User Reviews

"Das Fernsehen unter dem Hakenkreuz" ("TV under the swastika") is a documentary about the TV in Nazi-Germany from 1935 to 1944. The entertainment-programs broadcasted in Nazi-Germany are today unvoluntarily funny stuff. The Nazi-leaders didn`t really care much about the TV before the war, but they saw that they could entertain the soldiers with TV during the war. This is directed by the man who brought us "Das dritte Reich in Farbe", but I didn`t think that this was as good as his previous documentary, but then this is a totally different documentary. If you`re interested in the history of television, I would recommend this, because the it shows us how the Germans came up with new technology in the television-department before the Americans and what one of the most brutal dictatorships in history did with it.

This excellent documentary shows clips from 1935-1944. Clips include interview programs with Labor Minister Robert Ley, footage of the 1936 Olympics, light entertainment programs (vaudeville, etc.), plays, exercise shows, propaganda documentaries, cooking shows, and coverage of the 1938 (I think) Nuremberg rally. There's also a documentary of how amputee vets are being rehabilitated with artificial legs.

It also interviews some of the German TV pioneers who explain how some of the early technology worked (camera trucks at the Olympics, for example, had automatic film-developing machinery inside the truck.) Also fascinating is the political background behind the broadcasts, the technology, distribution of TV sets, how the war affected the planned and actual use of broadcasting, etc.

I guess it's no surprise that we were never taught in school that TV (the greatest invention in the history of the universe, if you ask any kid) was largely developed by the Nazis. They were no doubt afraid it just might have turned us all into Hitler Youth.

I'm currently going through Richard J. Evans's Third Reich trilogy and wonder what use he would have made with this amazing historical relic discovered after six decades. I myself believed that television only came into its own over a decade after its use here in Germany. To see the evolution of Hitler's state filmed for the small screen gives it an intimacy that is remarkable for its at times unscripted demeanour. I was struck particularly for example by Hitler being presented in Nuremberg with a bouquet of flowers from a little girl; completely unlike the way the scene would have been presented on the large screen after extensive editing by Riefenstahl. TV anchorwomen greet their tiny audiences with "Heil Hitler" and the programmes offered are particularly eclectic. One of the most striking documentaries about the regime I have seen since "Hitler's Private World." www.tracesofevil.blogspot.com

Instead of providing truer and deeper insights, they shrugged off any sustained, true historical value since very little is translated.

Sure the images are 'new' material but they do the audience and history little of appreciable value by having such minimal translation of German to English.

So I found it really annoying and in enlightening that any true historical value other than some unseen images were provided of all the nazis, their kowtowing to the maniacs, all the pomp & circumstance included among the TV show clips. No translation of interviews, dialogue of the clips themselves. It's as if the filmmakers of this super short documentary want to retain the mystique and simultaneously bore their audience.

Too bad. And no telling what they left out.