Nazism and cinema

Background

One must also remember that of itself the multitude is mentally inert, that it remains attached to its old habits and that it is not naturally prone to read something which does not conform with its own pre-established beliefs when such writing does not contain what the multitude hopes to find there.
A comprehensive critique of the film industry was published by the Nazi economist Hans Buchner in 1927 with the title "Spellbound by Movies. The Global Dominance of the Cinema". Further short Nazi films about party rallies were made in 1927–1929. The first NSDAP film office was established in 1931, and started producing "documentaries" in a larger scale, e.g., in 1932 "Hitlers Kampf um Deutschland", "Blutendes Deutschland", "Das junge Deutschland marschiert". Herbert Gerdes directed five Nazi propaganda films: Erbkrank, Alles Leben ist Kampf, Was du Ererbt, Schuld oder Schein, and Das Große Geheimnis.
Nazi propagandist Hans Traub, who had earned his PhD in 1925 with a dissertation on the press and the German revolutions of 1848–49, wrote in the essay "The film as a political instrument" in 1932:

Without any doubt the film is a formidable means of propaganda. Achieving propagandistic influence has always demanded a ‘language’ which forms a memorable and passionate plot with a simple narrative. … In the vast area of such ’language’ that the recipients are directly confronted by in the course of technical and economical processes, the most effective is the moving picture. It demands permanent alertness; it’s full of surprises concerning the change of time, space, and action; it has an unimaginable richness of rhythm for intensifying or dispelling emotions.

Goals of the Nazi film policy

Goebbels, who appointed himself "Patron of the German film", believed that a national cinema which was entertaining and put glamour on the government would be a more effective propaganda instrument than a national cinema in which the NSDAP and their policy would have been ubiquitous. Goebbels emphasized the will to end the "shamelessness and tastelessness" that he thought could be found in the former movie industry. The main goal of the Nazi film policy was to promote escapism, which was designed to distract the population and to keep everybody in good spirits; Goebbels indeed blamed defeat in World War I on the failure to sustain the morale of the people.
The open propaganda was reserved for films like Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph des Willens, records of the Nuremberg rallies, and newsreels. There are some examples of Nazi-era feature films that deal with the NSDAP or with party organizations such as the Sturmabteilung, Hitler Youth or the National Labour Service, one example being Hitlerjunge Quex about the Hitler Youth. Another example is the anti-semitic feature film Jew Suss. The propaganda films that refer directly to Nazi politics amounted to less than a sixth of the whole national film production, which mainly consisted of light entertainment films.
For conceiving a Nazi film theory, Goebbels suggested as formative material the Hamburg Dramaturgy and Laokoon, or the Limitations of Poetry by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and also demanded "realistic characters" pointing to Shakespeare. Goebbels emphasized Lessing's idea that "not only imagining per se, but purposeful imagining, would prove the creative mind".
Emil Jannings wrote in 1942 in the National Socialist Monthly about the goal of showing men and women who can master their own fate as models for identification.
The authorities and NSDAP departments in charge of film policy were the film department of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Chamber of Culture, the Chamber of Film, and the film department of the Party Propaganda Department.
A system of "award" was used to encourage self-censorship; awarded for such things as "cultural value" or "value to the people", they remitted part of the heavy taxes on films. Up to a third of the films in Nazi Germany received such awards.

History

Pre-seizure of power

A Symphony of the Will to Fight, the first film officially produced by the Nazis, was a coverage of the 1927 Nuremberg rally. Nazi activity was later filmed by UFA GmbH, which was acquired by Alfred Hugenberg in 1927.
The Nationalist Socialist Film Service was created in November 1928, and local parties were required to have film projectors starting in 1929. Goebbels established an organization to distribute Nazi films in 1930, but did not receive proper financial backing. Film production and distribution were instead handled by Gauleiters. In 1932, ten Landesfilmstellen were formed to distribute films created by the Nazi Film Service. The Hitler Youth started showing films on a monthly basis in Cologne beginning on 20 April 1934, and this expanded nationally to a weekly basis in 1936.

Takeover

The, formed on 1 June 1933, gave the Nazis financial control over film production as independent producers became dependent on its backing. The Reich Chamber of Film was formed on 14 July, and was later included as one of the seven organizations in the Reich Chamber of Culture. The Film Credit Bank was financing over 73% of feature films by 1936. The Reich Cinema Law, enacted on 1 March 1934, required all film scripts to be approved by a Nazi film advisor.
Hans Hinkel was tasked by Goebbels with removing all Jewish influence from the film industry. Weimar-era films which had Jewish people involved in the production were renamed and had those people removed from the credits. Warner Bros. closed its German affiliate rather than follow Nazi policies on Jews and Universal Pictures' German affiliate, Deutsche Universal, was moved to Vienna and then to Budapest.
German film exports fell as they could not reach screen quotas due to Nazi policies to reduce foreign film imports and widespread censorship inhibiting distributors who wanted to import films. The international box office accounted for 40% of German film earnings during the silent era and was at 30% in 1932, but fell to 11% for 1934–1935.
More and more production companies went bankrupt. The number of companies dropped from 114 to 79 to 38. This did not necessarily lead to a decrease in the number of new films, as the remaining production companies produced many more films. Nazi companies went on to produce co-productions with companies of other countries: eight co-productions with the Kingdom of Italy, six co-productions with the French Third Republic, five co-productions with the Kingdom of Hungary, 5 co-productions with Czechoslovakia, 3 co-productions with Switzerland, two co-productions with the Second Polish Republic and the Empire of Japan, and one each with Francoist Spain, the United States, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and Sweden.
State subsidies to the film industry resulted in improved production values: average film production costs quintupled from 250,000 ℛℳ in 1933 to 1,380,000 ℛℳ in 1942. Ticket sales within the Reich quadrupled from 250 million in 1933 to more than a billion in 1942. Box-office sales more than doubled from 441 million ℛℳ in 1938 to over 1 billion ℛℳ in 1942.
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1990-1002-500, Besuch von Hitler und Goebbels bei der UFA retouched.jpg|300px|thumb|Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and others watch filming at Ufa, 1935.
Max Winkler oversaw the elimination of economic roadblocks to the nationalization of the film industry. UFA and Tobis Film, who were financially struggling in 1936, now had the majority of their stock controlled by Cautio Trust Company, created by Winkler. Kautio acquired UFA in March 1937, Tobis in May, Terra Film in August, and Bavaria Film was also acquired. Austria and Czechoslovakia's film industries were nationalized into Wien-Film and following their annexations by Germany. On 10 January 1942, UFA-Film GmbH was formed as a giant holding company for the entire German film industry. UFI was a vertically integrated monopoly, covering the entire European film market under German hegemony, with foreign imports cut off. The company's profits surged, reaching 155 million ℛℳ in 1942 and 175 million ℛℳ in 1943.
Fritz Hippler, the director of The Eternal Jew, was placed in charge of the film section of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.