The Germans are an industrious, musical, law-abiding, tidy people -- says the narrator in this 1945 documentary by Frank Capra -- so how could they have turned into such monsters? Hitler would have said the Nazi adventures of World War II were an expression of German blood, but the writer tells us the ultimate cause was "tradition" or, as anthropologists would say, culture, not nature. Mention is made of famous German-Americans who escaped the trap of German culture: Admiral Nimitz, Wendell Wilkie, Henry J. Kaiser, and others.
Then we get an oversimple but still illuminating history of German militarism over the course of a hundred years or so. Americans don't really know much about international history, not even our politicians. We see footage of actors in costume during the period of Frederick the Great and Bismark, and documentary footage of Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler. We hear quotes taken from the writing and speeches of various German leaders, including all the above and von Clausewitz. It's kind of amusing. The quotes themselves are so barbaric that they must have been selected for their outrageousness and were surely taken out of context. Give me a Bible or a copy of Deepak Chopra and I'll select quotes that make each of them seem like tracts promoting Social Darwinism.
That initial presentation of the Germans as industrious, tidy, and so forth, establishes an eerie echo of Stephen Ambrose's description of a typical American GI's conception of the foreigners he fought with or through. The Arabs were filthy and disgusting liars. The Italians were phony and pushy. The French were dirty and couldn't be trusted. The British were stolid with no sense of humor. But the Germans were great! They knew how to take orders, they worked hard, they didn't cheat you, and they used toilet paper.
There is some particularly brutal footage of the victims of Nazi genocides and executions. Not just the pile of mannequin-like naked bodies we've become used to, but close ups of rotting corpses in Belgium, Italy, and Malmedy. There are a couple of live executions too. I'm not sure everyone would want to watch them.
So how does the film identify the heavies in the story? Well, Hitler and his goons, obviously. But the narrator comes very close to describing a military/industrial complex as well. This was about fifteen years before a retiring President Eisenhower warned us of the same tendency in the United States. And it gets positively spooky when the narrator describes the steps Hitler took in gaining absolute power -- destruction of unions, intolerance of dissent, a monopoly of the media, the silencing of scientists unless they agreed with the prevailing ideology, the paranoid notion that Germany was surrounded by hateful enemies, the persecution of communists and minorities. At times it sound positively frightening.
But it turns comic when the future of Germany is outlined. No more self rule until they learn their democratic lesson. This time there was no "truce," just "unconditional surrender." Their industry is destroyed. They are a beaten people and must admit it. (Nothing about turning the country into a traditional agrarian state, but almost.) The leaders are now the Allied military. We'll show them. And we DID. I think it was called the Wirtschaftswunder. In fifteen years everyone was driving Volkswagens with Blaupunkt radios.
Today, of course, they're the strongest economy in Europe, which isn't saying much, given the state of the global economy in general.
Then we get an oversimple but still illuminating history of German militarism over the course of a hundred years or so. Americans don't really know much about international history, not even our politicians. We see footage of actors in costume during the period of Frederick the Great and Bismark, and documentary footage of Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler. We hear quotes taken from the writing and speeches of various German leaders, including all the above and von Clausewitz. It's kind of amusing. The quotes themselves are so barbaric that they must have been selected for their outrageousness and were surely taken out of context. Give me a Bible or a copy of Deepak Chopra and I'll select quotes that make each of them seem like tracts promoting Social Darwinism.
That initial presentation of the Germans as industrious, tidy, and so forth, establishes an eerie echo of Stephen Ambrose's description of a typical American GI's conception of the foreigners he fought with or through. The Arabs were filthy and disgusting liars. The Italians were phony and pushy. The French were dirty and couldn't be trusted. The British were stolid with no sense of humor. But the Germans were great! They knew how to take orders, they worked hard, they didn't cheat you, and they used toilet paper.
There is some particularly brutal footage of the victims of Nazi genocides and executions. Not just the pile of mannequin-like naked bodies we've become used to, but close ups of rotting corpses in Belgium, Italy, and Malmedy. There are a couple of live executions too. I'm not sure everyone would want to watch them.
So how does the film identify the heavies in the story? Well, Hitler and his goons, obviously. But the narrator comes very close to describing a military/industrial complex as well. This was about fifteen years before a retiring President Eisenhower warned us of the same tendency in the United States. And it gets positively spooky when the narrator describes the steps Hitler took in gaining absolute power -- destruction of unions, intolerance of dissent, a monopoly of the media, the silencing of scientists unless they agreed with the prevailing ideology, the paranoid notion that Germany was surrounded by hateful enemies, the persecution of communists and minorities. At times it sound positively frightening.
But it turns comic when the future of Germany is outlined. No more self rule until they learn their democratic lesson. This time there was no "truce," just "unconditional surrender." Their industry is destroyed. They are a beaten people and must admit it. (Nothing about turning the country into a traditional agrarian state, but almost.) The leaders are now the Allied military. We'll show them. And we DID. I think it was called the Wirtschaftswunder. In fifteen years everyone was driving Volkswagens with Blaupunkt radios.
Today, of course, they're the strongest economy in Europe, which isn't saying much, given the state of the global economy in general.