The Hitler Gang
The Hitler Gang is an American film with propaganda undertones, shot from late autumn 1943 to early 1944 and premiered on April 26, 1944 . He traces the rise of Adolf Hitler , embodied by Robert 'Bobby' Watson , who specializes in this part , from Bohemian private to Chancellor of the National Socialist German Empire . This covers the years from 1918 to 1934. The film directed by John Farrow is considered to be one of the few attempts by Hollywood during World War II to seriously grapple with the phenomenon of German Nazism .
action
November 3, 1918. As a result of a nervous breakdown and, as he claims, temporarily blinded after an enemy gas attack, the young private Adolf Hitler lies in the hospital in Pasewalk . But the military doctors rule out Hitler's self-diagnosis and rather state a hint of hysteria and paranoia in their patient. Released again, the young Hitler can no longer find his way in civil life. A little later he met Captain Ernst Röhm , who was reactionary and loyal to the emperor. Röhm inspires Hitler for the fairy tale of the stab in the back legend , who eagerly accepts it and uses it ideologically in his first speeches about the German army, which is undefeated in the field. Hitler quickly made them the guide of the German Workers' Party , which he joined in 1919. Hitler, a brilliant speaker and agitator , quickly found his first followers, including Rudolf Hess . With 100 Reichsmark starting capital, Hitler finally buys leadership in the Workers' Party and at the same time dislodges the previous party leader, Anton Drexler .
Hitler quickly developed into a tribune of the people in smoky beer cellars. Masses of new members enroll in his party. Also Gregor Strasser and his chauffeur Heinrich Himmler close rapidly on the new Hitler's party. At the meetings in the dim cellars, the fanatics talk in a rage. Hitler sets the pace. He says: “People are not interested in party programs. We need to address their feelings, their strongest instincts! Hate! Give them a scapegoat. Someone who can be blamed for everything! ”And:“ We need a smaller enemy than the Christians. One that we can defeat. ”Finally, Himmler coldly suggests the Jews as the ideal scapegoat. Hitler thinks about it for a moment, then he is inflamed by the idea. “The Jews are the cause of all our anger! The Jews started the war, the Jews are the reason for our defeat! ”Hitler roars in rage. Hitler found his life's theme and from then on drums it into the heads of a grateful and increasingly devoted audience in all his beer cellar speeches. Not infrequently, such speech battles end in hall battles. Hermann Göring , who has quite a bit of capital, joins the troops and promises to take care of Hitler's security with his people from now on. In return, Hitler promises him the leadership of the air force, should one come to power.
The acquaintance with the hero von Tannenberg , General Ludendorff, became much more important for Hitler . It promises a high degree of seriousness and reputation and also facilitates access to important social circles and, above all, more recognition in the Reichswehr . But the professional soldiers hesitate, not wanting to think about a coup in spite of Ludendorff's advocacy. The chances of success seem too low to you. However, Hitler is not a man of waiting, he wants to strike - immediately. And so he urges his men to risk the coup on November 8, 1923. But the coup goes wrong, and Hitler is arrested and to five years' imprisonment convicted.
In Landsberg , where he is serving his prison sentence, which has been reduced to just under nine months, extremely comfortably, Hitler Hess dictates his pamphlet Mein Kampf . One day a Strasser emissary from Berlin visits him there. His name: Joseph Goebbels . Freed again, Hitler decides to take the legal path to power and for the time being withdraws to the Bavarian province, where he owns a house. One day his half-sister Angela Raubal introduces him to her daughter Geli . Hitler is delighted with her, but the young girl is disturbed by the uncle's tentative approaches. One night Hitler intruded into her room; one could hear soft sobs coming through the closed door. The next morning, Geli urgently asks her mother to take her back to Vienna , but she falls on deaf ears. Hitler arrives and persuades her to stay in the presence of her mother. Meanwhile, while playing a nightly card game, Himmler, Goebbels and Göring plan the assassination of Geli so that Hitler can concentrate on the essentials, politics. Geli's mother hears a shot from her daughter's chamber one evening and runs to the stairs that lead there. You meet Himmler. He takes off his hat and feigns condolences: “Poor child. We tried to stop them. But it was too late ... ”A newspaper editor who wants to get to the bottom of this mysterious process is treacherously murdered by Himmler's henchmen.
In the following years Hitler tried to win allies. He makes promises everywhere: promises to the industrialists, the military. He promised them armament, the revision of the Versailles Treaty and the big industrialists like Fritz Thyssen and Alfred Hugenberg the smashing of the unions, while Gregor Strasser promised the workers higher wages with shorter working hours and Goebbels announced on the radio that Hitler was a friend of the workers. This is how Hitler created allies and friends on his way to power. On all sides. Soon even President von Hindenburg noticed him. Franz von Papen advises him to receive Hitler. Hindenburg only reluctantly appointed him Chancellor on January 30th.
In order to eliminate the most important political opponent, the communists , Goebbels suggests setting fire to the Reichstag and blaming the Reds for the act. Thereupon Hitler received from Hindenburg the signature of the Enabling Act , which from then on left him completely free to implement his political goals. The brown terror is now finally finding its way into Germany. The trade unions are being smashed, armament is being pushed, the churches are being harassed and child-rearing is being completely subjected to the new ideology. In a dispute with Pastor Martin Niemöller , Hitler announced that he would let National Socialist ideology take the place of Christian values and education. Niemöller bravely contradicts the “Führer” and uses clear words against his ideas of a master race and the inferiority of the “ Jewish race ”. Thereupon Hitler got one of his notorious fits of rage and uttered wild threats against the man of God.
In 1934 General von Reichenau made it clear to Hitler that the military would recognize him as Commander-in-Chief and, after Hindenburg's death, also as the new head of state should the power of Hitler's thugs, the SA , be broken. Goebbels also encourages Hitler to settle accounts with Röhm and the SA. The night of the long knives began on June 30th , and Hitler had his old companion Röhm and other SA men as well as the former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his former confidante Gregor Strasser murdered.
The film ends with brief references to Hitler’s further acts of aggression and states that the free world was now gradually beginning to form against him. The last shot of the storyline shows Hitler enjoying his triumphs as he strides through a huge hall and briefly stops at a symbolized globe with a huge, iron swastika emblazoned in the middle. Then he pauses for a moment. From the off, the voice of Martin Niemoeller can be heard, which is darkly threatening and predicts Germany's fate: "Some day they find arms to fight your arms" and "They will destroy you". Then the film gradually fades out with some documentary shots of how the armies of the nations working together in the anti-Hitler alliance take up arms and begin to march. The flags of these nations also fly.
Production notes
A plethora of German, Austrian and Hungarian drama emigrants who fled from the Third Reich took part in this sometimes very woodcut-like and often (as far as we know today) production seem ahistorical in small to very small roles. That is why there was already a lot of bad blood in the run-up to the production about supposed (by the standards of the time) top salaries of up to $ 2,500 per week for emigrant actors , while, as Hollywood gossip Hedda Hopper claimed, US actors remained unemployed at the same time.
All the actors, including the native American Robert 'Bobby' Watson , speak with a hard, “Teutonic” accent. For Watson, Hitler became the role of his life. The man from Illinois played the German dictator a total of ten times - mostly quite slapstick-like - between 1942 and 1961. However, never before and never after was his Hitler part as big as in this film, and seldom has he played the dictator so convincingly (and largely without joke).
The make-up artists under the direction of Wally Westmore did some masterful work. In addition to aligning Watson with Hitler, the optical transformations of Luis van Rooten (as Himmler) and Victor Varconi (as Hess) are particularly successful . Also noteworthy are the film buildings designed by the native Germans Hans Dreier and Franz Bachelin , which gave the American cinema-goer a good impression of the middle-class living worlds and beer-haunted back rooms in Germany in the 20s and 30s.
Martin Kosleck , who has lived in the USA since the beginning of November 1931 and who was blacklisted by Goebbels immediately after he took power in 1933 , played here (after I was a Nazi spy ) for the second time his top persecutor, whom he looked fairly similar. Kosleck was last seen as Goebbels in the 1961 Hitler film biography by Stuart Heisler .
Albert Bassermann , who had been offered the small role of President Paul von Hindenburg , turned it down for personal reasons. Instead, it went to Sig Ruman .
In addition to attempts to recount the course of historical events more or less correctly, unsubstantiated claims are made again and again or very obvious propaganda segments are interspersed:
- For example, Hitler is portrayed as a liar and a coward, who was the first to seize the rabbit banner in the failed November putsch in 1923 and who loudly and untruthfully claims to have helped a wounded comrade. In addition, Hitler is deliberately exposed to ridicule when he hides behind women's clothes in a closet when he is arrested (also in 1923).
- According to the latest research, the assumption shown in the film that the Nazis themselves set the Reichstag on fire is considered rather improbable or at least unproven.
- Admittedly, there was a direct encounter between Hitler and Pastor Niemöller in early 1934. However, it can be doubted that there was a one-on-one conversation in which Hitler - as shown in the film - claimed that he was more powerful than Jesus Christ and that Christianity was some kind of disease. It is also unproven that Niemöller is said to have told Hitler that one day he would be destroyed and with him beloved Germany, whereupon the film Hitler furiously threatens him, the film Niemöller, with death (“You should die like everone should die who gets in my way ").
- When Himmler and Göring compared their death lists for an upcoming wave of purges in the context of the so-called Röhm Putsch in 1934 and discussed them, the name Joseph Goebbels also appeared.
However, the film presents considerable flaws and claims that have long since been refuted, especially with regard to the passage about Hitler's relationship with his niece Geli Raubal. Hitler is presented here as a lecher who penetrates the most reluctant Geli. His courtship fails, and the conspirators Himmler, Goebbels and Göring then decide, it is insinuated, Geli Raubal's murder. It is implied that Himmler shot personally.
Significantly, the film essentially ends as early as 1934, with a detailed description of the so-called Röhm Putsch . The most unfortunate role played by the American war allies of 1944, Great Britain , since 1935 (reintroduction of general conscription, German-British naval agreement , remilitarization of the Rhineland , annexation of Austria , Munich Agreement, etc.) mostly in interaction with France against Nazi Germany had played completely left out.
After Europe was liberated from Nazi rule in May 1945, The Hitler Gang was also performed in numerous (Western) European countries. The film produced by Paramount Pictures was not shown in Germany, Austria and Switzerland ; there is therefore no German dubbed version.
criticism
The international criticism, with all the freedom in dealing with the facts known at the beginning of the shooting (late 1943), regarded The Hitler Gang as a largely respectable attempt to make the rise of Nazism in Germany understandable and therefore comprehensible to a broad audience.
The assembly will discuss The Hitler Gang as follows: "The film hits the mark, and works arousing the popular imagination as those balladeer, the complicated crime on the simplicity of a fine and sung ballad series brought."
The Exilantenblatt Die Zeitung wrote in its 396th edition in a review of October 6, 1944 on page 6: “The extraordinary thing about this film, the manuscript of which is essentially based on the books of Konrad Heiden , is the similarity of the masks.” To later However, it is also noted: “The main weakness of this film is that it has set itself too long a goal. [...] If one had been content with letting the history of the brown-black ring club end - for the time being - on June 30, 1934 ... one would have avoided the difficulty, the last few years before the outbreak of this war at high speed and at the highest speed To have to rush through superficially. "
In Kay Weniger's More is taken away from you in life than is given to read: “'The Hitler Gang', John Farrow's attempt, filmed at the end of 1943 and not always successful, to credibly trace the rise of Nazism in Germany, was despite all the restrictions - Above all, the sketch of Hitler's relationship with his niece Geli Raubal and the circumstances of her death seem far-fetched and like pure propaganda in view of today's knowledge - quite respectable in the approach. "
The film's large personal lexicon saw The Hitler Gang as “one of the rare attempts by Hollywood to deal with the phenomenon of the Third Reich more seriously than usual”.
The Movie & Video Guide judged: "Historical drama of Hitler's rise to power had greatest impact on WW2 audiences but is still fairly interesting, though dwarfed by recent documentaries."
Halliwell's Film Guide writes: "Though at the time it seemed rather like a serious cabaret turn, this fictionalization of historical fact has some good impersonations and dramatically effective scenes."
In Rotten Tomatoes it says: "Though it takes several liberties with facts and motivations, The Hitler Gang is a reasonably absorbing chronicle of Hitler's rise to power."
Web links
- The Hitler Gang in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Hitler Gang in Rotten Tomatoes
Individual evidence
- ^ Announcement under construction, issue 46 v. Nov 12, 1943, p. 15
- ^ Announcement under construction from November 12, 1943, p. 15
- ^ Structure, issue 21, from May 26, 1944, page 11
- ^ Film review in Die Zeitung
- ↑ Kay Less: “In life, more is taken from you than given”. Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011. p. 43
- ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 2: C - F. John Paddy Carstairs - Peter Fritz. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 623.
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 582
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 471