiner's Ich klage third birthday, quoted in Helmut Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, vol. 2, p. 112.an (I A c c u s e , 1 9 4 1 ) a n d , in the latter stages of the w a r , i m p o r t a n tfilms by H a r l a n s u c h as Opfergang (Sacrifice, 1 9 4 4 ) a n d Kolberg 6. Ibid., p. 114.(1945). In each film love stories were used to capture the audi­ 7. Fritz Hippler, Betrachtungen zum Filmschaffen (Berlin, 1942), p. 79.ence's attention. The background against which these apparently 8. George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (Cambridge, Mass., 1903), act IIIi n n o c u o u s stories unfolded w a s a w a r of conquest (Wunschkonz­ert), euthanasia {Ich klage an), a n d a \"seemingly\" pointless e x a m p l e (Don Juan in Hell).of last-ditch resistance to invasion, i.e., the idea of \"holding out to 9. Heinz Guderian, Erinnerungen eines Soldaten (Neckargemünd, 1960), English translation Panzer Leader (London, 1955).

60 The Triumph of Propaganda +3 + 10. The name is short for Quecksilber or quicksilver, i.e., mercury, and alludes to REASONS FOR THE RISE Heini's quick wit and sprightliness. OF HITLER 11. The August 1937 issue, no. 1070, of the Party's secret \"Report on Germany\" Excursus on the Origins of National Socialism was obliged to note that \"promiscuity ... being a fact\" in the Hitler Youth, resulted in sexual permissiveness. A man by the name of Griinberger reported Thus, as Nietzsche said, the gentlest part of our nature must become that during the 8th Party congress in Nuremberg about 900 BDM girls had the toughest. We must rise above ourselves, onward and upward, become pregnant. until our stars are below us. 12. Gerd Albrecht, comp., Arbeitsmaterialien zum nationalsozialistischen Propa­ Joseph Goebbels^ gandafilm Hitlerjunge Quex (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), p. 20. Some fifty years after the collapse of the Nazi reign of terror, w e13. E. W. Möller quoted in Joseph Wulf, Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich. are still grappling with the question of how a Stalingrad, a Coven­ (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1966), p. 243. try, or a n A u s c h w i t z could happen. The so-called Historikerstreit or \"historians' debate\" raged in Germany in the 1980s. The debate14. Illustrierter Vilm-Kurier (Berlin), vol. 15,1933. was triggered by the May 1986 Römerberg Colloquium in Frank­ furt a m Main^ and Jürgen Habermas's rejoinder to the theories15. \"Die Fahne ist die neue Zeit,\" in Kinematograph (Berlin), 12 September 1933. advanced by Ernst Nolte, Michael Stürmer, and Andreas Hill- gruber, w h i c h he titled Eine Art Schadensabwicklung (A Kind of Set­16. Oskar Kaibus, Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst, pt 2: Der Tonfilm (Altona- tling of Damages).^ The w a y in which conservative historians Bahrenfeld, 1935), pp. 121f. have tried to deny the uniqueness of these calamides highlights G e r m a n y ' s continuing search for a bearable past.\" *'17. Joseph Goebbels in a letter to Ufa Director E. H. Corell (25 September 1933) in Joseph Goebbels, Der Angriff: Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich, 1935). The direction in which this kind of \"high-wire balancing act between creating meaning from the past and de-mythologizing\"18. Illustrierter Film-Kurier (Berlin), vol. 15, no. 1975,1933. (Michael Stürmer) is headed is obvious—namely, to step out of Hitler's shadow and disencumber today's Germany of the \"bur­19. llustrierter Film-Kurier (Berlin), vol. 15, no. 2034,1933. den\" of the crimes committed by the Nazis, including the system­ atic murder of six million European Jews under National Socialism.20. Hanns Heinz Ewers, Horst Wessel: ein deutsches Schicksal (Stuttgart, 1933). In his 1 9 6 3 book Faschismus in seiner Epoche* Ernst Nolte a r g u e d21. Curt Belling, Der Film in Staat und Partei (Berlin, 1936), p. 70. that the rise of fascist movements, including National Socialism, should be understood as a counterrevolution by bourgeois liber­22. Joseph Wulf, Theater und Film im Dritten Reich (Gütersloh, 1964), p. 335. alism against the \"threat of Bolshevism.\" His theory of fascism as23. llustrierter Film-Kurier (Berlin), vol. 14, no. 1890,1932.24. Valerian Polianskij, \"Das Banner des Proletkult,\" Ästhetik und Kommunikation (Hamburg), vol. 2, no. 5 / 6 , February 1972, pp. 85f.25. Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (London, 1947), p. 240.26. Joseph Goebbels in a speech delivered on 19 May 1933, quoted in Gerd Albrecht, comp., Arbeitsmaterialien zum nationalsozialistischen Propagandafilm Hitlerjunge Quex, p. 442.27. Kinematograph (Berlin), 11 October 1933.

62 The Triumph of Propaganda Reasons for the Rise of Hitler 63the \"reaction to a threat\" misled him ultimately to become an experiences and modes of thinking to succeeding generations.apologist for the Holocaust. In a 1986 essay titled Zwischen Mythosund Revisionismus ( B e t w e e n M y t h a n d R e v i s i o n i s m ) , N o l l e Consequently, the starting point for coming to grips with andespoused the incredible theory that the September 1939 declara­tion by Chaim Weizmann (President of the Jewish World Con­ learning from the recent past {Vergangenheitsbewältigung) has to begress) that the Jews were in a state of war with Germanyamounted to a \"declaration of war\" against the Nazis and there­ anchored in the present, not in a reinterpretation of the past.fore \"entitled\" Hitler to segregate Jews as prisoners of war and todeport them. In fact, the date September 1939 itself is an utter Horst-Eberhard Richter has described the psychodynamic mecha­canard, for it obscures the fact that the declaration was made fouryears after the promulgation of the Nuremberg racial laws, nearly nisms involved in this process.one year after the pogrom of November 1938, and immediatelyafter the introduction of the Yellow Star of David as a badge to This in no sense diminishes the uniqueness of the Nazis' crimes.mark Jews as \"subhumans.\" They live on as grave warnings and reminders of events unique in F r o m this point it was but a short step to the following conclu­sion: \"The so-called [emphasis a d d e d b y the author] annihilation of history, which is why Richter is correct in saying that these singu­the Jews during the Third Reich was a reaction to or a distortedimitation of [other acts of state terrorism], but it was not a unique larly horrible memories offer Germans a special opportunity. It isevent nor the first act of its kind.\" What strikes us here is the w a yin which Nolte has subliminally accepted the same reasons important for the younger generation \"to use the example of theiradvanced by the Nazis themselves and then refurbished and reusedthem, e.g., the \"justification\" for taking action against the Jews, the parents and grandparents to recognize their own potential for set­Holocaust as a \"reaction\" to a \"threat,\" to an \"Asiatic deed.\"^ Argu­ments once repressed have resurfaced in covert form, but are ting off in d a n g e r o u s directions.\"'' Thus, National Socialism willnonetheless effective. not become some \"exotic exception.\" Instead, it will be a \"didactic As Horst-Eberhard Richter has written, \"The most importantomission on the part of both victors and vanquished was (and is) d r a m a \" about what h u m a n beings are capable of.not to have understood the phenomenon of Nazism as merely theradical consequence of a universal temptation to which we are all This approach does more justice to history than the formulaicprone. Hitler was unique. Auschwitz was unique. But the Ger­mans under Hitler who submitted to his inhumane regime were cliche \"empathetic understanding\" (Verstehen) that lies behind theno different from their offspring today, and they, in their turn,share these predispositions with many other nationalities.\"* a t t e m p t s at explanation undertaken by Nolte e t al N o t long ago, It is not easy or pleasant, of course, for Germans to live with Dolf Sternberger vehemently rejected Nolte's attempt \"to maketheir past. However, the intent of this kind of historical interpre­tation is to d e n y responsibility (but not guilt) for w h a t h a p p e n e d in Auschwitz comprehensible.\" \"In fact, the sadistic atrocities sub­German history and—this is the important point—to refuse tolearn any lessons from it. In actual fact, though, it is virtually sumed under the name 'Auschwitz' are totally incomprehensible;impossible to become a disinterested party to this history—least ofall by engaging in the kind of interpretive gymnastics illustrated all one can do is report them. Even if it could be shown that theabove. For history continues to affect us through our contact withthe people who participated in it. They inevitably pass on their plan for the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question' had been hatched in Hitler's brain as some kind of response to earlier ('more original') atrocities committed by the Bolsheviks, this still would not make the execution of the plan, namely the actuality of indus­ trialized mass murder, one whit more comprehensible. At most, new light would be shed on the twisted minds of those who car­ ried out the crimes.... If it is true that the purpose of scholarship is understanding, then one would have to conclude that scholarship is unfit to contribute to our knowledge of the 'Auschwitz' phe­ nomenon\" (Dolf Sternberger, \"Unverstehbar\" [\"Incomprehensi­ ble\"], Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 April 1988). There is, of course, another problem in conducting research on the history of fascism over and above the dilemma posed by psy­ chological and moral determinism, i.e., the complex nature of the fascist phenomenon which, in its outward manifestations and at saferethe time of its birth, sought to embrace every of life. The result is that the various theories on the origins and role of fascism differ not only because of their different ideological premises and methodologies, but also with regard to the aspects of the subject they emphasize, that is, with regard to the characteristics that a

64 The Triumph of Propaganda Reasons for the Rise of Hitler 65particular school of thought considers the decisive factors in the interested primarily in the history of the psychological and socialdevelopment of fascist ideologies and regimes. conditions that made fascism possible. Therefore, we must deal with questions such as the following: Why did so many people Theories about fascism existed well before fascism came to find fascism attractiye? What kind of people willingly allowedpower in Germany, for example, the Marxist analysis of Italian themselves to be rnesnferlzed and carried away by the behaviorfascism by August Thalheimer (1930),* and the studies by Her­ and self-portrayal of Nazis in these documentaries and newsreels?mann Heller and Theodor Geiger. The attempts at explanation W h a t did N a z i s m appeal to xvithin these individuals? Fascism'sreflect the various forms assumed by the subject under study. allure was not based primarily on rational grounds. Rather, it wasGeorgi Dimitroff (1935) described the \"class character of fascism,\"' triggered by external phenomena that struck a chord within eachReinhard Optiz saw fascism as the \"dictatorship of monopoly cap­ individual—songs, forests of flags, parades, the cult of the bodyital,\"'\" which sought to standardize society while prosecuting or beautiful, symbols of fire, etc., which is why w e are chiefly con­proscribing any efforts to oppose its monopoly. Besides these cerned with the aesthetics of fascism. Ultimately, its appeal hadMarxist theories there are a number of writers who have focused religious implications that are revealed in the Nazis' own strategictheir studies of National Socialism on the person of Adolf Hitler, plans. To quote directly from Hitler:primarily Joachim C. Fest,\" John Toland,'^ and Friedrich Heer.'^Several sociopsychological theories concentrate on the mecha­ The broad masses of a people consist neither of professors nor ofnisms and phenomena that occur below the surface of political diplomats. The scantiness of the abstract knowledge they possessand economic events. Wilhelm Reich'* and Klaus Theweleit'^ directs their sentiments more to the world of feeling.... Their emo­investigated the writings and pronouncements of the fascists tional attitude at the same time conditions their extraordinary sta­themselves, studying them to discover the underlying psycholog­ bility. Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs lessical mechanisms that would explain the effect of historical, social, to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, anda n d political d e v e l o p m e n t s on the individual a n d the reasons for the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth consisted lessthe mass appeal of Hitler and his movement. Finally, in a broader in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanati­context, the history of enlightened industrial society was seen to cism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria wfiich drovebe moving in the direction of standardization [or \"mass culture\"], them forward.\"self-alienation, and the worship of modern technology (Adorno/Horkheimer, '^ Ralf Dahrendorf).'^ Hitler decided in favor of a secularized, surrogate nationalist-reli­ gious self-image that culminated in his pronouncement: \"I awak­ Each of the above-mentioned theories illuminates specific ened the masses.\"aspects of the complex issue of National Socialism, and in princi­ple they are not rriutuatf/exclusive, though their methods proba­ It is now easier to determine which segments of the populationbly are to some degree. So for those who have to live with the past regarded Hitler as their redeemer and believed fanatically in aand who seek an explanation of (not absolution from) pre-1945 national Götterdämmerung. F o r a long time National Socialism w a shistory, some of the ideas and explanations advanced by these considered an \"ideology of the middle class,\"^° though even thendivergent theories can be extremely useful in helping to under­ the t e r m \"middle class\" (Mittelstand) r a i s e d m a n y p r o b l e m s .stand conditions before and during the Nazi dictatorship. As Saul Today it is more generally accepted that the NSDAP, by the earlyFriedländer writes. National Socialism is \"in its singularity, as in 1930s, h a d b e c o m e a Volkspartei, i.e., it attracted voters from allits general aspects, the result of a large number of social, eco­ sections of the population—middle class, upper class, and evennomic, and political factors, of the coming to a head of frequently working class, though the last remained underrepresented.^'analyzed ideological currents, and of the meeting of the mostarchaic myths and the most modern means of terror.\"'* After the onset of the Depression, white-collar workers were hard hit by the Weimar republic's lack of social security since they Within the context of this study of the National Socialist view had virtually no unions to represent their interests, making theirand depiction of reality as reflected in the documentaries and slide d o w n the social ladder that m u c h bumpier if they lost theirnewsreels produced by the Nazi propaganda machine, we are jobs. In an essay titled \"The White-CoUar Worker\" (Die Angestellten)

66 The Triumph of Propaganda Reasons for the Rise of Hitler 67Siegfried Kracauer explained their susceptibility to fascism by both future-oriented and able to communicate its hopes andshowing how this group of salaried workers, which began to desires to the masses in an increasingly radicalized society. It isemerge in Germany in the early twentieth century and continued one of history's tragedies that the forces of the left were too half-to evolve through the 1920s and 1930s, was unable to develop a hearted and too late in establishing a united front.sense of class consciousness and create organizations to represent In his t w o - v o l u m e psychoanalysis of fascist male fantasies tidedits interests.^^ However, those who ascribe the effectiveness of the Männerphantasien,Klaus Theweleit describes the reasons for theNazi propaganda machine during the 1920s and early 1930s solely deep-seated desire of men to exhibit their power, to lose themselvesto its promise to eliminate unemployment and social grievances in combat, to get off \"the liberating shot,\" a desire that blocked outclearly miss the point. A Nazi election announcement dating from their conscious minds if not everything that m a d e them individual1932 d e s c r i b e d H i Ü e r not only as \"^he last hope\" .Q£.those \"who human beings. In examining men's fantasies Theweleit used auto-have lost everything—house and home, savings, livelihood, the biographies and diaries of World War I veterans who later becamestrength to work,\" but also, with nationalist and religious over- members of the Freikorps. The way in which these men—and ittones, as the \"shining beacon of all those who dream of a future was, of course, almost exclusively men who determined Nazi ide-for Germaiv);\" \"who believe in Germany's resurrection.\"^^ ology and strategy—depicted their wartime experiences in retro-Ralf Dahrendorf and others have underscored the myth of the spect is, in m y opinion, inadequately described by the term \"sexualleader, i.e., the idea of a Führer w h o would lead the Germans repression,\" used b y Wilhelm Reich in his Massenpsychologie desthrough a \"storm of steel\" to a twilight of the gods. This was the Faschismus to pinpoint the source of fascist p o w e r fantasies. Indeed,Utopianaspect of nationalism he viewed as a \"brutal break with the Nazis considered these Freikorpsmen the epitome of the indi-t r a d i t i o n a n d a s t r o n g p u s h t o w a r d m o d e r n i t y . \"^^ Hitler h a d vidual combatant who came to s3nnbolize the role played by thepromised to achieve secular, nationalist transcendence by means heroic individual in the struggle of the fascist community. Filmsof an exhilarating revolution that w o u l d institutionalize the i(Jea such as Hitlerjunge Quex, SA-Mann Brand, a n d Hans Westmar c o m -that only \"might m a k e s right.\" W h a t w e n o w call a'seizure \"(if municated this heroic ideal to millions of moviegoers.power or a takeover of power was always referred to by the Nazis Theweleit shows that these fighters w e r e not examples of theas a \"revolution,\" a revolution that was to encompass every aspect neurotic repression of sexual desires lived out in fantasies glorify-of life. To lay the groundwork for this revolution, the Nazis por- ing war. Rather, he writes, they exhibited signs of the so-calledtrayed social conditions in the Weimar republic as miserable and \"basic fault\"^'Svhich prevented them from ever developing a viablethe republic's political standing in the world as hopeless. The fact ego capable of coping with life, i.e., an individual personality.that the Nazis recruited so many of their voters from the bour- Theweleit cites the repressive education of children in the Wil-geois conservative and reactionary parties (mainly the DNVP), helnune era as the cause of this \"basic fault.\" For the total destruc-while the Catholic parties (Zentrum and BVP) and the parties of tion of these men's individuality he blames the war that robbedthe left were less affected until 1932,^^ showed just how quickly _them a n d the rest of their generation of their youth. These menthe National Socialists succeeded in mobilizing the hopes and h a d b e c o m e fixated on the w a r to the exclusion of everything else,fears of the lower middle class—hopes and fears that were trig- and w h e n it came to a less than glorious end, they lost the onlygered in equal measure by the Weimar republic's failed social poli- thing that had given meaning to their lives. In their memoirs theycies, the defeat of Germany in World War I, and the \"diktat of fantasized about having been a bulwark against \"red floods,\"Versailles.\" Last but not least. Hitler used the media to turn a cli- \"rifle-women\" {Flintenweiher), \"oceans of slime, dirt, a n d pulp.\"mate of instability into something approaching an atmosphere of For them, battle was an \"inner experience\" (Ernst Jünger). Theyrevolutionary change in the name of a dynamic, racially \"pure\" internalized it. In this sense, they became the avant-garde of theGermany purged of the power of \"Jewish\" high finance and Nazi attitude toward life and models for all those w h o wished tocleansed of Marxism. lead Germany to power and glory, all those who were incapable ofExcept for the Nazis, the left—at the other end of the political doing anything else—assunüng we can give credence to this psy-s p e c t r u m — r e p r e s e n t e d the only Utopian m o v e m e n t that w a s chological explanation.

68 The Triumph of Propaganda I Reasons for the Rise of Hitler 69 It would be unfair to extrapolate to the other members of the H the individual much more directly and profoundly than the mere generation of World War I in Germany the psychological mecha­ H nisms that were supposedly operating in the psyche of the Frei- ^1 ipnrdoimvidseuatlo einlitmo inmaates s uonregmapnlioz aytmi oennst, amnidlitraercyti,fya nodthpearrsaomciialli tialrlsy. korpsmen. On the other hand, the Freikorpsmen certainly Tg rhoeuapess—thhetaidciztaatkioen opfopssoelistsiicosn—tohf aatllis,sptheerteostaol finptuegbrliactiolinfeo. fTthe represented one of the idealistic images of Nazi ideology and I \"inmost powerful battalions\" h a d b e c o m e the \"highest culture.\" would soon become role models for the millions of German men \"r The Nazis had another name for the totalist or totalitarian aes­ and boys who related to the experience of war through books, k' tthhetic; they called it p r o p a g a n d a . It is practically impossible t o d a y pamphlets, and films glorifying these protofascist warriors. to imagine the impact of this propaganda without a knowledge of htoo w history h a d prepared the masses to respond to it. In the 1 9 2 0 s Depersonalization left its mark on every aspect of the subse­ the attitudes of an entire generation had been formed by the trau­ quent Nazi aesthetic: combat, power, the exaltation of death, the matic experience of having \"pointlessly\" risked their lives in wargreat phallic hero standing alone amid the tumult of battle. In ide­ and then having a \"humiliating\" peace foisted upon them. Thealizing the archetypal soldier, it m a d e the idea of fulfillment feeling of pointlessness recurred after World War II, but in thisthrough battle and absorption into the mass part of these men's case people assessed the w a r quite differently. The surrender wasdeepest desires—men who were empty shells without the masses not considered a \"humiliation\"; in fact, at least a majority felt it tothey had led as conquering heroes but that had shamelessly aban­doned them in course of the First World War. be a liberation. ^, \"Finally, there is ecstasy—a state of mind granted not only to This radically different assessment is one of the many reasonsthe holy man, to great writers and great lovers, but also to the that the feeling of meaninglessness after 1945 did not develop agreat in spirit. Ecstasy is an intoxication beyond all intoxications, d j m a m i c similar to that of the 1920s. The East G e r m a n film Diea release that bursts all bonds ... Man in ecstasy becomes a violent Russen kommen (The Russians A r e C o m i n g , 1 9 6 8 / 8 7 ) , directed b ystorm, a raging sea, roaring thunder. He merges with the cosmos, Heiner Carow, shows the last days of World War II through theracing toward death's dark gates like a bullet toward its target.And should the waves crash purple above him, he will be long eyes of the 16-year old Hitler Youth Günter and how his hopespast all consciousness of movement or transition; he will be aw a v e gliding back into the flowing sea.\"^^ Jünger celebrates w a r as and values are shattered overnight. However, since the idea ofa sexual experience. In another part of the book he writes: \"Blood limiting the film's perspective to that of a young fascist hero (awhirled through our brains and pulsated through our veins, as if first time for a Defa^^ picture) w a s apparently a bit too radical foranticipating a long-awaited night of love—^but this night w o u l d be the GDR, since in 1968 the country was trying to come to termsmore passionate and more furious.\"^' However, w a r is also a cul­ with the past, the film was consigned to the archives and was nottural experience. Here Ernst Jünger is describing the old social premiered until 1987. Entire sequences from Veit Harlan's NaziDarwinist assumptions: the cultural superiority of the victor, the p r o p a g a n d a film Kolberg w e r e edited in so as to emphasize the^oneness of victory, power, a n d culture. J ü n g e r ' s entire book Der drama surrounding the battle for the fortress town of Kolberg—Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Battle as Inner Experience) is a n i m a t e d the sacrifices made by the townspeople, their ability to hold out toby the glorification of battle and uses the same style throughout. the end, and above all the fact that the decision was taken by a civilian militia rather than the regular military. In Die Russen kom­ O n c e again Ernst Jünger a n d once again Der Kampf als inneresErlebnis: \"Regardless of h o w great a culture is, if men's nerves fail, men the y o u n g people of the village see Kolberg at the local cinema,it is nothing more than a giant with feet of clay. And the more mas­sive its structures, the more horrible the collapse ... therefore it is and their reactions reflect the various functions of propagandathe sacred duty of the highest culture to have the most powerful films: to divert people's attention from the daily experience of w a rbattalions.\"^ In other words, culture in all its aspects is synony­ (a soldier on leave and a young woman use the time in the theatermous with having the best military forces. Here at last it is per­ for a bit of hanky-panky); to motivate them to carry on the warfectly clear that fascism had another dimension, one that affected and be ready to die. The faces of the younger Hitler Youth are aglow after the Kolbergers finally repel the French attack on the town's fort.

70 The Triumph of Propaganda Reasons for the Rise of Hitler 71 \"Until now it seems as though the fascists have been consulted effectiveness as a tool of propaganda: \"The way in which a directortoo little about fascism, while those who claim to understand it arranges a shot reflects his attitude toward a subject—his affection,have been consulted too much.\" Though there is a good deal of his hatred, his pathos, or his mockery. Hence the propagandistictruth in this the starting point of Klaus Theweleit's study, it does power of the film medium. For the director does not have to provenot mean that National Socialism should be tied primarily to the his point of view; he leaves it u p to us to absorb it visually. \"^^person of Adolf Hitler. On the contrary, by personalizing the sys­tem in this w a y one lays oneself open to the suspicion of suc­ The eye of the camera and montage—two devices available tocumbing to the spell of the Hitler myth, as is the case of Joachim the filmmaker—help the viewer to accept film as reality. Irre­Fest's d o c u m e n t a r y Hitler—eine Karriere (Hitler: the W h o l e Story, sistibly, they draw the moviegoer into their version of reality,1977). Rather, the point is to analyze the psychological and social based on laws established in authoritarian fashion by the director.conditions of the people w h o fell under the Führer's spell, w h o There is no escape. In this respect, though, film is no more than aburst into tears when they saw the documentaries and newsreels reflection and a fimction of the modern industrialized world thatin those days, who enthusiastically shouted \"Heil\" thousands gave birth to it, a world that negates the individual, as the Naziupon thousands of times. documentary shows us in such exemplary and cynical fashion. Film epitomized and perfected the one factor that formed the In order to generate this kind of enthusiasm millions of times basis of the entire Nazi movement and that, in a much broaderover, the Nazis put every available medium and means of com­ sense than is connoted by the term today, embraced every areamunication at the service of their propaganda machine. Still, it is and aspect of life—propaganda.worth emphasizing with regard not only to the success but also tothe form and content of Nazi propaganda that Goebbels mainly Notesused the most modern, cutting-edge means of mass communica­tion, i.e., radio and, most powerful and effective of all, film. 1. Joseph Goebbels, \"Der totale Krieg\" in Joseph Goebbels, Der steile Aufstieg (Munich, 1944), p. 128. In Dialektik der Aufklärung, A d o r n o and H o r k h e i m e r note that\"the step from the telephone to the radio has clearly distinguished 2. Cf. Hilmar Hoffmann, ed.. Gegen den Versuch, Vergangenheit zu verbiegen [withthe roles. The former still allowed the subscriber to play the role of essays by Martin Broszat, Gordon Craig, Jürgen Habermas, Hans Mommsen etsubject, and w a s liberal. The latter is democratic: it turns all partic­ al.j (Frankfurt am Main, 1987). See also Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Pastipants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); Richard J. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow (New York,p r o g r a m s which are all exactly the same.\"^^ However, as they go on 1989); Peter Baldwin, ed.. Reworking the Past (Boston, 1990).to bolster their argument, they draw most of their examples fromthe most avant-garde technology in the field of art—film. A d o r n o 3. Jürgen Habermas, \"Eine Art Schadensabwicklung\" in Die Zeit (Hamburg), vol.and Horkheimer are not opposed to the technological advances in 29,11 July 1986, p. 40.film production and the creation of fantasy, but to the use to whichthey are put in standardizing the production of thoughts and ideas. 4. Ernst Nolte, Faschismus in seiner Epoche (Munich, 1963), English translationPublished in 1944 and deeply affected by the phenomenon of fas­ Three Faces of Fascism (New York, 1965).cism, the book sees the cause of the \"self-destructiveness of theEnlightenment\"^^ in the totalitarian Gleichschaltung of the e x p r e s ­ 5. Ernst Nolte in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 June 1986.sion of ideas by means of industrial technology. 6. Horst-Eberhard Richter, Leben statt machen (Hamburg, 1987), p. 110; cf.: Helmut Färber analyzes the unique opportunity of the film Hilmar Hoffmann, \"Zukunft ist wieder denkbar\" in Frankfurter Rundschau, 21m e d i u m to influence the masses: \"In film, reality, imagery, and the May 1988.commercial-like use of imagery become one, creating a second-ratereality. Even images that are inherently incongruous can be, as it 7. Horst-Eberhard Richter, Leben statt machen, p. 141.were, forced into a relationship. In this sense, film is directly relatedto demagoguery.\"^^ Bela Balazs points to another aspect of film's 8. \"Über den Faschismus\" in Gegen den Strom, Organ der KPD, Berlin (Opposi­ tion), 1930; now in Abendroth, Wolfgang, comp., Faschismus und Kapitalismus, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1967).

72 The Triumph of Propaganda Reasons for the Rise of Hitler 73 9. Georgi Dimitrov, Arbeiterklasse gegen Faschismus (Moscow, 1935; Marmheim, 1975). 31. [Defa was the acronym for Deutsche-Film-AG, the name of the GDR's film company—Transl.]10. Reinhard Opitz, \"Über die Entstehung und Verhinderung von Faschismus,\" Das Argument (Berlin), no. 87,1974. 32. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Außlärung, p. 109.11. Joachim C. Fest, Hitler. 33. Ibid., p. 1. 34. Helmut Färber, Baukunst und Film: aus der Geschichte des Sehens (Munich, 1977).12. John Toland, Adolf Hitler (New York, 1976). 35. B^la Baläzs, Schriften zum Film, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), vol. 2: Der13. Friedrich Heer, Der Glaube des Adolf Hitler: Anatomie einer politischen Religiosität Geist des Films: Artikel und Aufsätze 1926-1931, p. 73. (Munich, 1968).14. Wilhelm Reich, Massenpsychologie des Faschismus (Copenhagen, 1933; Cologne, 1971), English translation Mass Psychology of Fascism (New York, 1970).15. Klaus Theweleit, Männerphantasien, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1977-78), Eng­ lish translation Male Fantasies, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, Minn., 1987-89).16. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt am Main, 1969; 1987), English translation Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York, 1944; 1972).17. Ralf Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland (Munich, 1965), English translation Society and Democracy in Germany (New York, 1967).18. Saul Friedländer, Kitsch und Tod (Munich, 1984), p. 118, English translation Reflections on Nazism: an Essay on Kitsch and Death (New York, 1984).19. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 371, English translation Man Kampf (Boston, 1943).20. Seymour Martin Lipset, Soziologie der Demokratie (Neuwied, 1962), English original Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (New York, 1960).21. See, e.g., Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter (Chapel Hill, 1983); Richard F. Hamilton, Who Voted For Hitler? (Princeton, 1982); Detlev Mühlberger, Hitler's Followers (London, 1991); Michael Kater, The Nazi Party (Cambridge, Mass., 1983). The extent of blue-collar Nazification before 1933 has remained contro­ versial. See, e.g., Conan Fischer, ed.. The Rise of National Socialism and the Work­ ing Classes in Weimar Germany (forthcoming).22. Siegfried Kracauer, Die Angestellten (Frankhirt am Main, 1930).23. Walter Hofer, ed., Der Nationalsozialismus: Dokumente 1933-1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1957), p. 24.24. Ralf Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland, p. 442. See also lan Kershaw, Der Hitler-Mythos (Shittgart, 1980), English translation The \"Hitler Myth\": Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987).25. See the studies cited in note 21 above. [DNVP stands for Deutschnationale Volkspartei or German National People's Party, Zentrum for the Catholic Center Party, and BVP for the Bayerische Volkspartie or Bavarian People's Party.—Transl.]26. Klaus Theweleit, Männerphantasien.27. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 212-3.28. Ernst Jünger, Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Berlin, 1922), p. 53.29. Ibid., p. 12.30. Ibid., p. 37.

Film Propaganda in the Third Reich 75 +4+ I movement), and later a Nazified eclectic mass culture were all part of the strategy. The most important component, though, was theFILM PROPAGANDA IN THEJ perfectly stage-managed public appearances of the Führer, which THIRD REICH Hitler had a flair for transforming into gigantic circus-like mass rallies. Unlike his political adversaries. Hitler did not travel across History of Propaganda the country by car or rail. H e preferred to use a plane and descend from the clouds like some mythical savior to the waiting crowdsThe most striking success of a revolution based on a philosophy of life of Germans below. Since the Nazis' mania for theatrical effectswill always have been achieved when the new philosophy of life as far and the way in which they staged their spectacular shows areas possible has been taught to all men and, if necessary, later forced already well known, the following brief comments should suffice.upon them ... Even though they considered \"propaganda\" the actual objec­ Adolf Hitleri tive of their policy (the content of which was more often than not of very low quality) and perfected the art during their period ofThe Nazis will always have a place in the annals of mass decei^ rule, the Nazis were not the inventors of the concept. Conse­ quently, a few remarks on the history of propaganda are war­and inciting hatred. N o one will dispute their right to this claim to ranted in order to provide an overview of the historical material that Hitler so unscrupulously appropriated and twisted for hisfame. In fact, it seems perfectly justifiable to characterize the own purposes.National Socialist movement as a \"propaganda movement.\" \"We Initially, the term propaganda had meaning only within the context of the Roman Catholic church, where it originated as partmust inspire propaganda to proceed at an active, modern pace, of the Counter Reformation. During the reign of Pope Gregory XV, the cardinals of the R o m a n C u r i a set u p the Sacra Congregatio deand w e inust endow it with life a n d breath,\" w a s Joseph Goeb­ Propaganda Fide ( t h e C o n g r e g a t i o n for t h e P r o p a g a t i o n o f t h e Faith), the chief purpose of which was to combat Lutheranism inbels's recommendation in a lecture delivered at Nuremberg on 16 Germany. Founded in 1622, it became both famous and infamous as the Counter Reformation's main institution for training mis­September 1935 to the Gau and Kreis propaganda leaders of the sionaries to spread the Catholic faith around the globe.movement. Unlike any other politician before or since. Hitler, During the French revolution of 1830, conspiratorial groups secularized the ecclesiastical term, calhng their international cam­from the time he began his political activity, had very definite paigns \"La Propaganda.\" T h e e x t r e m e left w e r e the first to \"propa­ gandize\" their various causes.ideas regarding the effectiveness a n 4 the methods of modern Proponents of revolutionary activism in Russia imported themass propaganda. ' ^^'^^•^j. concept of propaganda from France, along with the idea of agita­ tion. The anarchist Sergei G. Nechayev introduced the term into Even when the Nazi movement was made up of nothing more the vocabulary of Russian anarchism with the activist slogan \"tak­than a bunch of stragglers and numbered only several dozen ing propaganda to the people\" (1869). Coauthor of a work titledmembers, its rallies and recruitment meetings clearly differed Revolutionary Catechism, N e c h a y e v w a s later vehemently criticizedfrom those of other political splinter groups. Like a clever adver­ by Marx and Engels. H e died after being imprisoned for ten yearstising executive. Hitler had effectively planned a strategy for mar­ in Peter Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. Dostoyevsky, himself anketing his product, namely himself, never confusing propaganda adherent of \"utopian socialism,\" inunortalized S. G. Nechayev b ywith sales promotion. A uniform set of party symbols, a party basing the character Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky on thenewspaper (which was founded very early in the history of the f a m o u s anarchist in his Possessed, sometimes translated as Demons.

76 The Triumph of Propaganda Film Propaganda in the Third Reich 77 In 1903 Lenin ridiculed the competition to generate relevant \"could not avoid seeing ranked under her banners all the restlessideas for the purposes of indoctrination with his often-quoted and dissatisfied of any nation with which she might come in con­ironic remark that propaganda disseminates a lot of ideas to the flict.\"^ In 1 9 1 4 Asquith immediately set u p a n Office of P r o p a ­few, while agitation spreads a few ideas to the many. Be that as it ganda that came directly under the War Cabinet. Among hismay, Lenin's CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) was advisors was Lord Northcliffe, who for twenty years, until 1928,the first organized mass movement to use propaganda as an was Britain's press baron. As temporary director of propaganda ininstrument and a weapon to mobilize an entire nation. Radio and enemy countries under Lloyd George, he was able to expand histhe press were not the only media forced to pound the programs influence. Northcliffe fired the first shot in the journalistic worldof totalitarianism into the hearts and minds of the masses. The war by publishing in his various newspapers a horrific vision ofstate used literature, film, the fine arts, and even music as tools in \"child-molesting beasts.\" He celebrated the Allies' sustained pro­the campaign to protect the revolution from an unbridled indi­ paganda barrage as the third factor—aside from the land war andvidualism that could threaten the state's raison d'etre. H o w e v e r , it the war at sea—in deciding the outcome of the conflict: \"The mostwas not until 1932 that Stalin established socialist realism as the ordinary pictures could become rabble-rousing propaganda whenonly officially approved school of art within the Communist combined with captions that were in common use at the time, e.g.,empire. Henceforth, the depiction of social reality could be used under a photograph of German soldiers, the words 'And thenonly to emphasize the positive accomplishments of socialism as hordes of the Kaiser's child-murderers arrived.'\"^the supreme principle of the new reality. At the same time, theparty decreed that the \"new man\" was to be made the exemplary C h a r l i e C h a p l i n ' s film Shoulder Arms ( 1 9 1 8 ) , w h i c h K u r tSoviet hero of this new society. Any deviation from the general Tucholsky called a \"perfect satire of the military,\" was the story ofline of the party's officially established virtues was denounced as Charlie's dream about capturing the Kaiser. While it was generallyformalism or decadent bourgeois art—and not just verbally. condemned as vile enemy propaganda, Tucholsky, on the otherRepression, denial of permission to work, and persecution were h a n d , pleaded: \"This brilliant film should be s h o w n in darkestthe responses to any attempts at producing art on one's own. Germany. Cross the Rhine, Chaplin, cross the Rhine.\"* The most obviously unrestrained of all Allied p r o p a g a n d a films. The Kaiser Hitler pursued his plans to subordinate the press, the cinema, —Beast of Berlin, w a s advertised in a correspondingly hostile m a n ­and the arts to the purposes of Nazi propaganda with similar ner: \"Keep your guns in your pocket and don't shoot at the screenuncompromising vigor, albeit in a different direction with regard n e x t Friday, b e c a u s e that's the d a y w e ' r e s h o w i n g The Beast ofto subject matter. In his case, others had already laid the \"ground­ Berlin.\" There w a s n o absolute difference in quality between thework\" for him in Germany. In a letter to the War Ministry dated 4 inflammatory propaganda produced by the Allies and that turnedJuly 1917, General Erich Ludendorff had made the connection out by Imperial Germany in the First World War. Even Frenchbetween \"propaganda\" and the subject of this book—\"film.\" Premier Aristide Briand set up an office of p r o p a g a n d a (Maison deGiven the universal hatred of Germany provoked by American la Presse) in October 1 9 1 5 , w h i c h Georges C l e m e n c e a u raised to afilm propaganda and with a view to the \"further course of the war secretariat for propaganda toward the end of the war.... German film propaganda must make a special effort to clarifythe German point of view.\" Under Woodrow Wilson, who had been elected president on a platform to keep America out of the war, influential industrialists In fact, we see a worldwide and extremely effective film propa­ like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford gave their initial financialganda campaign waged during World War I by the powers support to pacifist films such as Intolerance (1916), directed by D. W.arrayed against Germany. From the outset of the war. Prime Min­ Griffith, a n d Civilization (1916), directed by T h o m a s Ince. Directorister Asquith continued the age-old British tradition of using pro­ James Stuart Blackton signaled a 180-degree change in attitude withpaganda as a weapon. Interestingly, in 1826 Foreign Secretary his The Battle Cry of Peace (1916), the first nationalistic dramatic fea­George Canning made a prescient statement in a speech to the ture film. When America entered the war on 5 April 1917, the Com­L o w e r H o u s e of Parliament in w h i c h he foresaw that if His mittee on Public Information took over responsibility for theMajesty's government went to war over Portugal, his country organization of U.S. film propaganda. Wartime U.S. propaganda

78 The Triumph of Propaganda Film Propaganda in the Third Reich 79newsreels were distributed by Pathe and Hearst and were seen in propaganda as used by our economic competitors\" and to sug­more than twenty thousand European movie theaters. George gest launching a series of counteroffensives. Germany, he said,Creel, w h o supervised film propaganda in his capacity as director must not allow itself to be pushed into a corner in the worldof the U.S. Film Division, summarized his achievements with a market. France had ostensibly spread anti-German \"hate\" filmsmeasure of self-satisfaction: \"In our battle for public opinion in in E g y p t in 1909 \"in order to acquire renown not only as theforeign countries, we overcame the obstacle of a hostile press in inventor of the motion picture but as the inventor of the 'hate'almost every case through our use of film to inform and adver­ film as well.\"tise.\"^ War propaganda is only successful w h e n the soil has beenprepared well in advance. Aldous Huxley wrote that \"political But it was not until the middle of the war in 1916 that Klitzschand religious propaganda is effective, it would seem, only upon was able to persuade the Supreme Command and the Foreignthose who are already partly or entirely convinced of its truth.\"* Office by arguing that the British government had allocated the Since the subject matter of propaganda films was often drearyand did not have great entertainment value, Hollywood, being equivalent of 80 nüUion marks solely for the purpose of produc­more interested in profit than politics, soon returned to producingschmaltzy melodramas after the end of the First World War. The ing \"hate\" films for its anti-German propaganda campaign ininterest in business to the exclusion of everything else helpsexplain the fact that America produced hardly one film from 1933 Latin America.^ To counter this effort, the German government,to the beginning of the Second World War that dealt with the sub­ject of Nazism. On the contrary, high-quality Nazi documentaries with the support of other interested parties, founded Deulig, as u c h as Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (1938) a n d glorifications of w a rlike Fritz Hippler's Sieg im Westen (Victory in the West, late 1 9 4 0 ) film company that through appropriate documentary films waspacked movie theaters in America right up to the beginning ofWorld War II. \"Cheer up, America—the show will go on\" assured to publicize the fatherland a t h o m e a n d a b r o a d . The Deutschean MGM slogan. Lichtspiel-Gesellschaft (German Motion Picture Company) In his war memoirs, published in 1919, Ludendorff confirmedthe fact that enemy propaganda was one of the causes of the wide­ assumed the task of producing and distributing propaganda filmsspread defeatism inside Germany: \"Blockade and propagandabegan gradually to undermine our fighting spirit ... Before the until General Ludendorff, ever the omnipotent commander,enemy propaganda w e were like a rabbit before a snake ... Thepropagandists were clever in understanding the effects of such decided to put film production under his authority. At the begin­p h r a s e s as 'a p e a c e w i t h o u t v i c t o r s or v a n q u i s h e d ' {Verständi­gungsfrieden, or p e a c e of understanding), 'post-war d i s a r m a m e n t , ' ning of 1917, there followed the establishment in Berlin of Bufa'league of nations,' and so on, on the German people.\"^ EvenHitler acknowledged that he ultimately \"learned enormously\" {das Königliche Bild-und Filmamt [Royal Picture a n d Film Office]),from \"the amazing skill and truly brilliant calculation of enemywar propaganda.\" set up purely as a government agency. Within a short time kiosks A s early as 1 9 1 0 L u d w i g JGitzsch, the publisher of the Leipziger carried film posters proclaiming \"The heroic exploits of ourIllustrierte Zeitung, h a d r e c o m m e n d e d a \"nationalist political incomparable soldiers\"; \"Kaiser Wilhelm in the midst of enemyadvertising campaign\" to counteract \"the encirclement policy of fire\"; \"Our soldiers parade proudly past the Supreme War Lord infuture enemy powers by using similar means of propaganda.\" their field-gray uniforms.\"Klitzsch invited the captains of German industry to the AdlonHotel in Berlin to alert them to \"the great effectiveness of film Ludendorff, the Quartermaster-General, was now in charge of another, different kind of ordnance—film. In order for film \"not to lose its enormous importance as a means of political and military influence, \" it is \"absolutely necessary for the successful prosecu­ tion of the war that film be used with utmost vigor wherever Ger­ many is still able to exercise its influence.\" In retrospect, this order, issued in 1917 by the Chief of the A r m y General Staff, m a y be con­ sidered the charter that actually established Ufa {Universum-Film- AG) in D e c e m b e r of that s a m e year. On 5 February 1917 Bufa commissioned the Imperator-Film- Gesellschaft to p r o d u c e a n official p r o p a g a n d a film titled Die Schuldigen des Weltkrieges (Those Responsible for the W o r l d W a r ) . The notes shown below, on which it was to be based, illustrate the Royal Picture and Film Office's naivete regarding effective counterpropaganda:

80 The Triumph of Propaganda Film Propaganda in the Third Reich 81 1. The instigators of the worldwide conflagration; and the motion picture companies controlled by Nordisk merged 2. Who fanned the flames? (Sir Edward Grey sitting behind his to form the new Ufa enterprise. The official mission of Ufa was nothing less than to advertise Germany's greatness. \"[Govern­ desk); ment directives] asked not only for unambiguous screen propa­ 3. Who added fuel to the fire? ((Clemenceau, the fanatic revanchist); ganda, but also for films that would give people in foreign 4. Who volimteered to be their accomplice? (Sazonov, the lackey of countries a picture of German culture .. the Entente); The new consortium's first report, published on 10 October 1918, 5. Who was the butcher of Sarajevo? (Cinoci [sic], the minister of reflects the spirit one would expect of an enterprise that was b o m as a result of the war: \"In close collaboration with Lieutenant Colonel war and purloiner of millions); von Haeften of the military department of the Foreign Office, Major 6. The gang of murderers and arsorusts; Grau of the Royal War Ministry, Privy Councillor Walter of the 7. Who ravaged and despoiled East Prussia? (Nikolayevich, the Reich Treasury, and under the guidance of Herr von Stauß of the Deutsche Bank, and with the direct participation of the Prince Don- murdering Cossack); nersmarck Foundation, the negotiations to effect a merger in the 8. Who wanted German children to go without milk and Ger­ film industry w e r e expanded. On the one hand, the merger repre­ sented a vigorous and promising enterprise, and on the other it man mothers to go without bread (Asquith, who planned to offered assurances that important questions in the areas of German starve us to death); propaganda and German cultural and popular education would be 9. Who allied himself with savage tribes on every continent? resolved in the spirit of the Imperial government. The private-sec­ (Poincare, England's loyal servant and Grey's co-conspirator); tor program was aimed at creating a concern in which the most 10. Who ordered German doctors, nurses, officers, and men to be tor­ important activities of the film industry, i.e., production, distribu­ tured, murdered, mutilated? (Delcasse, King Edward's minion); tion, and screening, w o u l d be adequately represented.\"^\" 11. Who is deceiving and swindling the whole world? (Briand, the windbag of the \"grande nation\"); E v e n at this time Ufa w a s already a quasi-governmental opera­ 12. Who is responsible for the Baralong incident and King Steffen tion. Consequently, it w a s not difficult for the Nazis \"to induce [this [sic] [possibly the Stephana, a British steamer sunk by the British oligopoly of different companies] to cooperate by offering specific themselves—Transl.]? Who is spoiling for a fight to the firush? economic incentives and autarkic protective measures and, after (Lloyd George, England's Satan); they had assumed power, gradually to transform it into a monop­ 13. Who is Europe's biggest hypocrite? (Bratianu the two-faced); oly subservient to their regime.\"\" So far, though, the Germans, in 14. Who violated his pledge to the Triple Alliance? (Sormino, the the words of Gottlieb Hqrmes, would not consider making movies most mendacious among this gang of thieves); \"like the Belgians, w h o *äefame our army and its supreme com­ 15. Who is going to prosecute them? (Hindenburg). manders, or like the French.\" Instead, after the peace treaty was signed, the naive Germans turned out movies \"that were heavilyEvidently, the project to p r o d u c e Die Schuldigen des Weltkrieges weighed down by didacticism, statistics, and other methods asso­never came to fruition. ciated with academe ... and that now, as at the time they were pro­ duced, would have little or no prospect of finding acceptance While the war was still in progress, Ludendorff prepared to abroad.\"^^ Hence, there was a determination quickly to reverse thecentralize filmmaking, with an eye \"to having a more systematic defensiveness reflected in the German cinema's underdevelopedand stronger influence on the great mass of the people in the inter­ chauvinism and, with the help of Ufa and the inclusion of nation­ests of the state by using general standardized themes.\" A certain alist themes, go over to the offensive on a worldwide scale.Major Alexander Grau, a press specialist in the War Ministry, wasdetailed to carry out Ludendorff's orders. Ludendorff showed his The G e r m a n Kulturfilm industry o w e d its rapid rise after Worldtrue colors when he founded the \"Tannenberg League\" in 1926. It War I to two men: Emil Georg von Stauß, president of thed e s c r i b e d itself as a militant Kampfbund ( F i g h t i n g L e a g u e ) Deutsche Bank, w h o successfully gave it the financial wherewithaldirected against so-called \"supranational powers\" such as Jews,Freemasons, Marxists, and Jesuits. With its stock of sharesamounting to about 25 million marks, of which the Reich tooko v e r one-third, Ufa w a s set u p as a virtual film cartel without a n ycompetition. Messter-Filmgesellschaft, P. Davidson's Film-Union,

82 The Triumph of Propaganda Film Propaganda in the Third Reich 83 through his bank's acquisition of the shares held by the Reich and ideological origins, the roots of which lie mainly in the nineteenth Nordisk, and the above-mentioned Alexander Grau, who was century. Here we will outline some of the theories of mass psy­ responsible for conceptualizing the plan. chology on which Hitler and his henchmen based their efforts to bring t h e m i n d o f the m a s s e s into line {gleichrichten) a n d stan­ Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the nationalist conservative party dardize their thinking, theories that they also used to give a \"sci­ from 1928 and cofounder of the so-called Harzburg Front, which entific\" underpinning to the staged spectacles that were bothbriefly assembled all the right-wing enemies of the Weimar contemptuous and destructive of human life and individuality. Republic in October 1931, soon appeared on the scene to help pavethe w a y for the development of the cinema into a tool for propa­ In his psychology of crowds, the French social psychologistganda. A cold, calculating profiteer who made a fortune out of the Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) developed a pseudoscientific, elitist,inflation of the 1920s, Hugenberg bought up dozens of provincial and cynical theory of man that became the basis for his rejection ofn e w s p a p e r s , including the m u c h - r e a d Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger. democracy and socialism. It also became the foundation for dem­With the acquisition of the huge Scherl Verlag and with his news agogues whose efforts were aimed at using—or more properly,agency, Hugenberg soon controlled the largest media empire that abusing—human beings and the truth. \"Mass psychology\" is ahad ever existed in Germany. After buying the Deulig film com­ variant of the nineteenth century conservative theory of revolu­pany and the bankrupt Ufa (1927), he also used the film medium tion. In his Psychologie des Foules, published in 1 8 9 5 , Le Bon usedto advance his reactionary views. The media mogul was therefore the following characteristics to identify individuals whose per­able to conduct an unrestrained campaign against the Weimar sonality has been submerged in a crowd and whom he contemp­republic and Stresemann, the Locarno Pact and the League of tuously termed \"primitive people\":Nations, internationalism, liberalism, socialism, and pacifism. Disappearance of the conscious personality, predominance of the Hugenberg's nationalistic weekly newsreels spread anachro­ unconscious personality, the turning by means of suggestion andnistic and chauvinistic ideas about German supremacy. They were contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical direction, the ten­originally designed as contributions to help the Kaiser regain his dency to inunediately transform the suggested ideas into acts.... Hethrone. After the attempt failed, Hugenberg exploited them with is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceasedgreater success to p u s h Hitler's völkisch ideas. Using his cartel-like to be guided by his will. Moreover, by the mere fact that he formsempire to manipulate public opinion, Hugenberg ultimately part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs on thehelped Hitler to achieve power. He had hoped, as a consequence, ladder of civilization.\"to realize his long-range personal and political goals with Hitler'shelp. But Hitler's gratitude to Hugenberg was short-lived. Less The individuals who have been reduced to the level ofthan six months after Hitler appointed Hugenberg Minister of \"automatons\" and whose sentiments and ideas coincide withEconomics in his first coalition cabinet after being named chancel­ those of all others in the crowd become ready targets of propa­lor, he used massive pressure to force the conservative press baron ganda. Even though Le Bon considered crowds, as a matter ofto resign his post on 26 June 1933. Hugenberg's resignation led to principle, destructive, he also recognized their \"heroic\" function,the dissolution of his party, the National People's Party (DNVP), a which m a d e them important to the Nazis: \"It is crowds ratherday later. than isolated individuals that may be induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an idea, that may be This short excursus does not seek to portray Nazi propaganda fired with enthusiasm for glory and honor, that are led—almostas a lineal heir to Catholic or even Stalinist propaganda. The only without bread and without arms, as in the age of the Crusades—direct line w a s the one that led from Ludendorff to Hitler. W h a t it to deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel, or as in 1793, todoes intend to show is that the Nazis did not originate the idea of defend the fatherland.\"''* In his chapter titled \"The Leaders ofp r o p a g a n d a . At the same time, however, it is impossible to Crowds and Their Means of Persuasion,\" Le Bon described theexplain Nazi propaganda's attempt to have a profound influence malleability of crowds as though he were establishing a set ofon ideas and attitudes—\"while disengaging the critical faculties guidelines for future fascists.{unter Ausschaltung des Denkens)\" (Hitler)—without referring to its

84 The Triumph of Propaganda Film Propaganda in the Third Reich 85 The most influential successor to Le Bon, the enemy of democ­ to determine the course of life and history, and thus to prove them­racy, was the Spanish cultural philosopher Ortega y Gasset. His selves dynamic realities.\"^^m o s t p o p u l a r work. La Rebelion de las Masas, published in 1 9 3 0 a n dstill popular today, represents a noteworthy variation on the the­ Conditions for the Rise of Hitlerory of mass psychology. According to Ortega y Gasset, the nega­tive qualities of the masses are not linüted to them alone; they The first task of propaganda is to win people for subsequent organiza­apply to the individual as well. This individual, whom he calls tion; the first task of organization is to win men for the continuation\"mass man,\" only serves to enhance the superior individual's of propaganda. The second task of propaganda is the disruption of thesense of his own superiority. Ortega's definition of the masses con­ existing state of affairs and the permeation of this state of affairs withcludes with the kind of imperious language that is difficult to the new doctrine, while the second task of organization must be theimagine writing today: \"The mass is all that which sets no value on struggle for power, thus to achieve the final success of the doctrine.itself—good or ill—based on specific grounds, but which feelsitself 'just like everybody' and nevertheless is not concerned about Adolf Hitier^^it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel as one with everybody else.\" A number of the works cited above laid the intellectual founda­ In his theory of the group leader, published in 1921, Sigmund tions and helped pave the way for Hitler and his propagandaFreud anticipated the emergence of the masses who would even­ machine. But ultimately it w a s contemporary political and socialtually be manipulated by a dictator. The g i s t of his theory is that factors that allowed these destructive seeds to fall on fertile soil.the m e m b e r s of a_grQup a r e b o u n d by libidinal ties, to i d e n t i f y How could such unimpressive surrogate ideals, such high-sound­with a leader w h o then uses those ties to become, as it were, the ing but empty formulations, and such immoral theories possiblygroup's \"superego.\" prove themselves \"dynamic realities\" (Thomas Mann)? In his Doktor Faustus (1947) T h o m a s M a n n introduces t h r o u g h In researching the question of what might have induced broadindirection an influential exponent of an overbearing elitism. segments of a nation of seventy million people to follow a politi­Clearly, the ideas he represents are those of the French socialist cal pied piper like Hitier, A d o r n o based his essay Aufarbeitung derGeorges Sorel (1847-1922) and are meant to induce the illustrious Vergangenheit (Working U p the Past) on A m e r i c a n studies in thegroup of gentiemen conversationalists, gathered in the postrevo- field of social psychology. A c c o r d i n g to these studies, the psycho­lutionary Munich of 1919, into good-humoredly approving the logical m a k e u p {Charakterstruktur) of voters, that is, of groups, isscrapping of truth, science, and reason. Mann has his chronicler defined in relation to factors such as power or powerlessness,Serenus Zeitblom recall this intellectual soiree with a sinking feel­ rigidity or flexibility, conventionalism, conformism, lack of self-ing in the pit of his stomach. Following the experience of Hitierism, determination, and, ultimately, \"the general lack of ability to learnMann takes Georges Sorel's theory on the positive role of myth through experience.\" A d o m o concludes that groups are fond ofand violence—a theory which is said to have had a powerful influ­ identifying with p o w e r per se and, w h a t is m o r e , d o so \"regardlessence on Mussolini—and uses it to to make the following point: of the particular nature [of that power].\" Basically, Adorno believes that most people have poorly developed egos, and in ... that in this age of the masses parliamentary discussion must their attempt to bolster them, they need to identify existentially prove entirely inadequate for the shaping of political decisions; with and have the protection of large groups. Adorno's interpre­ that in its stead the masses would have in the future to be pro­ tation follows Sigmund Freud's line of argument. vided with mythical fictions, devised like primitive battle-cries, to release and activate political energies. This was in fact the crass There is no need to go into the details of these kinds of socio- and flaming prophecy of the book: that popular myths or rather psychological interpretations. What we are ultimately interested those proper for the masses would become the vehicles of political in knowing is what kinds of people in what kinds of actual situa­ action—fables, insane visions, chimeras—which needed to have tions a n d with w h a t kinds of outlooks w e r e impelled to join the notfiing to do with truth or reason or science in order to be creative.