My Struggle (Documentary)

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Movie
German title My fight
Original title The blodiga tides
Country of production Sweden , Germany
original language German , Swedish
Publishing year 1960
length 122 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Erwin Leiser
script Erwin Leiser
production Tore Sjöberg
music Marton Lorand
cut Ingemar Ejve
occupation

Mein Kampf (Original title: Den Blodiga tiden , German: Die bloutige Zeit) is a documentary film (sub-genre: compilation film ) about the rise of Adolf Hitler and the dictatorship of National Socialism between 1933 and 1945 in Germany and - after 1939 - others during the Second World War from Nazi regime occupied areas of Europe. The film is not limited to describing the politically effective power system of the German variant of fascism , but also describes its prehistory since the First World War .

The two-hour film, which received the rating of particularly valuable , was produced in Sweden in 1959 by the German-Swedish director and publicist Erwin Leiser . His documentation is approved for ages 12 and over and is recommended for ages 14 and up. The film premiered on April 25, 1960 in Gothenburg , and a few months later it was also shown in Germany.

Content and historical background

In a deliberately provocative reference to the title of Hitler's partly autobiographical draft program Mein Kampf , the film is not intended to be a “film adaptation” of the book; rather, it shows - as the essence and "continuation" of Hitler's book , so to speak - its consequences : The way to a Europe lying in ruins with around 60 million war dead worldwide including the unprecedented industrialized genocide of European Jews and other population groups (cf. Holocaust , Porajmos etc.).

Unlike many other documentaries on the subject to this day, the film does not deal with the actual rule of the National Socialists in isolation, but tries to explain, by including the prehistory since the First World War , how this historically fatal development in Germany - and, historically - happened - seen politically, in its impact on humanity or the entire world - could come.

When editing the film, Leiser resorted to material from the archives of the allied victorious powers of the Second World War and from Poland . Above all, however, he used Nazi propaganda material , which he cut together in an impressive way, whereby the comments on the sometimes horrific images, often kept in grammatical present tense , mostly maintained a brief and distanced, factual tone, which makes the film a sometimes frightening contemporary appearance Atmosphere. In this way, the film becomes a reminder of the responsibility of future generations to never let such a political-historical fate happen again.

Using the archive material mentioned, the film Mein Kampf shows the conditions under which National Socialism developed after the end of the First World War and how it was able to exploit its weaknesses under Hitler's leadership during the Weimar Republic in order to come to power in 1933 . It documents the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany , the persecution of political opponents, the exclusion of the Jews up to their ghettoization during the Second World War and finally the genocide of them in the extermination camps Auschwitz , Majdanek , Treblinka and others. a. The war, like the time before it, is presented chronologically , with the development in Poland being discussed in greater detail as an example.

To this day, this film is considered a classic and one of the best film documentaries on the history of National Socialism and the so-called " Third Reich ".

It is also often shown in schools as part of history lessons on the subject.

reception

“Erwin Leiser's excellently designed documentary film about seduction of the people, the politics of aggression and the criminal works of Adolf Hitler, especially in the East, made in Sweden. Despite his problematic handling of archival material, which he has at his disposal, and the meanwhile advanced research results about Hitler, it continues to be an important educational contribution to contemporary history. "

- Lexicon of international film

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martina Thiele: Journalistic controversies about the Holocaust in film . LIT Verlag Münster, 2001, ISBN 978-3-8258-5807-0 , p. 205 ( full text in Google Book Search).
  2. ↑ My struggle. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 11, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used