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Speaker 1: Mhm, and we're back. I'm Robert Evans, and this is

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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything

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Speaker 1: you don't know about the very worst people in all

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Speaker 1: of history. And today this is the second part of

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Speaker 1: a two part episode on the Nazis and Hollywood. My

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Speaker 1: guest today is Daniel van Kirk, and we are both

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Speaker 1: A fan suggested Tapatio derritos to us and they're amazing.

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Speaker 1: We're eating them right now, really really good. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: did not want this in my life and now I'm

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Speaker 1: never gonna be able to get rid of. I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: take these two parties. Oh they're amazing. I'm gonna tell

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Speaker 1: people to have parties so that I can take them

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Speaker 1: to them. Like, I want to get through the rest

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Speaker 1: of this episode as quickly as possible so I can

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Speaker 1: binge eat the rest of these delicious tapato wanting more

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Speaker 1: and on fire again. We have not received a scent

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Speaker 1: from the Dorrito's company. This is all just free enthusiasm

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Speaker 1: over their products. Um so, Daniel, you should probably plug

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Speaker 1: your stuff for the four listeners who aren't gonna listen

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Speaker 1: to part one and are going to jump into part

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Speaker 1: two and part one so that that is an approach.

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Speaker 1: I want to let everybody know that they can listen

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Speaker 1: to me on the Dumb People Tom podcast, which is

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Speaker 1: show that I host and the Squad Brothers do as well.

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Speaker 1: And then I have another podcast called pen Pals, and

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Speaker 1: that is why Scovill and myself reading people's letters. You

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Speaker 1: sound us anything you want, we write you back audibly.

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Speaker 1: We say it's your podcast. We just talked about it.

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Speaker 1: And then I have a show called Hindsight where I

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Speaker 1: have creators, comedians, producers, directors, writers. They bring through photos

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Speaker 1: from any chapter of their life and we just talked

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Speaker 1: about the context of their life when each photo was taken.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of context, let's talk about the context of the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties now. In the first episode, we talked about

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Speaker 1: how the early German sensor's basically threatened Hollywood with cutting

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Speaker 1: them off, getting Germany off from the movies entirely unless

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Speaker 1: they made certain changes to the movies in order to

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Speaker 1: make them more palatable for for Germans. And you know,

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Speaker 1: this led to Hollywood not attacking the Nazis directly and

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Speaker 1: really not even really mentioning Judaism. The Nazis ramped up

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Speaker 1: there control and they ramped up the profitability for Hollywood

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Speaker 1: at the same time, and it was a gradual thing

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Speaker 1: where they'd ask for one thing and then a little

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Speaker 1: bit later that asked for another, and that's how they

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Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, And we also talked about The House

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Speaker 1: of Rothschild, the movie made to be a rebuke of

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Speaker 1: anti Semitism that also kind of wound up being a

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Speaker 1: little bit anti Semitic, to which all credit to the

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Speaker 1: knock He's the only guy so far, he's done the

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Speaker 1: right thing, but yeah, he could be like, tell me

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Speaker 1: who did it worse than me? Because I'm the only

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Speaker 1: one at this point? Is this better than nothing? You

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Speaker 1: prefer this to nothing? So it's important to note, like again,

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Speaker 1: one of the big questions here is what were the

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Speaker 1: studios collaborating directly with the Nazis or were they were

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Speaker 1: they just appeasing the Nazis in the same way that

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Speaker 1: everybody was appeasing the Nazis in the thirties, And in

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Speaker 1: order to sort of answer that question, one of the

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Speaker 1: things that's important to note is that the US has

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Speaker 1: has always had, and still has a pretty virulent ashist movement.

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Speaker 1: We've been seeing a lot more of that in the

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Speaker 1: last year or so, but it was particularly prominent in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and even in Hollywood there were a

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Speaker 1: lot of fascist sympathizers. This was made very evident by

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Speaker 1: the production of a movie called Gabriel over the White House.

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Speaker 1: It was probably the first explicitly fascist fictional movie of

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Speaker 1: all time. Um the basic premise is that a president

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Speaker 1: suffers a terrible car accident and undergoes a personality change.

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Speaker 1: Uh he goes in front of Congress, castigates them for

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Speaker 1: wasting America's money, and then demands them to declare a

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Speaker 1: national emergency and vote him absolute power. While he's chastising

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Speaker 1: Congress for fucking up the country, somebody calls him a dictator,

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Speaker 1: and he snaps back, I believe in democracy as Washington, Jefferson,

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Speaker 1: and Lincoln believed in democracy, and if what I planned

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Speaker 1: to do in the name of the people makes me

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Speaker 1: a dictator, then it is a dictator. Based on Jefferson's

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Speaker 1: definition of democracy, a government for the greatest good of

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Speaker 1: the greatest number. So none of this is a satire,

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Speaker 1: although some people have tried to say that, since this

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Speaker 1: is not presented as a bad thing either. He's the hero,

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Speaker 1: the president who takes dictatorial control of the country to

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Speaker 1: fix its problems is the hero. But see's so crazy

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Speaker 1: because he says that thing where he says, what do

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Speaker 1: you say Jefferson's definition? Yeah, the greatest good for the

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Speaker 1: greatest number of people. Yeah, But the the ending to that,

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Speaker 1: the rebuttal to that is the greatest good for the

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Speaker 1: greatest number of people without their choice. Yeah, without them

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Speaker 1: having any sort of saying that. Yeah, that doesn't come

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Speaker 1: up in the movie. So the film that or the

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Speaker 1: movie was based off of a book, and the book

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Speaker 1: was had been written by a british Man during a

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Speaker 1: long boat ride who basically wondered to himself a Britishman

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Speaker 1: during a long boat ride. Yeah, I wondered, wouldn't it

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Speaker 1: be great if America became fascist? That was basically his

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Speaker 1: his Yeah, I mean he thought it wouldn't be Now

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Speaker 1: he'd never ever been to America when he wrote this book.

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Speaker 1: He's got a lot of it. Never need to go

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Speaker 1: to America to write a book about it. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: he writes this book and will Liam Randolph Hurst loves it,

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Speaker 1: and William Randolph Hurst is like, this motherfucker's got to

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Speaker 1: be a movie. So Hurst is the dude who decides

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Speaker 1: to make this into a movie, the guy who wants

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Speaker 1: to run everything. Yeah. So Hayes, the chief censor, was

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Speaker 1: also actually the only person who raised any objection to

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Speaker 1: the contents of Gabriel over the White House. He worried

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Speaker 1: that people might quote regarded as a direct indictment of

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Speaker 1: the plurility and falliability of today's government machinery and personnel,

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Speaker 1: and that only by a blow in the head of

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Speaker 1: the president and its consequent acts of a deranged man

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Speaker 1: is enough righteousness and wisdom put into the executive branch

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Speaker 1: of the government to lead. So that's his problem, is

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Speaker 1: that like it's saying, well, you're saying the government so

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Speaker 1: fun that the president needs a head injury to be

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Speaker 1: good at being the president. So Hayes complains and changes

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Speaker 1: are made to the film. They don't make the film

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Speaker 1: any less fascistic. Instead, they make it clear to the

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Speaker 1: viewer that rather than being addled in his accent, the

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Speaker 1: president has been taken over by God who is using

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Speaker 1: him as a conduit to save the nation. Lines that

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Speaker 1: emphas sized his supernatural power were added. This is one

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Speaker 1: of the people who knows the president of this movie

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Speaker 1: talking about so what if he What if it wasn't

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Speaker 1: so much about him getting injured, but but just spiritually

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Speaker 1: woke in the name of Jesus Christ. Yeah, what if

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Speaker 1: he's a vessel for God that takes over the country

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Speaker 1: and turns into a dictatorship. That's a better idea. I'm

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Speaker 1: William hayes sensor. So here's a line of someone talking

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Speaker 1: about the president in the movie that was added as

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Speaker 1: a result of Hayes's suggestions. Quote, there's something about him,

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Speaker 1: something new and terribly strange, which deprives you of volition

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Speaker 1: or of any capacity to act and think for yourself.

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Speaker 1: It is easier to give way than to continue fighting

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Speaker 1: for your ego. You become content to serve, to serve,

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Speaker 1: and wait his pleasure. Again, this is not portrayed as horrifying.

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Speaker 1: It's a good thing. It's good that the President's godly

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Speaker 1: aura has taken over your mind, dictating our government. So

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Speaker 1: Gabriel over the White House was unique at the time

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Speaker 1: because it was the first big Hollywood production to actually

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Speaker 1: address the Great Depression. For the first couple of years

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Speaker 1: of the Depression, Hollywood had avoided commenting on the issues

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Speaker 1: of the day in any of their movies, thinking it

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Speaker 1: would be a bad idea if they were seen as

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Speaker 1: trying to wade into politics or social issues. So I

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Speaker 1: wasn't even thinking about that. That That the impressions going on too.

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Speaker 1: And this is the first major studio movie to address

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Speaker 1: the country's economic problems posits fascism as a solution. But see,

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Speaker 1: isn't that sign of the vacuum that was also happening

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Speaker 1: in the nies in Germany? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: the same. There's like this vacuum here for like a

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Speaker 1: need of like pick us up. Yeah, And it's it's

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Speaker 1: evidence that the same trends that put Hitler into power

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Speaker 1: could have easily put a fascist into power in the

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Speaker 1: United States because clearly people are thinking along those lines.

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Speaker 1: Wouldn't be great if some strong guy could just come

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Speaker 1: along and fix with the answers. Yeah, it's always a

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Speaker 1: threat like that. Like Germany wasn't the only country that

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Speaker 1: the current running through it? Um So. Gabriel over the

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Speaker 1: White House premiered in Berlin in February of ninety four. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: it passed the censors. The Nazis of this movie. It

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Speaker 1: played for fifty and consecutive days in its first run. Ironically,

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Speaker 1: Hayes's changes actually put the movie more in line with

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Speaker 1: a key Nazi concept, fewer princip or the leader principle.

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Speaker 1: This is sort of the core of Nazism, Like one

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Speaker 1: of the core kernels of Nazi ideology is the fewer principle. Um.

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Speaker 1: It evolved out of the Social Darwinis theories of a

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Speaker 1: guy named Herman Groff caser Ling, who felt that certain

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Speaker 1: individuals were quote born to rule. The book Darker Legacies

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Speaker 1: of the Law in Europe sites the work of a

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Speaker 1: guy named Huber who gives a good explanation of the

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Speaker 1: fewer principles. So I'm going to quote that in the

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Speaker 1: Fewer the essential laws of the Vulcan, which is the

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Speaker 1: people come into manifestation. By allowing these essential laws to emerge,

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Speaker 1: he sets up the great common objectives that have to

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Speaker 1: be realized. The fewer embodies the overall will of the

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Speaker 1: people as an objective historical quantity. So the idea of

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Speaker 1: the fewer principle is that like, there's this the will

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Speaker 1: of the people can become manifest in a man, and

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Speaker 1: it's almost a supernatural thing, and he's chosen by destiny

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Speaker 1: to embody the people's will, which is exactly what Hayes

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Speaker 1: has changes had made it from like the president gets

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Speaker 1: hurt in the head and it makes him more decisive

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Speaker 1: to God chooses the president to be the vessel of

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Speaker 1: American from the viewpoint of the people. Not only is

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Speaker 1: he of us, he is us. Yeah, he is. He

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Speaker 1: speaks we speak through him. Exactly. So Hayes had inadvertently

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Speaker 1: made Gabriel Over the White House even better Nazi propaganda

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Speaker 1: as a result of his censorship, which hopefully was an accident. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it was an accident. Mulligan on that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we'll give him Mulligan on accidentally making Nazi propaganda. Who

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Speaker 1: hasn't you know we all trial accidentally was so a

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Speaker 1: Nazi newspaper doubt and grief, which means the attack. Let

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Speaker 1: a man named Brandon. Yeah, it's the Nazi, the attack

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Speaker 1: and the like somebody in the writer's room for a

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Speaker 1: Nazi should have been little on the nose. We're calling

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Speaker 1: ourselves a little on the nose. They love that ship.

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Speaker 1: So a Nazi reviewer reviewed Gabriel Over the White House

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Speaker 1: and concluded that the movie was proof that the fewer

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Speaker 1: principle was deeply embedded in the human soul that German

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Speaker 1: fascism was was emblematic of a greater human truth, because

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Speaker 1: even America's democratic traditions hadn't been able to destroy this.

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Speaker 1: So like the Nazis watched this movie, they're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: the Americans are fascists, Like they just haven't overthrown their

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Speaker 1: decadent government. But they feel it too. But they feel

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Speaker 1: it too. That's in all of this matter where you are.

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Speaker 1: You know, if you try to do the opposite, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna end up being like, well, you know what feels

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Speaker 1: right though, fascism? Yeah, fuck it. Maybe they're right. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: So here's a quote from that German movie reviewer. At

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Speaker 1: first the smiling, somewhat complacent parliamentary politician, then the completely

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Speaker 1: transformed figure of a man possessed by a holy fanaticism,

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Speaker 1: one who sees himself as above all party authority, as leader,

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Speaker 1: and as patron of the interests of his entire people

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Speaker 1: and all of humanity. So again they see this as

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Speaker 1: clearly like, oh, this is just like America, being like,

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Speaker 1: what if we had our own Hitler? They love it.

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Speaker 1: So movie president fascist even got to commit a mass

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Speaker 1: murder of his own. That's part of the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: But because it's the thirties, the people he massacres are gangsters.

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Speaker 1: They deserve it. Organized criminals. Yeah. Well, he describes these

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Speaker 1: people as like the running man. As long as these

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Speaker 1: people are like prisoners and jail, who cares they have

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Speaker 1: committed a crime, It's okay to kill anybody. Absolutely yeah

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Speaker 1: the movie. President describes these organized criminals as quote a malignant,

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Speaker 1: cancerous growth eating at the spiritual health of the American people. Uh,

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Speaker 1: the only way to deal with gangsters is to eliminate them,

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Speaker 1: so that our citizen, pursuing his peaceful way will no

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Speaker 1: longer be forced to conduct his business in the shadow

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Speaker 1: of extortion and debt. At one point, again meant to

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Speaker 1: be a heroic moment, the President gets the head gangster

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Speaker 1: and his men into a court martial and sentences them

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Speaker 1: all to die. You're the last of the racketeers, he said,

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Speaker 1: And why because we have in the White House a

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Speaker 1: man who has enabled us to cut the red tape

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Speaker 1: of legal procedures and get back to first principles. And

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Speaker 1: I for an eye Nick Diamond, who's the head of

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Speaker 1: the gangsters. A tooth for a tooth, a life for

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Speaker 1: a life. So President movie Fascists sets up a concentration

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Speaker 1: camp on Ellis Island and personally oversees the execution of

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Speaker 1: all the gangsters. Now had concentration camps already begun. Oh,

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Speaker 1: they've been happening for decades and decades in Germany over

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Speaker 1: the Nazi Germany. The word Nazi Germany. It happens as

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Speaker 1: soon as the Nazis are in power. They started at

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Speaker 1: first they have what are called the open air concentration camps,

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Speaker 1: but they're building camps this whole period of time. But

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Speaker 1: also concentration camps had started. We did a whole episode

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Speaker 1: on this, but they were very well established at this point.

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Speaker 1: So he lines up all the gangsters because you're camp

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Speaker 1: corrupt people, and he's sealing money. Yeah, and I'm going

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Speaker 1: to kill you all. And then the Nazi beasts and

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Speaker 1: then the Nazis watched this and go, now bear with me,

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Speaker 1: what if I think gangster? But let's write ja Yeah,

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Speaker 1: yeah exactly. Um So the Nazis loved this movie v

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Speaker 1: but high ranking Nazis like Joseph Gebbels are actually very

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Speaker 1: frustrated by it. He liked the movie, but he hated

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Speaker 1: how much better American studios were in making fascist propaganda.

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Speaker 1: He felt that actual Nazi filmmakers were often absolutely atrocious. Hitler,

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Speaker 1: for his part, didn't like propaganda entertainment. Hitler's feeling was

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Speaker 1: that quote, it makes me sick when I see political

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Speaker 1: propaganda hiding under the guys of art. Let it be

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Speaker 1: either art or politics, Jimmy King Kong, or give me

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Speaker 1: a newsreel. Don't give me both. Which is why the

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Speaker 1: most famous Nazi propaganda film is Triumph of the Will,

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Speaker 1: the famous Lennie reefinstall movie. If you've seen clips of

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Speaker 1: Germans Nazis marching and Hitler's it's probably from Triumph of

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Speaker 1: the Will. It's like the most famous proper explicitly propaganda

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Speaker 1: film of all time, but it was not overwhelmingly popular

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Speaker 1: in fact in Nazi Germany in the year that Triumph

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Speaker 1: of the Will was released nineteen thirty five. In that year,

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Speaker 1: nine American films outperformed at the box office. So per

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Speaker 1: last episode, when I said, well, they'll all go see

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Speaker 1: it if it's American film. That that's not necessarily true. No,

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Speaker 1: that will They won't go see a German fascist propaganda movie,

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Speaker 1: but they will all go see American movies that are

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Speaker 1: regarded as being fat because the American movies are entertaining,

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Speaker 1: So so Gabriel over the White House performed the best

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Speaker 1: it performed. Well, oh, I thought you said there was

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Speaker 1: nine movies that performed better better than Triumph of the World.

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Speaker 1: Triumph of the Will actually isn't in the top ten

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Speaker 1: most popular movies in Germany that you're released. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: was not, because it's it's it's great if you want

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Speaker 1: to scare people about how powerful New Germany is. But

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Speaker 1: nobody watched that movie and got convinced of anything, right, gotcha, gotcha?

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Speaker 1: So I'm going to read a quote from the collaboration

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Speaker 1: which is talking about sort of how the Nazis propaganda

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Speaker 1: movies were not particularly successful in Nazi Germany. In a sense,

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Speaker 1: the most successful Nazi propaganda film of the nineteen thirties

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Speaker 1: was not Triumph of the Will, commissioned by Hitler, but

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Speaker 1: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer produced by Paramount Now.

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Speaker 1: The Eyes of the Bengal Lancer was a very popular

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Speaker 1: movie at the time in the United States. It was

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Speaker 1: nominated for seven Academy Awards. It focused around a unit

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Speaker 1: of British cavalrymen defending their headquarters in Bengal from a

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Speaker 1: local Indian uprising. Gary Cooper played a leading role the

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Speaker 1: bad guy Mohammed Khan was probably the first character in

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Speaker 1: history to use the line we have ways to make

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Speaker 1: men talk in a torture scene. So that's where that

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Speaker 1: that you've heard different variations, that's where that originated from.

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Speaker 1: The Nazis loved this movie because it yet again provided

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Speaker 1: a perfect depiction of the fewer principle at work. The

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Speaker 1: colonel in charge of the British cavalry unit is depicted

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Speaker 1: as infalliable. He's not even willing to negotiate with the

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Speaker 1: enemy when they capture his own son. One of the

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Speaker 1: colonel soldiers criticizes him for this and gets harangued by

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Speaker 1: a major who basically outlines Nazi racial theory in a

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Speaker 1: few words. Man, you are blind. Have you never thought how?

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Speaker 1: For generation after generation, here a handful of men have

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Speaker 1: ordered the lives of three million people. It's because he's here,

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Speaker 1: and a few more like him, men of his breed

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Speaker 1: have made British India men who put their jobs above everything.

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Speaker 1: He wouldn't let death move him from it, and he

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Speaker 1: won't let love move him from it. When his breed

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Speaker 1: of man dies out. That's the end. And it's a

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Speaker 1: better breed of man than any of us will ever make.

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Speaker 1: And it's worth noting as Erland does that. In the

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Speaker 1: German version of this movie, the major says a handful

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Speaker 1: of white men protect three hundred Indians from chaos. So

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Speaker 1: the movie was actually edited by Hollywood to make it

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Speaker 1: more racist for the Nazis. Yeah, watching this movie gave

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Speaker 1: Joseph Gebel's the insight that in effective propaganda, a hero

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Speaker 1: does not always speak heroically, but he acts heroically. In

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Speaker 1: other words, it's more effective to make a propaganda movie

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Speaker 1: that doesn't say what it's propagandizing for, that shows it exactly.

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Speaker 1: The Life of a Bengal Lancer became one of Hitler's

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Speaker 1: favorite movies of all time. The Hitler Youth screened it

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Speaker 1: for tens of thousands of young Nazis. Gert Eckert, their leader,

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Speaker 1: noted ruefully, it is shameful that our filmmakers lack the

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Speaker 1: courage to make a movie like The Lives Live of

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Speaker 1: a Bengal Lancer. So when we think of Nazi propaganda,

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Speaker 1: we think of triumph of the will. When Nazis thought

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Speaker 1: about effective Nazi propaganda. They thought a Gary fucking Cooper ship,

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Speaker 1: Thanks Paramount. Yeah, these are not the only pro fascist

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Speaker 1: movies made by Hollywood in this time. There was another

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Speaker 1: film called Our Daily Bread that was a great example

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Speaker 1: of fascism in Hollywood in the thirties. On its surface,

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Speaker 1: the film was about a bunch of unemployed men who

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Speaker 1: start a farm together. At one point, all the men

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Speaker 1: sit down to try to decide how to like organize

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Speaker 1: their new society. Right, one guy suggests, basically anarchy where

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Speaker 1: everybody's equal. One guy suggested democracy where everybody votes. And

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Speaker 1: then one dude's like, what if we make the protagonist

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Speaker 1: of the movie. What if he's just in charge of

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Speaker 1: us and we all blindly follow whatever he says, And

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Speaker 1: then everybody cheers and immediately realize that this is the

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Speaker 1: best way to organize. But would they tell you in

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Speaker 1: Hollywood that this this also is a response to the depression? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: of like, these people don't have anything, so they set

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Speaker 1: out to go and make on their own and farm

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Speaker 1: their own land and not have to rely on the

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Speaker 1: government falling out from under them. Yes, but when they

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Speaker 1: have to pick a leader for their group, everything is

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Speaker 1: all the different political styles are suggested and they go

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Speaker 1: with one guy is just an absolute ruler. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: they cheer that like that, Like the Nazis loved Our

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Speaker 1: Daily Bread played for fifty five weeks in Nazi Germany,

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Speaker 1: like more than a year. Ernst Choral, Production chief of UFA,

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Speaker 1: the German film production company, actually wrote a report on

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Speaker 1: the movie and basically said that it was such perfect

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Speaker 1: fascist propaganda that it seemed like it had been made

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Speaker 1: under orders from the propaganda ministry like that. He was like,

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Speaker 1: this is such a perfect movie. I feel like Joseph

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Speaker 1: Gebel's outlined the plot for them to follow. So the

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Speaker 1: Nazis also loved. Mr Smith gost to Washington UH and

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Speaker 1: said that it was quote excellent propaganda that riticals corruption

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Speaker 1: and parliamentarianism in Washington. Jimmy Stewart don't like that, no, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean Jimmy Stewart bombed the Nazis in World War Two.

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Speaker 1: But they looked at it and saw, well, here's a

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Speaker 1: movie about how shitty democracy is and how one guy

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Speaker 1: with a vision has to come in and fix this

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Speaker 1: corrupt town. You see that, Like that's that's the key,

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Speaker 1: because this means you want to say that they're retrofitting it, right,

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Speaker 1: but it's so, but it's also there. It's there, And

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Speaker 1: this is one of the things that's scary because this

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Speaker 1: is still the way movies work, where it's just if

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Speaker 1: you're telling a story, you've got ninety minutes, you're trying

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Speaker 1: to get a lot of It's easier to have one person.

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Speaker 1: You know, in history it's usually big groups of people

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Speaker 1: who make things happen. It's way easier to pick one protagonist.

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Speaker 1: But that also these stories that are easy to follow

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Speaker 1: also kind of reinforce these attitudes that like you're behind

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Speaker 1: one man, get behind one man, and so a lot

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Speaker 1: of it is not that there's even direct collaboration going on,

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Speaker 1: it's just that the way movies work is entertainment really

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Speaker 1: wound up reinforcing Nazi beliefs about how the Untrix fascist

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Speaker 1: film kind of right a little bit. I mean, if

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Speaker 1: you want to view with that, you could. If The

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Speaker 1: Matrix had come out nineteen thirty six, I think the

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Speaker 1: Germans would have loved it and also would have seen

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Speaker 1: that the Smith as a Jewish stand very racist. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: the one, the one we need him, Yeah, he is

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Speaker 1: the savior. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's you think too

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Speaker 1: much about it and you start to get kind of

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Speaker 1: hopeless about the nature of storytelling because there is an

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Speaker 1: aspect of it where it's like, well, how do you

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Speaker 1: tell a story without reinforcing these things? But also I'm

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Speaker 1: saying on some level there has to be some retrofitting.

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Speaker 1: But when you but then that's why you get into

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Speaker 1: the book, the collaboration where you're like, how much was

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Speaker 1: and we do know that lions were at it, and like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and we know that Joseph Gebbels was. He was very

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Speaker 1: frustrated by all this because he loved Hollywood movies, but

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Speaker 1: he could not get German filmmakers, Nazi filmmakers, to make

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Speaker 1: anything that compared to what Hollywood was making. He's lamented

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Speaker 1: that German writers have seldom expressed national socialist ideas in

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Speaker 1: the relaxed, lively way that we see in the examples

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Speaker 1: I have just given. He was talking about the movies

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Speaker 1: we've just talked about. Our German writers have been able

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Speaker 1: to find the form to depict nationalists into some degree

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Speaker 1: national socialist ideas and film, but they have not yet

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00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:11,720
Speaker 1: mustered up the freedom to shape their work in the

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Speaker 1: way I have described naturally, we will continue making films

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Speaker 1: about our own history, but something new, entirely new, something

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Speaker 1: like our daily bread, would considerably expand our propagandistic abilities.

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Speaker 1: So like what Girbel's estating that all of the movies

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Speaker 1: that German filmmakers tried to make to embody this fewer

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Speaker 1: principle were based on actual figures from history, like they

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Speaker 1: would pick a guy like Otto von Bismarck and they

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Speaker 1: would make a movie about him to try to like.

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Speaker 1: But that Americans seem to be the only people who

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Speaker 1: had the ability to just imagine a fascist leader and

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Speaker 1: make a movie about him. For whatever reason, the Germans

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Speaker 1: could only go back to their history to make propaganda,

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Speaker 1: and Americans possessed at the time the seemingly unique ability

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Speaker 1: to realistically imagine a dictator, which brings the question, do

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Speaker 1: you have to have freedom in order to make truly

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00:21:58,400 --> 00:22:03,920
Speaker 1: excellent fascist propaganda? Uh? Because the Nazis couldn't. It's weird.

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Speaker 1: So Hollywood Studio sold, as I said, sixty five movies

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Speaker 1: to Germany nineteen thirty three. This would be their high

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Speaker 1: water mark. The tide turned against them on March second,

429
00:22:12,880 --> 00:22:15,520
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, when Hollywood had the unmitigated goal to

430
00:22:15,560 --> 00:22:19,080
Speaker 1: produce tar Tarzan the Eighth Man. The movie had actually

431
00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:20,679
Speaker 1: been out for more than a year when the Nazis

432
00:22:20,720 --> 00:22:24,679
Speaker 1: suddenly banned it. Article fifteen had recently been changed, adding

433
00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:27,320
Speaker 1: that films could be banned if they quote harmed national,

434
00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:31,480
Speaker 1: socialist ethical artistic sensibilities. The banning process for Tarzan had

435
00:22:31,520 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 1: started when dr Ernst Seeger, the chief censor of Germany,

436
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:37,199
Speaker 1: had actually objected to the film for a reason I

437
00:22:37,240 --> 00:22:39,520
Speaker 1: think will surprise everybody. So I'm going to read his

438
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 1: objections to Tarzan the Ape Man. No, no, it's not

439
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:46,359
Speaker 1: what you'd guess at all. It's nothing racist. Did that

440
00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:49,119
Speaker 1: Tarzan even have long here? I know that movie? I

441
00:22:49,119 --> 00:22:51,679
Speaker 1: don't know. Probably not. I'm a hacking a fraud, so

442
00:22:51,680 --> 00:22:54,680
Speaker 1: I did not not. I did not research that part.

443
00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:58,320
Speaker 1: But here's dr Ernst Seeger expressing his his issues with

444
00:22:58,400 --> 00:23:01,160
Speaker 1: Tarzan the Ape Man. This film is one of those

445
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:03,560
Speaker 1: Africa pictures that would aim to awaken the thrill of

446
00:23:03,600 --> 00:23:06,920
Speaker 1: sadistic instincts stincts in the spectator by deliberately and subtly

447
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:10,000
Speaker 1: emphasizing the atrocities in the struggle between humans and animals,

448
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:12,920
Speaker 1: as well as that between animals of different kinds. It's

449
00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:15,760
Speaker 1: a moral and bestializing effect is illuminated in the fact

450
00:23:15,720 --> 00:23:17,919
Speaker 1: that the audience laughs at the mortal danger of a

451
00:23:18,040 --> 00:23:21,120
Speaker 1: nice little monkey who lets out atrocious death screams while

452
00:23:21,119 --> 00:23:24,399
Speaker 1: clumsily running from a roaring panther, and furthermore titters with

453
00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 1: pleasure when a herd of elephant stampedes through a Negro village,

454
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:30,040
Speaker 1: and when an elephant hurls a pigmy through the air

455
00:23:30,119 --> 00:23:32,960
Speaker 1: onto the ground, where the unfortunate soul parishes, writing and

456
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:36,359
Speaker 1: pitiable death, convulsions and shrieks. The cruelty to animals that

457
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:38,640
Speaker 1: occurred in the making of this picture is a cultural

458
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:41,399
Speaker 1: disgrace which has been barred from taking place in the

459
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 1: New Germany because of the animal protection law we have instituted.

460
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:47,879
Speaker 1: The film law should spare no means in preventing foreign

461
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:50,080
Speaker 1: pictures of this type from reaching the screen in Germany.

462
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:52,639
Speaker 1: For the producers of these pictures are breaking the fundamental

463
00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:56,199
Speaker 1: precepts of humanity and their pure obsession with profit not

464
00:23:56,320 --> 00:23:59,400
Speaker 1: what you'd call it, right, Take key cared about animals,

465
00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:03,360
Speaker 1: any care about African people being shown? Well I don't

466
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 1: think that, yeah, but well he cared about the African

467
00:24:05,800 --> 00:24:08,240
Speaker 1: people he cared about. He hated a scene where a

468
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:11,560
Speaker 1: Negro what he called a Negro village was destroyed and

469
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 1: were killed. He was horrified by all this. So this

470
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:17,960
Speaker 1: isn't that crazy that like some of the worst people

471
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:20,760
Speaker 1: in history. Also, like we're early on that tip of

472
00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:23,680
Speaker 1: like be nice to animals. They were the first people

473
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:26,720
Speaker 1: to put through like really modern animal rights laws. It's

474
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 1: hard for me sometimes to watch like a really old

475
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:30,320
Speaker 1: movie with the horses, where you're like, I just don't

476
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: give a ship, I don't care what happens. I didn't

477
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:35,800
Speaker 1: really care about people either, because they got a lot

478
00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: of actually just killed at those days. So we're going

479
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,400
Speaker 1: to get into more about tars and the ape man

480
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: and what the Nazis did with that, because the the

481
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 1: problems wrinkle out from here. So Seeger is not the

482
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:51,440
Speaker 1: only person with objections movie. He's just the only person

483
00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:54,919
Speaker 1: with not racist objections to the movie. Um, but first

484
00:24:55,080 --> 00:25:05,359
Speaker 1: it is time for some adds and we're back. Those

485
00:25:05,359 --> 00:25:09,080
Speaker 1: were some great ads, fantastic people should take your advice

486
00:25:09,119 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: on those. Yes, please buy these products indoor services. Now

487
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 1: we just talked about Seeger's surprising objections to Tarzan the

488
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: eight Man. Well, I wasn't surprising he objected, yeah, but

489
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:23,320
Speaker 1: surprising that he objected because it was cruel to animals

490
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: and to people, rather than I think so he must.

491
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: I think at this point he would have had to

492
00:25:28,760 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: have been a member of the party. I don't know

493
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:33,359
Speaker 1: if he like most people who joined the party. I've

494
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 1: just never thought of a Nazi and also simultaneously thought,

495
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:40,879
Speaker 1: good call. Yeah, it's weird, right, I mean, even the

496
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:43,920
Speaker 1: Nazi clock is we're right once a day. There you go,

497
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:47,360
Speaker 1: there you go. So everything we just talked about. His wife,

498
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:49,880
Speaker 1: Seeger thought the movie needed to be banned, but he

499
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:51,920
Speaker 1: wasn't sure of his own judgment, and so he sent

500
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 1: the film off to the Propaganda Ministry to basically get

501
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:56,639
Speaker 1: their input on the matter, and once they reviewed it,

502
00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 1: they concluded that quote this film must be sensor must

503
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 1: be considered dangerous. The Nazi state has been tirelessly trying

504
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 1: to awaken in public opinion the highest sense of responsibility

505
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:08,239
Speaker 1: in the selection of a husband. It has also put

506
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 1: a great deal of effort into freeing the ideas of marriage, womanhood,

507
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:14,080
Speaker 1: and motherhood from the superficial distortion of the past epoch,

508
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:17,920
Speaker 1: which was completely aimed at sexuality and making them honorable again.

509
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 1: A film that puts pure libido in the foreground, that

510
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:23,399
Speaker 1: tends to imply that a jungle man, virtually an ape,

511
00:26:23,640 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: is capable of the noblest impulses of the soul and

512
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 1: is a worthy marriage partner, certainly runs against the tendencies

513
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: of national socialism with regards to population politics. So there's

514
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: your natural to the marriage is not just between a

515
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 1: man and a woman, it's between a distinguished man and

516
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: a woman. And you can't show a man who's basically

517
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 1: an ape winning the affections of a noble German woman

518
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: because they yea, because they aren't of German caliber. Yeah,

519
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:54,359
Speaker 1: essentially exactly, it's not us. Yeah. So this the propaganda

520
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:58,440
Speaker 1: ministries problem with this is what you'd expect from the Nazis.

521
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 1: I'm just weirded out that seegars anyway, So this sort

522
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:06,640
Speaker 1: of opened the damn from the Nazis banning movies. Um

523
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 1: secret only banned two or three titles a year previously,

524
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: but after this he went kind of band happy because

525
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:14,719
Speaker 1: now the president had been set that not only are

526
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: we going to stop movies that are explicitly anti German,

527
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 1: but we will Yeah, exactly will be in movies if

528
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 1: we think they will harm our racial instincts, will band

529
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 1: movies just because we think they present if in any

530
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,120
Speaker 1: way it infringes on what we're trying to do as

531
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 1: a people, not who we are, not just who we

532
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:36,600
Speaker 1: are political motives and what we are as a country,

533
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: but just our moral code. To go all the way

534
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:42,200
Speaker 1: back to me, like, well, no, that's not how anybody

535
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: should behave, Yeah, exactly how a German would act or

536
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: behave or view things exactly. So seeger starts going band

537
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,439
Speaker 1: happy after this. He can's a movie called Blonde Venus

538
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 1: for being a lax depiction of marriage and morality that

539
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:57,399
Speaker 1: contradicts the nation's current emphasis on the importance of family.

540
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:01,439
Speaker 1: He banned scarface not the the first scar face, for

541
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 1: making criminality look appealing. Do we know anything though about like,

542
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 1: you know how in our country back in the early

543
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:09,840
Speaker 1: nineteen nards, we had the independence the people who saw

544
00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: it on their own to do it. We're like, fuck

545
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: your your rules on what it has to be or whatever.

546
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 1: Was there that in Germany of of just these like

547
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:21,919
Speaker 1: not artists were in charge, I mean any of the

548
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:24,560
Speaker 1: artists who are people who were like I got a

549
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 1: copy of Scarface and we're gonna watch it. I there

550
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: there may have been, I mean not in a documented

551
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 1: sense that it felt like any sort of movement or

552
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:34,119
Speaker 1: collective of people, not that I have any sort of

553
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:37,120
Speaker 1: information about. Because number one, you know, you're talking about

554
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:38,800
Speaker 1: having a copy of a film. You have like a

555
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 1: real at this point, so it's like a sizeable thing.

556
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:44,720
Speaker 1: But also, like the first couple of years, the Nazis

557
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,480
Speaker 1: are in power there. If you were an artist who

558
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: could be making good movies, you're either out of Germany

559
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:52,479
Speaker 1: at this point where you're in a camp. Yeah, I

560
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 1: mean you know that's that's what happened. Um so yeah,

561
00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 1: he uh seeger bands scar Face, as I said, for

562
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 1: making look appealing to be a criminal. He bans all

563
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:06,280
Speaker 1: horror movies for being immoral and exciting people's bass instincts.

564
00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: The Germans were not alone in this, or not alone

565
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,719
Speaker 1: in banning movies. The Fox filment Caravan was banned in

566
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 1: France for depicting a gypsy and a white man making love.

567
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: Uh So, like how dare they? And we'll get into

568
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:22,160
Speaker 1: Caravan a little bit, because that's not even what was

569
00:29:22,200 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 1: going on. But like everybody's racist back then the Nazis

570
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 1: are just a couple of steps racist, or there's so

571
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: much more efficient, they're super efficient at it. So by

572
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:34,280
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, the situation had gotten very dark for

573
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: the Hollywood studios. Dozens of films have been rejected for import,

574
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 1: costing the studios millions of dollars. The only studios who

575
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: could even afford to stay in Germany by this point

576
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: were MGM, Paramount and twentieth Century Fox. The situation was

577
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: so dire that Douglas Miller, the American Trade Commissioner in Berlin,

578
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: wrote a warning letter back to d C. He said

579
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 1: it would be unfortunate for German American relations if our

580
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: motion picture companies no longer feel they have any possibility

581
00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 1: of selling films in Germany or any further interest in

582
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: considering the German point of view. He also noted that

583
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: if our film ties with Germany or severed, American film

584
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:07,520
Speaker 1: companies will jump at the chance of using stories which

585
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 1: will trade Germany and the Germans in an unfavorable light.

586
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 1: Not because they desire to injure Germany, but because they

587
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:15,440
Speaker 1: are hungry for villains and desire a relief from the

588
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:19,280
Speaker 1: monotony of always using Americans or unnamed foreigners in this connection.

589
00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:21,840
Speaker 1: So the government saw it as a bad thing if

590
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 1: Hollywood was going to start making anti Nazi movies. And

591
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,920
Speaker 1: that's another important are the US government, Yeah, because they

592
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 1: didn't want war with Germany. At this point, there were

593
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:32,440
Speaker 1: still a big we don't want war movement in the

594
00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 1: United States and so there was a real worry that

595
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: solution exactly. And if Hollywood gets kicked out of Germany,

596
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: they're gonna start making anti Nazi films and that's going

597
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 1: to push us closer to war. So this is another factor.

598
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 1: It's just important to keep all of this in mind.

599
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: We're thinking about the decisions being made by these people.

600
00:30:48,520 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: So rather than pack up, the remaining studios decided to

601
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 1: lean into the Nazis. Um In nineteen thirty seven, Paramount

602
00:30:55,080 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: picked a manager for their Berlin branch who was a

603
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:01,200
Speaker 1: strong Nazi Party member. Uh Fritz Steinold, who was the

604
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 1: gentile manager of MGM Germany, divorced his Jewish wife. She

605
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 1: was later sent to a concentration camp. No ship. Yeah, wait,

606
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: so this is Paramount. That was MGM. Jim and the Paramounts,

607
00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: the one who picked Nazi hired a branch. Yeah, they

608
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 1: may had him manage their Berlin branch and MGMs branch

609
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:24,080
Speaker 1: manager divorces his Jewish wife to please the Nazis and

610
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 1: and she gets Yeah, she winds up in a concentration

611
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:29,120
Speaker 1: camp and probably dies there. Yeah. I don't know exactly

612
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: what happened here, but probably not a good story. Yeah

613
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: what the fund, dude? Yeah? So for what money? Yeah?

614
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 1: So studios, it's it is important to note that studios

615
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: also tricked the Nazis. Sometimes didn't the jew run MGM. Yeah,

616
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: and I don't mean that that sounded worce. A Jewish

617
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 1: person ran in Jewish people who still ran back in Hollywood,

618
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: and they hired a Nazi, yeah, in Germany for their

619
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 1: German branch because he would help them with the Nazis. Dude,

620
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: it's messed up. I was almost saying that to that

621
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 1: person's ghosts. Yeah, like dude, so um, there were also

622
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:07,960
Speaker 1: it's important to note there were some ways at which

623
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,200
Speaker 1: Hollywood kind of stuck their fingers at the Nazis, Like

624
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: the Nazis were hesitant to accept any movies, and increasingly

625
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 1: in late thirties just stopped accepting movies with Jewish actors

626
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 1: in them. So they would lie about they would just

627
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 1: they would just change the name on the credits so

628
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 1: that like the Nazis wouldn't notice that they'd snuck Jewish

629
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 1: people into their movies. So there's a little bit of

630
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 1: that going on. It's not all one. Yeah, but you

631
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: also hired a guy and said, like your life, I

632
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 1: don't know how good you feel about this marriage, visa,

633
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: your job, but um, we'd like to make some more money. Yeah,

634
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 1: so and you can send her off wherever you want.

635
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 1: I know where, Yeah, I know where she should go.

636
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: Yeah that's horrible. Oh, it's terrible. So for a while

637
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: thirty seven profits came back up. The film ministry recovered

638
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: there was more money coming in. You're hiring Nazis. Yeah,

639
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 1: you're hiring Nazis. It worked out for a little while,

640
00:32:56,760 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 1: but then on November ninth and tenth, ninety eight, still

641
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:03,240
Speaker 1: Knocked happened. This was followed by a corresponding surge in

642
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 1: official German anti semitism. What happened Chrystal knocked? I don't

643
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 1: know what that is? The Night of Broken Glass, I'm sorry.

644
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 1: It was basically a night where sort of the Nazis

645
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: was the first big massive public all across Germany, like

646
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 1: pogram against the Jews where synagogues were burnt. Jewish businesses

647
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 1: were like that. It's called the night of broken Glass

648
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: because so many Jewish businesses had their windows shattered that

649
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 1: it was just glass. They did like an at home blitzkrieg. Yeah,

650
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: exactly on on the German Jewish people, and a lot

651
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: of people were murdered during Krystal knock. It's a one

652
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: of those marks where things about. So after this happens,

653
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 1: there's a surge in official anti semitism um. Two weeks

654
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 1: after Krystal knocked, Darren Griff that Nazi newspaper prints and

655
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: article which is titled one third of Hollywood Stars or Jews,

656
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: and it listed like dozens and dozens of Jewish film

657
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 1: industry people. One day after the attack listed that. Yeah,

658
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: and one day after the attack list that, the German

659
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: Propaganda Ministry publishes a black list with the names of

660
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 1: sixty Hollywood stars on it. They announced that if anyone

661
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 1: on the list is in any American film, that film

662
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: will not be allowed to enter Germany. Not everyone on

663
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:15,359
Speaker 1: the list was Jewish. Ernest Hemmingway made it on there,

664
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: so did Bing Crosby. So this is the list you

665
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 1: want to be on, So good for bing Crosby. And yeah,

666
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:25,640
Speaker 1: I mean I hear. I thought he was just on

667
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:27,239
Speaker 1: the list of beating the ship out of his kids.

668
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 1: He beat the ship out of his kids, and the

669
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:34,680
Speaker 1: Nazis didn't like him. So when some you lose someone,

670
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 1: was it was he old blue Eyes? Or is that

671
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: someone else? You're right, you're right? What do they call

672
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 1: bing Crosby? Um? Please stop? Dad? White Christmas is a

673
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: fun film for the whole family. Yeah, don't pay too

674
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:53,959
Speaker 1: much attention to the fact that none of the black

675
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 1: actors have speaking roles. There you go and pay attention

676
00:34:57,520 --> 00:35:01,719
Speaker 1: to the tree. It's you watched that movie again as

677
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:05,319
Speaker 1: an adult and you notice some troubling things. That sucks too,

678
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: because like there's a lot of the movie that's yeah,

679
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: really fun musical scene, you know, yeah, yeah, but man

680
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 1: those train scenes where it's like, oh, oh, right, Jim

681
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 1: Crow is still a thing, right, yeah, Okay, So we're

682
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 1: hearing that Bing Crosby's nickname was old Growner, which I

683
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 1: don't approve of the old Growner. Well, right or wrong,

684
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 1: I'm in here's the bottom line. Everyone needs to go

685
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:35,640
Speaker 1: watch Will Farrell and John c Radley's recreation of the

686
00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 1: David Bowie being Crosby Christmas Special. It is perfect. I've

687
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 1: never even heard of this. Well, you saw that. You've

688
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: seen the David Bowie being crossed Christmas? Is that a

689
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:48,440
Speaker 1: real thing? Yes? Man? What was he happening in Hollywood

690
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 1: at that seat? Is that bing? Crosby is in London

691
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: visiting his cousin or something like that, and there's a

692
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:57,799
Speaker 1: knock at the door and it's David Bowie and he says, oh,

693
00:35:57,880 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: you must be the cousin from overseas. He was like,

694
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:03,600
Speaker 1: well or wrong, i'men And then he comes into his

695
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:05,799
Speaker 1: house and then they sing Drummer Boy together, which I'm

696
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 1: sure you've either heard, oh I have heard that it's

697
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:13,040
Speaker 1: a Christmas special. So shot for shot, moment for moment,

698
00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:16,320
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell and John c Riley recreated that Christmas Special.

699
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:22,879
Speaker 1: What a weird thing. Beautiful. Okay, this is a lot

700
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: of information for me to take in right now. I'm

701
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:27,920
Speaker 1: gonna have to pack that one away for later so

702
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 1: we can finish this. So the Nazis put together this

703
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:34,480
Speaker 1: blacklist of you know, if any actor on this list

704
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 1: is in a movie, it cannot come into German and

705
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 1: they didn't say they were just choose. There's just people

706
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:39,799
Speaker 1: we don't These are people we don't like a lighting.

707
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:42,920
Speaker 1: A lot of them are Jews, but they obviously on

708
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 1: there because he went to the Spanish American War and

709
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 1: was big not fan of fascists for himself. But you know,

710
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:52,880
Speaker 1: right right now. Another weird factor that complicates events was

711
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: the fact that companies doing business in Germany couldn't take

712
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 1: cash they made out of Germany. Um Paramount and twentieth

713
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:01,000
Speaker 1: Century Fox just invested the money they made in Germany

714
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 1: and local cameraman in film stock and would record Nazi

715
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:06,719
Speaker 1: rallies and stuff and then would sell that footage to

716
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:08,080
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. And that's how they made

717
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:10,440
Speaker 1: a profit. Kind of laundered it. Yeah, yeah, it was.

718
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 1: It was like it was back out saying, but yeah,

719
00:37:14,080 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: you had to do something. You couldn't take the money

720
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: directly out of it, right. MGM found a different tactic.

721
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: And I'm going to read another quote from the collaboration.

722
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:25,400
Speaker 1: In December nineteen thirty eight, one month after Christal knocked,

723
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: MGM discovered a way to export its profits more effectively.

724
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:32,479
Speaker 1: An American Trade commissioner explained the process MGM first loaned

725
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:35,400
Speaker 1: the money to certain German firms where credit was badly needed.

726
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:38,279
Speaker 1: MGM then received bonds in exchange for the loan, and

727
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:40,840
Speaker 1: finally sold these bonds abroad at a loss of around

728
00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 1: which was a substantial approvement over previous losses. There was

729
00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:47,040
Speaker 1: just one catch. Do you want to guess what the catches?

730
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:50,000
Speaker 1: You want to guess what these firms are doing funding

731
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,719
Speaker 1: the Nazis? I don't know. The firms in question, the

732
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:57,120
Speaker 1: American Trade Commissioner said, are connected with the armament industry,

733
00:37:57,239 --> 00:38:00,640
Speaker 1: especially in the Sue Dayton territory or Austria. In other words,

734
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 1: the largest American motion picture company helped to finance the

735
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,960
Speaker 1: German war machine. Jesus, that's how they're getting their money

736
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 1: out of Germany, loaning money to the people making German guns.

737
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:18,320
Speaker 1: That's not Hollywood, no man, it's dark. Um. Do you

738
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:22,439
Speaker 1: remember gamer Gate? Yes? Yeah, I'm assume most people listening

739
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:24,360
Speaker 1: remember gamer Gate. If if you spend a lot of

740
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:27,799
Speaker 1: time reading the complaints that supporters of that movement made,

741
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: you ran into the idea that film criticism, or that

742
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:33,759
Speaker 1: criticism of any kind was bad, that critics shouldn't point

743
00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 1: out problems in games or flaws or troubling trends that

744
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:38,880
Speaker 1: these are in lematic of that they should instead just

745
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:42,759
Speaker 1: describe what happens in the game directly. They would have

746
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:45,360
Speaker 1: agreed with Joseph Gebbel's because at the end of nineteen

747
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,360
Speaker 1: thirty six he made film criticism illegal in Germany and

748
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:52,360
Speaker 1: mandated film description instead. Here's an excerpt from one of

749
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:56,720
Speaker 1: those reviews. The American film Honolulu is full of humorous ideas,

750
00:38:56,800 --> 00:39:00,279
Speaker 1: refreshingly fast paced, and contains dance sequences, catching me and

751
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:03,759
Speaker 1: gags about mistaken identity. A very pleasant entertainment. It is

752
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:06,239
Speaker 1: gratifying that it is able to bring harmless amusement to

753
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:09,360
Speaker 1: these serious times. That sounds like one of my pitches

754
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:12,279
Speaker 1: when I'm not trying to sell something. Yeah, there are

755
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 1: things that happened that people find funny. There are mistaken

756
00:39:15,200 --> 00:39:20,920
Speaker 1: identities in the movie. Now, Technicolor presented an issue for

757
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:25,120
Speaker 1: the Nazis uh, and that's actually presented an issue for

758
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: racists everywhere because when Technicolor came out, Hollywood realized, like,

759
00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 1: white people look boring, So let's start casting people who

760
00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:39,359
Speaker 1: aren't white in our movies because it's exciting because now

761
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 1: we can actually have people with different skin tones and

762
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:44,920
Speaker 1: it will register. And so people who are not white

763
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 1: sore in representation in Hollywood when technicolor becomes a thing,

764
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: and the Nazis do not like this. So this is

765
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:56,239
Speaker 1: a big issue for the Nazis that like technicolor means

766
00:39:56,360 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: that people who aren't white are increasingly characters. They want

767
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:02,120
Speaker 1: one tone, they want one tone. That's kind of the

768
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 1: whole thing with the Nazis. So we're going to get

769
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: into how this has an impact on you know, this

770
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:10,000
Speaker 1: supposed collaboration. But first ads, you know, you all know

771
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: the game. It's adds. Listen and we're back and we're

772
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 1: talking about technicolor and the rash of non white characters

773
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 1: it brought to Hollywood, which was great for actors, movies,

774
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 1: and art. As a concept in human history, not welcome

775
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: by Nazis, not welcome by Nazis. They were not a

776
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,880
Speaker 1: big fan of this. A good example is the movie Ramona.

777
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: In this movie, an Indian chief named Alessandro rescues a

778
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: white woman stuck in a tree. They fall in love,

779
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 1: but it's quickly revealed that Ramona's mom isn't her real mom,

780
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:44,840
Speaker 1: and that her actual mom was an Indian squaw, so

781
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:47,280
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually race mixing, but she was part Indian.

782
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:53,439
Speaker 1: But even this was too much for the Nazis. Yeah, yeah,

783
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 1: well they're not white people, yeah, exactly, and they're in

784
00:40:57,640 --> 00:40:59,560
Speaker 1: a movie, that's what which were they though? Was this

785
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 1: one of those deals for Hollywood? I'm sure it was, right,

786
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:06,200
Speaker 1: like it's fucking thirty years later, John Wayne would play

787
00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:10,800
Speaker 1: Gang of Scotts. Now. Thanks to the German love of

788
00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 1: Karl May, particularly Hitler's love of Karl May, Ramona was

789
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:17,879
Speaker 1: allowed to play Karl May was a German. He wrote

790
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: books about the wild West that had hit was Hitler's

791
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:22,440
Speaker 1: favorite thing in the world. We have a whole episode

792
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:25,000
Speaker 1: about it. But so this movie was allowed to play

793
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: because the Nazis kind of had a thing about Native Americans.

794
00:41:28,560 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: But a movie they banned was The Gypsy Princess, which

795
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:34,320
Speaker 1: portrayed the love of a white man for a Gypsy woman.

796
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 1: It was an explicitly anti racist and pro mixed marriage movie,

797
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:41,399
Speaker 1: which is pretty ballsy from the mid thirties, but of course,

798
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:44,080
Speaker 1: you know the Nazi Well, actually, weirdly enough, this movie

799
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 1: didn't make it into Germany and past the sensors at

800
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:48,279
Speaker 1: least for a while, like they caught it after it

801
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 1: had already been released. Erlan thinks that this was got

802
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:54,800
Speaker 1: through because the sensors were basically they had hit a

803
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: point in censorship in Germany where they were just looking

804
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:00,880
Speaker 1: at the casts and scanning from mentions of the Nazi Party,

805
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 1: and if the cast was okay and there was no

806
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 1: mention in the Nazi Party, a lot of stuff slipped through.

807
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:07,960
Speaker 1: So that is important some movies because like this movie

808
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:11,000
Speaker 1: that's pro mixed marriage runs a Nazi Germany for a

809
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 1: little while, so it's not a one sided picture. Although

810
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 1: I don't think the people who made the Gypsy Princess

811
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:22,400
Speaker 1: Number one, that's a pretty racist title today. Um, you

812
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: have to think of things in their timeline. Someone in

813
00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:27,480
Speaker 1: the mid thirties making a movie that says mixed marriage

814
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: is good, that's that's brave at the time. Yeah, But

815
00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:32,800
Speaker 1: I don't think they were explicitly trying to change opinions

816
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: in Nazi Germany. They were trying to change opinions in America,

817
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 1: and it just so happened that the movie slipped through.

818
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 1: A Few movies did get into Germany that like included

819
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 1: racial things that the Nazis were against and there were

820
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:46,040
Speaker 1: even some moments in various movies where veiled critiques of

821
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:49,439
Speaker 1: Nazi policies made it past the censors. This stuff, however,

822
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:52,160
Speaker 1: had a negligible impact on the German populace because it

823
00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:54,400
Speaker 1: was easy to ignore. This would not have been the

824
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:57,160
Speaker 1: case with a proposed movie based off of Sinclair Lewis's

825
00:42:57,200 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 1: book It Can't Happen Here, which you've definitely seen some

826
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:02,959
Speaker 1: quotes and selections from It Can Have It Here spread

827
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: on Twitter recently as a result of certain things in

828
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 1: modern American politics. It's a very famous book, and it's

829
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,840
Speaker 1: worth noting that Sinclair's wife was a woman named Dorothy Thompson.

830
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 1: She is the female journalist who I end our episode

831
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 1: on the non Nazi Bastards behind Hitler with one of

832
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,800
Speaker 1: her quotes. She had actually interviewed Hitler back in Berlin

833
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:23,400
Speaker 1: before he reached total power, and had written very brutal

834
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 1: things about him. Now, in fairness, she didn't She considered

835
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,160
Speaker 1: his political career doomed to failure. She never thought he

836
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 1: was going to become dictator, but once he did, she

837
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: dedicated herself to tearing him apart in the international press.

838
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: She was kicked out of Germany and nineteen thirty four

839
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: and became one of Hitler's most strident pre war critics.

840
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 1: The collaboration quotes one line in particular from her pre

841
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 1: Dictator interview with Hitler, and I think it's worth reading

842
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,720
Speaker 1: out here. So this is Dorothy Thompson talking about Hitler.

843
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 1: If you want to gauge the strength of the Hitler movement,

844
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 1: imagine that in America, an order with the tongue of

845
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: the late Mr Bryan, Williams Jennings Bryan and the histrionic

846
00:43:57,640 --> 00:43:59,960
Speaker 1: power of Amy McPherson who I don't know who, that is,

847
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 1: combined with the publicity gifts of Edward Burnet's and Ivy Lee,

848
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:05,560
Speaker 1: should manage to unite all the farmers with all the

849
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 1: white color unemployed, all the people with salaries under three

850
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:10,719
Speaker 1: thousand a year who have lost their savings and bank

851
00:44:10,800 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 1: collapses in the stock market, and they're being pressed for

852
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:15,160
Speaker 1: payments on the ice box and the radio, the louder

853
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 1: evangelical preachers, the American Legion, the d A R, the

854
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan, the w C t U, Matthew Wall,

855
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 1: Senator Bora, and Henry Ford. Imagine that and you will

856
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:26,040
Speaker 1: have some idea of what the Hitler movement in Germany means.

857
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,360
Speaker 1: So this is the kind of writer that Dorothy Thompson is,

858
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,239
Speaker 1: and she becomes quite famous as an anti Hitler activist.

859
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 1: This drives her husband, Sinclair Lewis, crazy, and he writes

860
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: it Can't Happen Here so that he can be seen

861
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:40,399
Speaker 1: as a more prominent anti Hitler voice than his wife.

862
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 1: I mean that's one version of Iran sharpening, I guess.

863
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:47,800
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, we got a good piece of anti

864
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:50,640
Speaker 1: fascist literature out of it. That's useful, but it's done

865
00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:53,040
Speaker 1: in the vein. And I'll show this broad Yeah, the

866
00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: most misogynistic piece of anti Nazi propaty ever ever CONCEIVEE

867
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:00,440
Speaker 1: What inspired you to write this life and allow a

868
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 1: woman to be perceived as better than me? My wife's

869
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 1: too famous, I'm Sinclair Lewis. Yeah. So he wrote it

870
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:10,880
Speaker 1: Can't Happen Here, and it sold very well, but that

871
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 1: was still just a couple of hundred thousand copies. So

872
00:45:13,520 --> 00:45:16,239
Speaker 1: when Hollywood starts talking about maybe adapting it to a film,

873
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 1: he gets excited because this means his book is going

874
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 1: to be shared to away wider audience. Millions of people

875
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: might get these ideas and he does seem to genuinely

876
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:26,920
Speaker 1: want to try to warn Americans about the danger of fascism.

877
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 1: Now the mill the movie got a script that a

878
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:32,240
Speaker 1: lot of people think was a fantastic script. Lewis didn't

879
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:34,520
Speaker 1: write it, somebody else adapted it. It's apparently got a

880
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: very good script, and it includes lines like this from

881
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:39,719
Speaker 1: the main character, a guy named Dremus, who is a

882
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 1: journalist who initially falls for the American fascist candidate and

883
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 1: then later winds up fighting against him. Quote, all us

884
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:49,239
Speaker 1: lazy minded daremus as are responsible. I used to think

885
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 1: that wars and depressions were brought on by diplomats and bankers.

886
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 1: They were brought on by US liberals because we did

887
00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:58,160
Speaker 1: nothing to stop them. So it's like there's some fucking

888
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:01,600
Speaker 1: potent ship screen, right. The only thing worse than evil

889
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:05,440
Speaker 1: is the proposed stampine. Let it happen exactly. So this

890
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: is set to be a pretty great anti Nazi movie,

891
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:12,120
Speaker 1: pretty bold movie, but it worries some people. One of

892
00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:14,239
Speaker 1: those people is a guy named William finnsch Riber, who

893
00:46:14,320 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 1: is the chair of the film Committee for the Central

894
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 1: Conference of American Rabbis. He writes to Mayor of MGM

895
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:23,280
Speaker 1: about why they shouldn't go through with producing this movie. Quote.

896
00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 1: I have considered the problem at great length, and I

897
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:28,040
Speaker 1: am of the opinion that a film version of that story,

898
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: howsoever interpreted and directed, will have anything but a beneficial

899
00:46:31,640 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 1: effect upon the Jewish problem. More and more, I am

900
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 1: convinced that during these highly critical days for the Jewish

901
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 1: people here and elsewhere, we ought not to thrust the

902
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:42,000
Speaker 1: jew and his problems too much into the limelight. I

903
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: am quite sure that any interpretation of the story made

904
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 1: by your film will be forceful and certainly not seemingly

905
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:50,200
Speaker 1: detrimental to the Jewish cause. But there are times when

906
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: to say nothing is better than to say something favorable.

907
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: So this is not an ill considered thing. This guy

908
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: is thinking about it, and you can't. You know, you've

909
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:02,040
Speaker 1: got to think about like happened with that the Rothchild movie,

910
00:47:02,480 --> 00:47:04,040
Speaker 1: Like this is what this guy is worried about, and

911
00:47:04,080 --> 00:47:07,360
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a legitimate worry. I happen to

912
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:09,800
Speaker 1: think it would have been better for history if the

913
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:12,920
Speaker 1: movie had been made, but it was not. It was

914
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:17,640
Speaker 1: canceled on February six, day before Valentine's The day before

915
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:23,400
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day, Yeah, that's no love. Sinclair Lewis was not

916
00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 1: happy about this. He said, the hell am I supposed

917
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:34,239
Speaker 1: to beat this woman? That's his quote. You guys are

918
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:37,640
Speaker 1: really fucking my marriage here, No gotta, I'm even angrier

919
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 1: at my wife. No, he actually said something poign and profound.

920
00:47:43,200 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: What we've been talking about today. The world today is

921
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:49,720
Speaker 1: full of fascist propaganda, which definitely was cover that this episode.

922
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:52,800
Speaker 1: The Germans are making one pro fascist film after another,

923
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 1: designed to show that fascism is superior to liberal democracy.

924
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:58,320
Speaker 1: But Mr Hayes actually says that a film cannot be

925
00:47:58,440 --> 00:48:01,280
Speaker 1: made showing the horrors of fascist and extolling the advantages

926
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: of liberal democracy because Hitler and Mussolini might ban other

927
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:09,120
Speaker 1: Hollywood films from their countries. If yep, democracy is certainly

928
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 1: on the defensive when two European dictators, without opening their

929
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 1: mouths or knowing anything about the issue, can shut down

930
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: an American film. I wrote, it can't happen here, but

931
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:20,880
Speaker 1: I begin to think it certainly does. It certainly can

932
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:25,279
Speaker 1: good quote? Yeah, good quote. He's saying it can. It

933
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:29,400
Speaker 1: can be influenced here. Yeah. Hitler's not even saying canceled

934
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:31,840
Speaker 1: this movie. We just know that it will fuck things up,

935
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: so we're canceling it because we're scared. Which again, the

936
00:48:35,719 --> 00:48:38,000
Speaker 1: people who attack been Irwan for saying this is a

937
00:48:38,040 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: collaboration will say, well, the Nazis didn't even say anything

938
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:44,440
Speaker 1: about a movie like this. Rwan's argument is that basically

939
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: the Nazis had already trained Hollywood so well that they

940
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 1: didn't need to actively. Exactly, the mouse had touched the

941
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 1: cheese enough times, exactly, thank you for bringing mice into

942
00:48:55,160 --> 00:48:57,520
Speaker 1: this again. Always yeah, it's important if they're not here,

943
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:00,680
Speaker 1: they're in that damn movie theater because the Nazis let

944
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 1: them loose. Right, It always ties back to Nazis. So now.

945
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:06,960
Speaker 1: The late nineteen thirties in general seemed to show a

946
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 1: real shift in how Hollywood censorship occurred. Rather than having Jisling,

947
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:13,320
Speaker 1: who was the German censor who's in in Los Angeles,

948
00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:16,840
Speaker 1: whether having him review movies and suggest changes, studio executives

949
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:19,359
Speaker 1: started cutting films as they made them, simply because they

950
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: knew what the Germans wouldn't accept. I want that money,

951
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 1: damn right, then fund their war machine and then get

952
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:29,560
Speaker 1: our money back a loss, which is still pretty good,

953
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:32,560
Speaker 1: still pretty good. I don't want to think too much

954
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:34,920
Speaker 1: about that. What the money is buying? That's the Russians problems.

955
00:49:35,160 --> 00:49:41,640
Speaker 1: Hey is that your new wife? Oh boy? Yeah. So

956
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:44,239
Speaker 1: a Warner Brothers movie about the Drive us a fair

957
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:47,120
Speaker 1: Ever heard of the Drives affair? H Is that Mr

958
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 1: Holland's opus? No, it's a It's one of the most

959
00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: famous moments in the history of anti Semitism. Alfred Dright

960
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 1: I think Alfred was his first name. Drivers was definitely

961
00:49:54,600 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 1: his last name. He was a Jewish French military officer

962
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:00,319
Speaker 1: pre before World War One who was a key used

963
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 1: of selling military secrets I think to the Germans um

964
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:05,239
Speaker 1: and he was likely innocent, but there was a big

965
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: show trial about it. It's a big because like anti Semitism,

966
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: French anti Semitism played a huge role in it, and

967
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 1: it was a very famous thing at this point in

968
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 1: history because it was not all that distant. It was

969
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:17,919
Speaker 1: anyone on the street probably would have known the broad

970
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:20,439
Speaker 1: detailed and the amount of time that news stories would

971
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: stay in our conscious then. So Warner Brothers makes a

972
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:26,440
Speaker 1: movie about the dry Fist affair, which is again one

973
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: of the most important moments in the history of anti Semitism.

974
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 1: The movie does not contain the word Jew or any

975
00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: references to not once. Yeah, they cut them all out.

976
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers cut Warner executives cut those out before they

977
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: even showed it to the Germans because they knew, they

978
00:50:42,120 --> 00:50:45,120
Speaker 1: knew that wouldn't be okay. The Nazis were very aware

979
00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:48,200
Speaker 1: of how effective they had been, and being Nazis, they

980
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:51,399
Speaker 1: pushed for even more control over gives them an inch,

981
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:55,400
Speaker 1: that's what Nazis do. On April first, ninety seven April falls.

982
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: But not actually because just they just warned sixty people

983
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:00,800
Speaker 1: involved in a movie called The Road Back, which was

984
00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:02,759
Speaker 1: a sequel to All Quiet on the Rest and Front,

985
00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:05,480
Speaker 1: that if they were in that movie, if the movie

986
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 1: got made, Germany would ban any future movies any member

987
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:11,760
Speaker 1: of the cast worked on in the future, like everyone

988
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 1: in that cast would be black bald from being in

989
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:20,319
Speaker 1: a movie. Exactly exactly, so the studio made twenty one

990
00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:22,600
Speaker 1: cuts to The road Back in a desperate attempt to

991
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:25,600
Speaker 1: please Jistling in the Germans. Rather than the movie had

992
00:51:25,640 --> 00:51:29,480
Speaker 1: originally criticized German militarism, and they changed the film to

993
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:33,439
Speaker 1: just criticize all militarism anywhere in the world, like it's

994
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:37,600
Speaker 1: not happening. Germans happy anyway, No, and it did not.

995
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 1: Jiling banned Universal from working in Germany and they had

996
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:42,200
Speaker 1: to pull out of the country even after they made

997
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:44,920
Speaker 1: twenty one cuts to the film. Right, yeah, Now, there

998
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 1: were several attempts in the late thirties to make The

999
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:49,040
Speaker 1: Mad Dog of Europe, which was that movie we talked

1000
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:51,840
Speaker 1: about earlier in other Nazi movies, but they were all defeated.

1001
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:55,200
Speaker 1: Uh F Scott's. Fitzgerald actually helped write a script for

1002
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 1: a nihilistic movie about soldiers in post war Germany titled

1003
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:01,280
Speaker 1: Three Comrades that would had one of its main characters

1004
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:04,120
Speaker 1: murdered by Nazis. At one point in the script, a

1005
00:52:04,239 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 1: character was supposed to shout, there's more to fight for,

1006
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:09,800
Speaker 1: better than food, better than peace, democracy, freedom, a new Germany.

1007
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:13,319
Speaker 1: Isn't that worth fighting for? But MGM executives deleted all

1008
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: references to Nazis and democracy from the final film. I

1009
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 1: felt like that we cut democracy right out of that M. No,

1010
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:23,280
Speaker 1: that's not going to sell, not in Germany. Three Comrades

1011
00:52:23,320 --> 00:52:26,360
Speaker 1: also had included a scene where a sympathetic character identifies

1012
00:52:26,360 --> 00:52:28,840
Speaker 1: as Jewish and expresses a deep love of Germany and

1013
00:52:28,920 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 1: a faith that their home country will protect them. MGM

1014
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 1: cut that two when they showed just slaying the film

1015
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 1: for the first time. He loved it. How could he not.

1016
00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:40,480
Speaker 1: The film had basically been made for his specific tastes. Yeah,

1017
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:43,479
Speaker 1: and that's also the version they released here. They didn't

1018
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:46,279
Speaker 1: do like, yeah, continental versions. Yeah, I mean they would

1019
00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: do slightly different versions, but those things were cut out

1020
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:50,880
Speaker 1: in the American version too, because again they're cutting the

1021
00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:53,279
Speaker 1: stuff before they even send it to the sensor. As

1022
00:52:53,360 --> 00:52:55,640
Speaker 1: late as nineteen forty, movies that were thought to inflame

1023
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:58,520
Speaker 1: German sentiment were banned or heavily edited to remove all

1024
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: references to Hitler and Jews. The first movie that might

1025
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 1: be described as anti Nazi wasn't released until May nineteen

1026
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:07,879
Speaker 1: thirty nine. It was called Confessions of a Nazi Spy

1027
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 1: and it was about an actual Nazi spying ring that

1028
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:11,880
Speaker 1: had been busted in the East Coast of the United

1029
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:15,800
Speaker 1: States not that long before. Who did huh Nazis No no, no, no,

1030
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,279
Speaker 1: I mean who released it? Oh geez uh. I don't

1031
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:22,879
Speaker 1: think it was made by one of the studios. Uh, yeah,

1032
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:25,160
Speaker 1: I would guess that was involved in Germany at the time.

1033
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:27,759
Speaker 1: Got made but it wasn't. It wasn't even a big

1034
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 1: deal because number one, it was talking about an actual

1035
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:34,279
Speaker 1: historic thing that had happened, and number two, it still

1036
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:36,879
Speaker 1: pulled all of its punches. They were moved. Any sort

1037
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:40,400
Speaker 1: of references to Jewish people or Nazi hatred of Jewish people, like,

1038
00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:42,719
Speaker 1: none of that made it into the final cut, and

1039
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 1: in fact, from what we can tell, the Nazis actually

1040
00:53:45,480 --> 00:53:48,800
Speaker 1: kind of like this movie. Um Joseph Gebel's in particular,

1041
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 1: was thrilled to see an actor playing him in the film.

1042
00:53:52,520 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: The Gebel's in the movie Confessions of a Nazi Spy

1043
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 1: said this, there is to be a slight change in

1044
00:53:57,239 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: our methods from now on. National socialism in the United

1045
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 1: States stressed itself in the American flag and must appear

1046
00:54:02,239 --> 00:54:04,759
Speaker 1: to be a defensive Americanism. But at the same time

1047
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:07,239
Speaker 1: our aim must always beat it as credit conditions there

1048
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:08,799
Speaker 1: in the United States, and in this way and make

1049
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:11,560
Speaker 1: life in Germany admired and wished for, and the ensuing

1050
00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:13,879
Speaker 1: chaos we will be able to take control. So that's

1051
00:54:13,960 --> 00:54:16,640
Speaker 1: Joseph Gebbel's in the movie. He only had two minutes

1052
00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 1: on screen in this film, but he he loved it. Gebels.

1053
00:54:20,760 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: The actual Gebels wrote in his diary, I myself play

1054
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:26,160
Speaker 1: a main role, and not even a particularly unpleasant one,

1055
00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:28,759
Speaker 1: But I do not consider the film dangerous. Otherwise it

1056
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,359
Speaker 1: arouses fear in our enemies rather than anger and hate.

1057
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:34,560
Speaker 1: So the one movie pre World War Two that could

1058
00:54:34,600 --> 00:54:37,640
Speaker 1: almost be considered anti Nazi, the Nazis think makes them

1059
00:54:37,640 --> 00:54:42,160
Speaker 1: look cool. Yeah that's right. Yeah, you're damn right. We will. Yeah,

1060
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:46,640
Speaker 1: So as friendly as Hollywood seemed in nineteen thirty nine

1061
00:54:46,680 --> 00:54:49,800
Speaker 1: to the Nazis, there was at least one major anti

1062
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:54,080
Speaker 1: Nazi production underway. The Great Dictator Charlie Chaplin, had started

1063
00:54:54,120 --> 00:54:58,520
Speaker 1: production in nineteen thirty eight. Now Hitler knew about some

1064
00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:00,239
Speaker 1: of this, and he knew that they were contin uwing

1065
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:02,920
Speaker 1: attempts to make anti Nazi pictures. He could kind of

1066
00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:06,279
Speaker 1: see the winds changing. So on January nineteen thirty nine,

1067
00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:08,920
Speaker 1: he gave an infamous speech. One quote from it is

1068
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:11,319
Speaker 1: very well known to students of the Holocaust, as it's

1069
00:55:11,400 --> 00:55:13,759
Speaker 1: often seen as some of the first evidence that Hitler

1070
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:17,760
Speaker 1: was planning genocide. He said, quote, if international finance, jewelry

1071
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:20,680
Speaker 1: inside or outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations

1072
00:55:20,719 --> 00:55:22,840
Speaker 1: once more into a world war. The result will not

1073
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 1: be the Bolshevization of the Earth and thereby the victory

1074
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:28,120
Speaker 1: of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.

1075
00:55:28,680 --> 00:55:30,840
Speaker 1: What I didn't realize until I read Erlin's book is

1076
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 1: that later in the same speech, Hitler also said this

1077
00:55:33,880 --> 00:55:36,840
Speaker 1: and the announcement of American film companies of their intention

1078
00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:39,879
Speaker 1: to produce anti Nazi, i e. Anti German films will

1079
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:43,080
Speaker 1: only lead our German producers creating anti Semitic films in

1080
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:47,800
Speaker 1: the future, which you know they did. Yeah. So MGM

1081
00:55:48,120 --> 00:55:50,359
Speaker 1: was the first of the big studios to actually make

1082
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:53,200
Speaker 1: a straight up anti Nazi film. It was called The

1083
00:55:53,280 --> 00:55:55,839
Speaker 1: Moral Storm and it was which is the more. Also

1084
00:55:55,920 --> 00:55:57,919
Speaker 1: had the guy whose wife got sent off to Yeah

1085
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: yeah uh uh this year did and The Mortal Storm

1086
00:56:02,680 --> 00:56:05,920
Speaker 1: was released in mid nineteen forty, So that's the first

1087
00:56:06,040 --> 00:56:09,840
Speaker 1: actual anti Nazi film that's made. Yeah. MGM was banned

1088
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:13,200
Speaker 1: in Germany in August nineteen forty. Paramount followed one month

1089
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:16,359
Speaker 1: later on September twelfth, nineteen forty. And that is when

1090
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:22,080
Speaker 1: this collaboration officially ends. In September of nineteen forty. So

1091
00:56:23,160 --> 00:56:26,360
Speaker 1: up until that point, Hollywood is doing their damnedest to

1092
00:56:26,440 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 1: work with the Nazis now. As I stayed it at

1093
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:31,960
Speaker 1: the top of this podcast, the anti Nazi films, newsreels,

1094
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:34,160
Speaker 1: and cartoons from World War Two are still famous today.

1095
00:56:34,239 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 1: But the truth is that collaboration or not, the American

1096
00:56:36,600 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: film industry did not turn on the Nazis until the

1097
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 1: war they brought to Europe created box office receipts. The

1098
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:44,759
Speaker 1: start of World War Two reduced foreign revenue by half

1099
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:47,239
Speaker 1: for Hollywood, and in the end, that's what it took

1100
00:56:47,280 --> 00:56:50,200
Speaker 1: to make Hollywood sour on the Nazis. Well one, not

1101
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 1: Germany might be gone, yeah right, nobody's there's watching movies.

1102
00:56:54,719 --> 00:56:57,360
Speaker 1: But also they control Europe now, so none of our

1103
00:56:57,400 --> 00:57:01,680
Speaker 1: movies are allowed in it. France, whatever, pause that we're

1104
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:03,920
Speaker 1: fighting a war, so the people in our own country

1105
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:07,000
Speaker 1: want to see movies where we're anti Nazi. Well, we

1106
00:57:07,040 --> 00:57:11,680
Speaker 1: weren't fighting because we get into it into the December

1107
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 1: seven December seven one. But it is important to note

1108
00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:20,360
Speaker 1: that like Germans or like sorry that Hollywood, all the

1109
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 1: stuff they're famous for, the anti fascist stuff they're famous for,

1110
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:26,320
Speaker 1: happened after there was no chance of making another Diamond Germany.

1111
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 1: You know, with the exception of one Charles mother fucking Chaplain.

1112
00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:36,440
Speaker 1: So Charlie was not a fan of the Nazis, and

1113
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:39,360
Speaker 1: the Nazis hated Charlie Chaplin because they were sure he

1114
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: was Jewish, even though he absolutely was not. One Nazi paper,

1115
00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:48,720
Speaker 1: the guy feels Jewish, man, he feels it. Look at him,

1116
00:57:48,800 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 1: Look at him. Come on, he looks just like Hitler.

1117
00:57:50,800 --> 00:57:53,360
Speaker 1: He's got to Jewish. I'm not I'm not watching this stuff.

1118
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:57,520
Speaker 1: One Nazi paper called him quote a disgusting Jewish acrobat,

1119
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: which Acre off. Now. Chaplin had visited Berlin last in

1120
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:06,320
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one as part of a publicity tour for

1121
00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:08,840
Speaker 1: his movie City Lights, and the Nazi press had basically

1122
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 1: gone to war with him. They branded him as a

1123
00:58:11,720 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 1: quote anti German warmonger and also an American film jew.

1124
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 1: American film Jew. Yeah. Video of Chaplain in Berlin was

1125
00:58:22,520 --> 00:58:26,440
Speaker 1: also used, like American film Jew. He's an American film Jew.

1126
00:58:26,480 --> 00:58:28,840
Speaker 1: I don't care. It might say he's not keeping, but

1127
00:58:28,840 --> 00:58:34,720
Speaker 1: I'm telling you American film Jew. Video of Chaplain in

1128
00:58:34,760 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: Berlin during this visit was also used in that propaganda

1129
00:58:37,200 --> 00:58:40,160
Speaker 1: flick The Eternal Jew, which we talked about earlier. The

1130
00:58:40,280 --> 00:58:42,560
Speaker 1: narrator in that scene says, it cannot be denied that

1131
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:45,560
Speaker 1: one part of the German people enthusiastically applaud the foreign

1132
00:58:45,640 --> 00:58:48,400
Speaker 1: Jews who come to Germany the deadly foes of their race.

1133
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 1: During a shot of a crowd cheering Chaplain, which again,

1134
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:53,400
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin was not Jewish. They never got that through

1135
00:58:53,440 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 1: their heads, not not once. Yeah. When Chaplin decided to

1136
00:58:57,600 --> 00:58:59,720
Speaker 1: make The Great Dictator, he used his own money to

1137
00:58:59,760 --> 00:59:03,080
Speaker 1: fill moment because no studio would agree to make this movie,

1138
00:59:03,520 --> 00:59:06,280
Speaker 1: he used his own production house. Thus, bypassing the studios

1139
00:59:06,400 --> 00:59:10,480
Speaker 1: entire apocalypse. Now, yeah, exactly, and Chaplin actually risked getting

1140
00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:13,160
Speaker 1: all of Hollywood films banned in Germany for doing this

1141
00:59:13,280 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 1: work because he started in nineteen thirty eight. Now, unfortunately,

1142
00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 1: the film wasn't finished until because Chaplin was a perfectionist.

1143
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 1: Here's an exerpt from his autobiography where he talks about

1144
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:26,760
Speaker 1: sort of the how people's attitudes changed during the process

1145
00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:29,600
Speaker 1: of him trying to make this. Halfway through making The

1146
00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:32,960
Speaker 1: Great Dictator, I began receiving alarming messages from United artists.

1147
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:35,040
Speaker 1: They had been advised by the Hayes office that I

1148
00:59:35,040 --> 00:59:37,760
Speaker 1: would run into censorship trouble. Also, the English office was

1149
00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 1: very concerned about an anti Hitler picture and doubted whether

1150
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:42,520
Speaker 1: it could be shown in Britain. But I was determined

1151
00:59:42,560 --> 00:59:45,000
Speaker 1: to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at. More

1152
00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 1: worrying letters came from the New York Office imploring me

1153
00:59:47,720 --> 00:59:49,840
Speaker 1: not to make the film, declaring it that it would

1154
00:59:49,840 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 1: never be showed in England or America. But I was

1155
00:59:52,080 --> 00:59:53,960
Speaker 1: determined to make it, even if I had to hire

1156
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:57,080
Speaker 1: halls myself to show it. Before I had finished The Dictator,

1157
00:59:57,160 --> 01:00:00,240
Speaker 1: England declared war on the Nazis. Then suddenly the Holocaust again,

1158
01:00:00,320 --> 01:00:02,840
Speaker 1: the breakthrough in Belgium, the collapse of the Imagine Old Line,

1159
01:00:02,880 --> 01:00:06,240
Speaker 1: the stark and ghastly fact of Dunkirk, and France was occupied.

1160
01:00:06,600 --> 01:00:09,080
Speaker 1: The news was growing gloomier. England was fighting with her

1161
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:11,120
Speaker 1: back to the wall. Now our New York office was

1162
01:00:11,160 --> 01:00:14,320
Speaker 1: wiring frantically, hurry up with your film. Everyone is waiting

1163
01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:17,760
Speaker 1: for it. So it's a tale of three acts in

1164
01:00:17,840 --> 01:00:21,440
Speaker 1: that one quote, right, yeah, yeah. Unlike most of our episodes,

1165
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:24,280
Speaker 1: this one ends with a hero. The Great Dictator was

1166
01:00:24,360 --> 01:00:26,960
Speaker 1: not the first anti Nazi movie to come out of Hollywood.

1167
01:00:27,000 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 1: It was the second or the third depending on your

1168
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:31,960
Speaker 1: but it was the first good anti Nazi movie to

1169
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 1: come out of Hollywood, and it was also singular among

1170
01:00:34,680 --> 01:00:38,280
Speaker 1: it was the first movie to depict violence towards in

1171
01:00:38,360 --> 01:00:42,320
Speaker 1: the murder of Jews by the Nazis. Yeah, so thank you,

1172
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:46,840
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, no ship man, Yeah, good guy hell yeah. Yeah.

1173
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:48,160
Speaker 1: And he had to do it all himself. He was

1174
01:00:48,200 --> 01:00:53,280
Speaker 1: literally like, I'll create this, this has to be done,

1175
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:55,960
Speaker 1: and there is some evidence that he regretted it later.

1176
01:00:55,960 --> 01:00:58,240
Speaker 1: There must be laughed, hit, there must be laughed at,

1177
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:01,200
Speaker 1: which he came to question that later in life, just

1178
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:03,520
Speaker 1: because of how horrible the Holocaust was. He wondered, like,

1179
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:07,560
Speaker 1: was it but we need to person that's what he

1180
01:01:07,640 --> 01:01:10,040
Speaker 1: thought before. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, and I

1181
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:13,200
Speaker 1: I don't think he was wrong. Like Keyans and Nuck

1182
01:01:13,240 --> 01:01:15,960
Speaker 1: are definitely the guys who are rightist in this. They're

1183
01:01:15,960 --> 01:01:19,880
Speaker 1: the two people who fucking tried. Yeah everyone else. You know,

1184
01:01:20,040 --> 01:01:21,919
Speaker 1: you can either say whether or not you think it's

1185
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:27,000
Speaker 1: a collaboration. But Hollywood certainly fell down on their job

1186
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:30,480
Speaker 1: to sort of defend the ideals of the society they

1187
01:01:30,560 --> 01:01:35,439
Speaker 1: sent them to until until the tea was gone, not them. Yep, yep,

1188
01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:38,440
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. They sucked the teat until the tea

1189
01:01:38,560 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 1: was gone. That's fucked up, man. Yeah, and just for

1190
01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:50,440
Speaker 1: money for money. But also, and you know, I'm not

1191
01:01:50,520 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: trying to put any sort of like you have to

1192
01:01:55,000 --> 01:01:57,440
Speaker 1: care because of who you are. I mean, everybody's entitled

1193
01:01:57,480 --> 01:02:01,000
Speaker 1: to their own opinion and viewpoint. But it's just hard

1194
01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:03,600
Speaker 1: for me. And I'll say a full disclosure, I'm not Jewish.

1195
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:07,440
Speaker 1: I'm fine with someday being an American film hyphen jew.

1196
01:02:08,080 --> 01:02:13,040
Speaker 1: But the idea that these these companies, these production companies,

1197
01:02:13,120 --> 01:02:17,000
Speaker 1: these studios are being run by people who are Jewish,

1198
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:21,360
Speaker 1: and then they keep putting money over the persecution that

1199
01:02:21,480 --> 01:02:24,480
Speaker 1: they I have a hard time believing they weren't aware of.

1200
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: And it's again, I tried to make sure I presented

1201
01:02:27,720 --> 01:02:30,200
Speaker 1: there there were legitimate reasons for the Jewish community to

1202
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:32,840
Speaker 1: worry that addressing the issue at all would make things worse.

1203
01:02:32,920 --> 01:02:35,400
Speaker 1: I get that, but some of it doesn't, not all,

1204
01:02:35,480 --> 01:02:38,720
Speaker 1: and not in all every case we've we've gone over. Yeah,

1205
01:02:38,800 --> 01:02:42,280
Speaker 1: you don't have to keep profiting from the Nazis, right,

1206
01:02:42,480 --> 01:02:44,760
Speaker 1: you could not. You could decide we shouldn't make a movie, right,

1207
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:46,800
Speaker 1: now because it will inflame things. But we're not going

1208
01:02:46,960 --> 01:02:51,720
Speaker 1: to get movies and nobody did that. They're a principle

1209
01:02:51,840 --> 01:02:54,520
Speaker 1: Morald stand could have been taken and it was not

1210
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:58,640
Speaker 1: other than by Zanuck of twentieth century and who also

1211
01:02:58,760 --> 01:03:00,600
Speaker 1: did business in Germany. So he's all made money off

1212
01:03:00,640 --> 01:03:04,000
Speaker 1: the Nazis and Chaplain who legitimately did not try too,

1213
01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:08,840
Speaker 1: who was pretty stridently anti Nazi from day zero. Let

1214
01:03:08,920 --> 01:03:10,840
Speaker 1: me ask you this and you can say it past.

1215
01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:13,480
Speaker 1: We're not getting into that on this episode, Dan, But

1216
01:03:13,640 --> 01:03:17,280
Speaker 1: how far are we from major Hollywood studios that directly

1217
01:03:17,320 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 1: attack our current I mean like a cartoon about but

1218
01:03:22,800 --> 01:03:26,160
Speaker 1: I mean like a big movie The Post Try The

1219
01:03:26,280 --> 01:03:29,080
Speaker 1: Post did it without doing it. I don't think it

1220
01:03:29,160 --> 01:03:31,600
Speaker 1: can be that far right. I don't think so um,

1221
01:03:32,120 --> 01:03:34,000
Speaker 1: nor that I think that there's anybody who doesn't want to.

1222
01:03:34,040 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that. I don't think it's a particularly

1223
01:03:37,160 --> 01:03:39,560
Speaker 1: will be a particularly brave thing to do in our

1224
01:03:39,600 --> 01:03:43,400
Speaker 1: current cultural climate because there's so much so many people

1225
01:03:43,440 --> 01:03:45,920
Speaker 1: are making fun of the president right now. What scares

1226
01:03:45,960 --> 01:03:49,160
Speaker 1: me more is China, which not to say not to

1227
01:03:49,200 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: compare the Chinese government to the Nazi government, because there's

1228
01:03:51,400 --> 01:03:55,160
Speaker 1: no comparing the modern Chinese to the Nazis. But you

1229
01:03:55,280 --> 01:03:57,520
Speaker 1: have a case where a government does have a troubling

1230
01:03:57,600 --> 01:03:59,960
Speaker 1: human rights record is doing really bad. They don't even

1231
01:04:01,280 --> 01:04:03,720
Speaker 1: exactly and they've locked a million weager Muslims up in

1232
01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:06,880
Speaker 1: one of their areas. Probably you don't know if there's

1233
01:04:06,920 --> 01:04:09,600
Speaker 1: really a million person concentration camp in China, but there's

1234
01:04:09,600 --> 01:04:12,960
Speaker 1: some evidence that that's being done, and Erik Prince is involved.

1235
01:04:13,080 --> 01:04:14,600
Speaker 1: But we do know that this is a government with

1236
01:04:14,640 --> 01:04:17,880
Speaker 1: a troubling history of human rights abuse. And Hollywood also

1237
01:04:18,040 --> 01:04:21,520
Speaker 1: is totally dependent upon China, like it is a huge deal.

1238
01:04:22,160 --> 01:04:25,720
Speaker 1: So my question is, if something in the future happens

1239
01:04:25,720 --> 01:04:28,480
Speaker 1: where the Chinese government is caught doing something terrible, does

1240
01:04:28,520 --> 01:04:31,320
Speaker 1: Hollywood blacklist any mentioned from that out of the knowledge

1241
01:04:31,360 --> 01:04:33,920
Speaker 1: that it will cut out the Chinese market um? And

1242
01:04:34,040 --> 01:04:38,040
Speaker 1: also would the Chinese government be willing to cut Hollywood

1243
01:04:38,200 --> 01:04:40,800
Speaker 1: entirely out of China in order to make that kind

1244
01:04:40,840 --> 01:04:43,480
Speaker 1: of statement. We don't know what would happen, but I

1245
01:04:43,560 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 1: will say based on this, I don't expect any more

1246
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:48,760
Speaker 1: courage out of the modern studio heads in Hollywood then

1247
01:04:48,800 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 1: we got out of the ones in the thirties. Yeah,

1248
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:56,320
Speaker 1: I don't either, so damn dude. And then the war

1249
01:04:56,480 --> 01:04:59,600
Speaker 1: started and everybody wanted to make their anti yeah, and

1250
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:02,520
Speaker 1: then and then Mickey Mouse is fighting Hitler as opposed

1251
01:05:02,560 --> 01:05:07,600
Speaker 1: to entertaining him. Yeah, yeah, huh, yep, this is crazy,

1252
01:05:09,440 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel, you want to plug some plug doubles? Sure.

1253
01:05:12,760 --> 01:05:14,360
Speaker 1: I'd like to let everybody know if you go to

1254
01:05:14,440 --> 01:05:17,360
Speaker 1: Daniel van Kirk dot com or you follow me on

1255
01:05:17,520 --> 01:05:20,120
Speaker 1: any social media platform where I'm at Daniel van Kirk,

1256
01:05:20,520 --> 01:05:22,680
Speaker 1: I might be coming to your area. The first leg

1257
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:26,160
Speaker 1: of my Together tour starts in Houston and then heads

1258
01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:30,640
Speaker 1: over to Austin, Dallas, Lafayette and Baton Rouge, So, Texas,

1259
01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:33,120
Speaker 1: and Louisiana. And that's just the first leg. I'm also

1260
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:35,080
Speaker 1: going to be doing some more Southeast stuff than the

1261
01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:38,760
Speaker 1: Northeast and the Midwest and keep going around, so check

1262
01:05:38,840 --> 01:05:40,360
Speaker 1: for those legs to be added. You can do all

1263
01:05:40,400 --> 01:05:42,960
Speaker 1: that at Daniel van Kirk dot com or follow me

1264
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:45,120
Speaker 1: at Daniel van Kirk and listen to the podcast that

1265
01:05:45,200 --> 01:05:47,560
Speaker 1: I do. Well you say hello to my old hometown

1266
01:05:47,680 --> 01:05:50,200
Speaker 1: Dallas for me, I will. I don't go back there

1267
01:05:50,280 --> 01:05:53,680
Speaker 1: in the summer ever. You don't want to swim through it. No, No,

1268
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:55,880
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's why I moved to Los Angeles

1269
01:05:56,640 --> 01:06:00,080
Speaker 1: so I don't have to live through another Yeah. No,

1270
01:06:00,120 --> 01:06:03,360
Speaker 1: it's a humidity. Yeah, you're yeah, swimming through it as right,

1271
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Speaker 1: it's your everyone lives inside an armpit for seven months. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at

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Speaker 1: I right, okay, just two letters. You can find my

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Speaker 1: book on Amazon, A Brief History of Vice. You can

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Speaker 1: find this podcast and all of the sources for this

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Speaker 1: episode and including Ben's wonderful book The Collaboration, on our

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Speaker 1: website Behind the Bastards dot com. You can also find

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Speaker 1: us on Twitter and Instagram at at bastards pod. So like,

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Speaker 1: subscribe and rate, and more than anything, just buy a

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Speaker 1: bunch of t shirts. Buy a bunch of T shirts

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Speaker 1: from t public dot com slash behind the Bastards. I

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Speaker 1: love about