Hitler's Children
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Hitler's Children |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1943 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Edward Dmytryk |
| script | Emmet Lavery |
| production | Edward A. Golden |
| music | Roy Webb |
| camera | Russell Metty |
| cut | Joseph Noriega |
| occupation | |
| |
Hitler's Children is an American propaganda film made in 1942 by Edward Dmytryk . The focus of the story is the seduction and poisoning of German youth by the National Socialist ideology based on a case study of two young German-Americans. The story is based on the novel Education for Death by Gregor Ziemer . The film advertisement announced the strip with the following words: The truth of the Nazis from the cradle to the battlefront ("The truth about the Nazis, from the cradle to the battlefield").
action
In 1933, the US citizen Professor Nichols ran an English-language school in Berlin, the American Colony School. With its liberal principles and ideas, it is a kind of counter-draft to the recently established Horst Wessel School, a refuge for National Socialist indoctrination of German youth and anti-Semitic spread of hatred. One day there is a fight between the students from both schools. Right in the middle: the US-born Karl Bruner and Anna Müller, an American who was once born in Germany. Eventually the girl misses Karl with the baseball bat. This tangible conflict is the beginning of a mutual rapprochement. Anna's parents had once sent their daughter back to the Reich so that she might get a better education there. For this purpose they chose the American institution on German soil. Despite significant differences in political views that just since the seizure of power by the National Socialists come to virulent day, the two young people understand with principals Nichols well.
Six years later, on the eve of World War II. Karl Bruner has made a career with the Gestapo and excels above all in taking rigid action against students at the American School who allegedly have the "wrong nationality". Meanwhile, Anna works as a teacher at Nichols' school and spreads the liberal ideals of her role model. Soon the ethnic German with the American passport has to give up her job and suddenly disappears. Professor Nichols goes looking for his dedicated teacher, but doesn't get very far. The hands of the US consulate are tied and Anna's grandparents lack the courage to work with the foreigner Nichols. Franz Erhart, a German friend of the American school principal, suggested contacting the Department of Education and trying to find out whether Anna might have been taken to a labor camp. During his research, Nichols met the icy Gestapo Colonel Henkel, who was also Karl's superior. Although Henkel is ready to make a meeting with Anna possible, Karl strongly advises the American against having a private conversation. Anna has changed and has now become a “model German”, just as the regime demands of “Aryan” girls. Nichols just can't believe it, and he manages to have a one-on-one conversation with Anna in the labor camp. She advises him not to want to free her, because he would probably have no chance and would only endanger himself by such an action.
Anna plays her role as a national socialist who is loyal to the line that her old friend Karl Bruner suggests that she take a course in geopolitics at the university. But Anna rejects this idea, fearing that they will only indoctrinate her there and train her to become a future spy against the United States. Then she has to go back to the camp, where she is supposed to work as a simple worker from now on. Colonel Henkel soon lost faith that the liberal Anna could ever become a fanatical National Socialist and therefore ordered her forced sterilization . Bruner is horrified, his old feelings for Anna break through. He's begging her to howl like him with wolves and at least pretend that she is now convinced of the Nazi ideology. Anna manages to break out of the camp and flees to Berlin, where she finds protection in a Catholic church. But they tracked down there and kidnapped the girl again, amid loud protests from the bishop present. Henkel had Anna whipped and, in his sadism, ordered Bruner to come to him, to whom he would witness this harsh punishment. After the second lash, Karl intervenes and prevents further blows. This also seems to have sealed his party-political fate.
Bruner tries to navigate. On the one hand he begins to doubt National Socialism and now understands Anna better than ever before, on the other hand he publicly regrets his intervention and hesitation. But Henkel has long had its own plans in mind. He wants a public tribunal against Anna Müller and Karl Bruner, which should even be broadcast on the radio. This should deter anyone who thinks they have to rebel against the new order. The death sentences seem to have already been set. As the height of cynicism, Henkel promises his former subordinate to at least allow him to have an honorable burial after his execution. Professor Nichols must leave Germany immediately if he is not charged with aiding and abetting treason. Arrived at the airport, he heard Karl's flaming speech on the radio against the new Hitler-Germany and its inhumanity. Then Karl is shot dead. Anna, who doesn't want to leave her found boyfriend alone at that moment, runs to him and also dies in the hail of bullets.
Production notes
Hitler's Children was filmed in 1942 and premiered on January 6, 1943. Even after 1945, the film was not shown in cinemas in German-speaking countries.
The production costs were a moderate 205,000 US dollars, the income was 3,550,000 dollars. This made Hitler's Children a sensational box office success. In terms of box office income, the film was ranked 4th of all films released in the USA in 1943 and was also the most commercially successful RKO production of that year.
The film structures were designed by Albert S. D'Agostino and Carroll Clark , while Darrell Silvera and Harvey Miller were responsible for the equipment .
For the good-looking lead actor Tim Holt , this film was an extremely unusual excursion into the film genre of political drama: he was usually at home on the saddle and played leading roles in countless low-cost westerners.
useful information
The author of the book, Gregor Ziemer (1899–1982), an American with German ancestry, headed the American School in Berlin from 1928 to 1939 before he fled Hitler's Germany. In his work Education for Death , he processed his experience with the National Socialist youth and education policy between 1933 and 1939.
Reviews
Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times that the film was quite "an obvious, conventional melodrama" and was touching mainly because of the "sheer brutality that is shown". However, the narrative structure is "extremely theatrical". Crowthers conclusion was that the strip completely spoiled "the good opportunity to show the frightening importance of a disintegration into which the German youth is plunged".
The Movie & Video Guide saw Hitler's Children as a "captivating exploitation film" that must have been "pretty sensational" when it was made.
Halliwell's Film Guide perceived the film on the one hand as an "artificial melodrama", but pointed out that the success at that time with the audience was due to the topicality and explosiveness of the topic and that they had refused to "portray the Nazis as idiots".
Howard Barnes pointed out in the Herald Tribune that the film was "strong anti-Nazi propaganda".
Individual evidence
- ↑ cit. n. Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 471
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 582
- ^ Halliwell's Film Guide, p. 471
Web links
- Hitler's Children in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Extensive review in the New York Times of February 25, 1943