Propaganda Films

• There are hundreds of grotesque propaganda movies and documentaries depicting Germans as stereotypically cruel, bigoted and characterlogically deranged. Germans of the war periods are frequently portrayed as grey emotionless ogres lacking the higher virtues found in Englishmen and Americans. Although propaganda movies originated in the Soviet Union with directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, the techniques associated with this genre were perfected by early Hollywood filmmakers such as Howard Hawks, Stanley Kramer, Fritz Lang, Michael Curtiz and Jeremy Isaacs. Prime examples of all-out propaganda against Germany are found in the movies Spy in Black, Five Graves to Cairo, Hotel Berlin, Casablanca, Adventures of Tartu, Passage to Marseilles, The Stranger, The Train, A Matter of Life and Death, The Dam Busters, A Bridge Too Far, Cross of Iron, Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, Heroes of Telemark, Guns of Navarone, The Boys From Brazil, The Odessa File, Schindler's List, and many others of this kind. Despite their cinematic qualities, movies of this genre are flagrantly biased, unlike more balanced treatments found in Rommel, Night of the Generals, All Quiet on the Western Front, Das Boot, and British-made Colditz series. However, even in productions of this kind, the German is generally portrayed as a subhuman creature, inferior in kind to his British, American and Jewish opponents. Regrettably, propaganda movies are not a product of the past. The genre and the demonization continue to this day, with major American TV channels - such as the History Channel - producing more documentaries on the villainy of Nazi Germany than on any other topic.
  
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