The Third Reich (TV series)

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Television series
Original title The Third Empire
Country of production Germany
original language German
Year (s) 1959-1960
length 45 to 70 minutes
Episodes 14 in 1 season
genre History , documentation
First broadcast October 21, 1960 to May 19, 1961 on SDR and NWRV Cologne

The Third Reich is a fourteen-part documentary series about the Nazi era , 1933–1945, from the years 1960/61 by Heinz Huber, Arthur Müller, Gerd Ruge .

background

The documentary series was an early historical project of German television that dealt with the topic in question. It was a joint production of the NWRV Cologne and the Süddeutscher Rundfunk, which continued the previously broadcast documentary series The Weimar Republic . The editorial staff responsible for the production of the documentary series consisted of Heinz Huber, Artur Müller and Gerd Ruge. Hannes Hoff and Eberhard Leube took on assistance tasks. The Munich publicist Kurt Zentner contributed documentation material to the project. Scientific advice was provided by Waldemar Besson and Heinz D. Stuckmann . The documentary series was planned and realized within 18 months. Archives in Rome, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, London, Warsaw and the USA were used and 500,000 meters of film were viewed. The production costs were about 702,000 German marks . Each episode is devoted to a thematic focus, the first episode, for example, the seizure of power . Only one episode, the eighth episode “The SS State”, dealt with the persecution of the Jews. In many passages of the film, propaganda material was used without comment. High-ranking contemporary witnesses and knight's cross winners had their say in the documentary series, but Jewish survivors of the Holocaust did not.

The first episode was broadcast for the first time on Friday, October 21, 1960 at prime time on ARD . The other episodes were broadcast every fortnight, mostly during prime time, but occasionally only after 10 p.m. The episodes varied in length, between 45 and 70 minutes. The total broadcast length was approximately 700 minutes. On average, the documentary series reached 58 percent of television viewers, a quota that was only achieved by sports or entertainment programs at the time. Heinz Huber and Artur Müller received the Adolf Grimme Prize in 1964 for the episode Der SS-Staat . On the occasion of a repetition, a book accompanying the series was published in 1964. Such an accompanying book was a novelty at the time. The documentary series Germany after the war was produced as a sequel to The Third Reich .

In the documentary series Das Erbe der Nazis , from the years 2015/16, the historian Sönke Neitzel described the documentary series “The Third Reich” as a failed attempt to critically deal with Nazi history. It was a reminder television, with little critical discussion, that was therefore not very painful and therefore tolerable even for the National Socialists. The media historian Edgar Lersch sees the essential function of this series, the photographs and film sequences of which also consisted to a considerable extent of material from the propaganda troops, as follows: “The series is fixated on Adolf Hitler as the source of all evil. Even his first paladins are usually referred to as his willless tools. [...] The Germans themselves were the first victims of Hitler ”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Large TV documentary about The Third Reich , accessed on: October 17, 2018
  2. ↑ a b c d TV series. The Third Reich , accessed on: October 17, 2018
  3. ↑ a b Die Zeit : Funk. Television: Fourteen times “The Third Reich” , from: October 21, 1960; accessed on: October 17, 2018
  4. ↑ a b c d Der Spiegel : Documentary series. Twelve years in twelve hours , dated: November 2, 1960; accessed on: October 17, 2018
  5. ↑ Cf. Edgar Lersch : From the "SS State" to "Auschwitz". Two television documentaries on the extermination of European Jews before and after "Holocaust" , accessed on: October 17, 2018
  6. ↑ Edgar Lersch: Against the dictation of pictures? The television series DAS DRITTE REICH 1960/61. In: Rainer Rother , Judith Prokasky (ed.): The camera as a weapon. Propaganda images of the Second World War. edition text + kritik, Munich 2010, pp. 283–296, here p. 288.