Speaker 1: Mhm, and we're back. I'm Robert Evans, and this is
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything
Speaker 1: you don't know about the very worst people in all
Speaker 1: of history. And today this is the second part of
Speaker 1: a two part episode on the Nazis and Hollywood. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Daniel van Kirk, and we are both
Speaker 1: A fan suggested Tapatio derritos to us and they're amazing.
Speaker 1: We're eating them right now, really really good. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: did not want this in my life and now I'm
Speaker 1: never gonna be able to get rid of. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take these two parties. Oh they're amazing. I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: people to have parties so that I can take them
Speaker 1: to them. Like, I want to get through the rest
Speaker 1: of this episode as quickly as possible so I can
Speaker 1: binge eat the rest of these delicious tapato wanting more
Speaker 1: and on fire again. We have not received a scent
Speaker 1: from the Dorrito's company. This is all just free enthusiasm
Speaker 1: over their products. Um so, Daniel, you should probably plug
Speaker 1: your stuff for the four listeners who aren't gonna listen
Speaker 1: to part one and are going to jump into part
Speaker 1: two and part one so that that is an approach.
Speaker 1: I want to let everybody know that they can listen
Speaker 1: to me on the Dumb People Tom podcast, which is
Speaker 1: show that I host and the Squad Brothers do as well.
Speaker 1: And then I have another podcast called pen Pals, and
Speaker 1: that is why Scovill and myself reading people's letters. You
Speaker 1: sound us anything you want, we write you back audibly.
Speaker 1: We say it's your podcast. We just talked about it.
Speaker 1: And then I have a show called Hindsight where I
Speaker 1: have creators, comedians, producers, directors, writers. They bring through photos
Speaker 1: from any chapter of their life and we just talked
Speaker 1: about the context of their life when each photo was taken.
Speaker 1: Speaking of context, let's talk about the context of the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties now. In the first episode, we talked about
Speaker 1: how the early German sensor's basically threatened Hollywood with cutting
Speaker 1: them off, getting Germany off from the movies entirely unless
Speaker 1: they made certain changes to the movies in order to
Speaker 1: make them more palatable for for Germans. And you know,
Speaker 1: this led to Hollywood not attacking the Nazis directly and
Speaker 1: really not even really mentioning Judaism. The Nazis ramped up
Speaker 1: there control and they ramped up the profitability for Hollywood
Speaker 1: at the same time, and it was a gradual thing
Speaker 1: where they'd ask for one thing and then a little
Speaker 1: bit later that asked for another, and that's how they
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, And we also talked about The House
Speaker 1: of Rothschild, the movie made to be a rebuke of
Speaker 1: anti Semitism that also kind of wound up being a
Speaker 1: little bit anti Semitic, to which all credit to the
Speaker 1: knock He's the only guy so far, he's done the
Speaker 1: right thing, but yeah, he could be like, tell me
Speaker 1: who did it worse than me? Because I'm the only
Speaker 1: one at this point? Is this better than nothing? You
Speaker 1: prefer this to nothing? So it's important to note, like again,
Speaker 1: one of the big questions here is what were the
Speaker 1: studios collaborating directly with the Nazis or were they were
Speaker 1: they just appeasing the Nazis in the same way that
Speaker 1: everybody was appeasing the Nazis in the thirties, And in
Speaker 1: order to sort of answer that question, one of the
Speaker 1: things that's important to note is that the US has
Speaker 1: has always had, and still has a pretty virulent ashist movement.
Speaker 1: We've been seeing a lot more of that in the
Speaker 1: last year or so, but it was particularly prominent in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and even in Hollywood there were a
Speaker 1: lot of fascist sympathizers. This was made very evident by
Speaker 1: the production of a movie called Gabriel over the White House.
Speaker 1: It was probably the first explicitly fascist fictional movie of
Speaker 1: all time. Um the basic premise is that a president
Speaker 1: suffers a terrible car accident and undergoes a personality change.
Speaker 1: Uh he goes in front of Congress, castigates them for
Speaker 1: wasting America's money, and then demands them to declare a
Speaker 1: national emergency and vote him absolute power. While he's chastising
Speaker 1: Congress for fucking up the country, somebody calls him a dictator,
Speaker 1: and he snaps back, I believe in democracy as Washington, Jefferson,
Speaker 1: and Lincoln believed in democracy, and if what I planned
Speaker 1: to do in the name of the people makes me
Speaker 1: a dictator, then it is a dictator. Based on Jefferson's
Speaker 1: definition of democracy, a government for the greatest good of
Speaker 1: the greatest number. So none of this is a satire,
Speaker 1: although some people have tried to say that, since this
Speaker 1: is not presented as a bad thing either. He's the hero,
Speaker 1: the president who takes dictatorial control of the country to
Speaker 1: fix its problems is the hero. But see's so crazy
Speaker 1: because he says that thing where he says, what do
Speaker 1: you say Jefferson's definition? Yeah, the greatest good for the
Speaker 1: greatest number of people. Yeah, But the the ending to that,
Speaker 1: the rebuttal to that is the greatest good for the
Speaker 1: greatest number of people without their choice. Yeah, without them
Speaker 1: having any sort of saying that. Yeah, that doesn't come
Speaker 1: up in the movie. So the film that or the
Speaker 1: movie was based off of a book, and the book
Speaker 1: was had been written by a british Man during a
Speaker 1: long boat ride who basically wondered to himself a Britishman
Speaker 1: during a long boat ride. Yeah, I wondered, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be great if America became fascist? That was basically his
Speaker 1: his Yeah, I mean he thought it wouldn't be Now
Speaker 1: he'd never ever been to America when he wrote this book.
Speaker 1: He's got a lot of it. Never need to go
Speaker 1: to America to write a book about it. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: he writes this book and will Liam Randolph Hurst loves it,
Speaker 1: and William Randolph Hurst is like, this motherfucker's got to
Speaker 1: be a movie. So Hurst is the dude who decides
Speaker 1: to make this into a movie, the guy who wants
Speaker 1: to run everything. Yeah. So Hayes, the chief censor, was
Speaker 1: also actually the only person who raised any objection to
Speaker 1: the contents of Gabriel over the White House. He worried
Speaker 1: that people might quote regarded as a direct indictment of
Speaker 1: the plurility and falliability of today's government machinery and personnel,
Speaker 1: and that only by a blow in the head of
Speaker 1: the president and its consequent acts of a deranged man
Speaker 1: is enough righteousness and wisdom put into the executive branch
Speaker 1: of the government to lead. So that's his problem, is
Speaker 1: that like it's saying, well, you're saying the government so
Speaker 1: fun that the president needs a head injury to be
Speaker 1: good at being the president. So Hayes complains and changes
Speaker 1: are made to the film. They don't make the film
Speaker 1: any less fascistic. Instead, they make it clear to the
Speaker 1: viewer that rather than being addled in his accent, the
Speaker 1: president has been taken over by God who is using
Speaker 1: him as a conduit to save the nation. Lines that
Speaker 1: emphas sized his supernatural power were added. This is one
Speaker 1: of the people who knows the president of this movie
Speaker 1: talking about so what if he What if it wasn't
Speaker 1: so much about him getting injured, but but just spiritually
Speaker 1: woke in the name of Jesus Christ. Yeah, what if
Speaker 1: he's a vessel for God that takes over the country
Speaker 1: and turns into a dictatorship. That's a better idea. I'm
Speaker 1: William hayes sensor. So here's a line of someone talking
Speaker 1: about the president in the movie that was added as
Speaker 1: a result of Hayes's suggestions. Quote, there's something about him,
Speaker 1: something new and terribly strange, which deprives you of volition
Speaker 1: or of any capacity to act and think for yourself.
Speaker 1: It is easier to give way than to continue fighting
Speaker 1: for your ego. You become content to serve, to serve,
Speaker 1: and wait his pleasure. Again, this is not portrayed as horrifying.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. It's good that the President's godly
Speaker 1: aura has taken over your mind, dictating our government. So
Speaker 1: Gabriel over the White House was unique at the time
Speaker 1: because it was the first big Hollywood production to actually
Speaker 1: address the Great Depression. For the first couple of years
Speaker 1: of the Depression, Hollywood had avoided commenting on the issues
Speaker 1: of the day in any of their movies, thinking it
Speaker 1: would be a bad idea if they were seen as
Speaker 1: trying to wade into politics or social issues. So I
Speaker 1: wasn't even thinking about that. That That the impressions going on too.
Speaker 1: And this is the first major studio movie to address
Speaker 1: the country's economic problems posits fascism as a solution. But see,
Speaker 1: isn't that sign of the vacuum that was also happening
Speaker 1: in the nies in Germany? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the same. There's like this vacuum here for like a
Speaker 1: need of like pick us up. Yeah, And it's it's
Speaker 1: evidence that the same trends that put Hitler into power
Speaker 1: could have easily put a fascist into power in the
Speaker 1: United States because clearly people are thinking along those lines.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't be great if some strong guy could just come
Speaker 1: along and fix with the answers. Yeah, it's always a
Speaker 1: threat like that. Like Germany wasn't the only country that
Speaker 1: the current running through it? Um So. Gabriel over the
Speaker 1: White House premiered in Berlin in February of ninety four. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it passed the censors. The Nazis of this movie. It
Speaker 1: played for fifty and consecutive days in its first run. Ironically,
Speaker 1: Hayes's changes actually put the movie more in line with
Speaker 1: a key Nazi concept, fewer princip or the leader principle.
Speaker 1: This is sort of the core of Nazism, Like one
Speaker 1: of the core kernels of Nazi ideology is the fewer principle. Um.
Speaker 1: It evolved out of the Social Darwinis theories of a
Speaker 1: guy named Herman Groff caser Ling, who felt that certain
Speaker 1: individuals were quote born to rule. The book Darker Legacies
Speaker 1: of the Law in Europe sites the work of a
Speaker 1: guy named Huber who gives a good explanation of the
Speaker 1: fewer principles. So I'm going to quote that in the
Speaker 1: Fewer the essential laws of the Vulcan, which is the
Speaker 1: people come into manifestation. By allowing these essential laws to emerge,
Speaker 1: he sets up the great common objectives that have to
Speaker 1: be realized. The fewer embodies the overall will of the
Speaker 1: people as an objective historical quantity. So the idea of
Speaker 1: the fewer principle is that like, there's this the will
Speaker 1: of the people can become manifest in a man, and
Speaker 1: it's almost a supernatural thing, and he's chosen by destiny
Speaker 1: to embody the people's will, which is exactly what Hayes
Speaker 1: has changes had made it from like the president gets
Speaker 1: hurt in the head and it makes him more decisive
Speaker 1: to God chooses the president to be the vessel of
Speaker 1: American from the viewpoint of the people. Not only is
Speaker 1: he of us, he is us. Yeah, he is. He
Speaker 1: speaks we speak through him. Exactly. So Hayes had inadvertently
Speaker 1: made Gabriel Over the White House even better Nazi propaganda
Speaker 1: as a result of his censorship, which hopefully was an accident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was an accident. Mulligan on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll give him Mulligan on accidentally making Nazi propaganda. Who
Speaker 1: hasn't you know we all trial accidentally was so a
Speaker 1: Nazi newspaper doubt and grief, which means the attack. Let
Speaker 1: a man named Brandon. Yeah, it's the Nazi, the attack
Speaker 1: and the like somebody in the writer's room for a
Speaker 1: Nazi should have been little on the nose. We're calling
Speaker 1: ourselves a little on the nose. They love that ship.
Speaker 1: So a Nazi reviewer reviewed Gabriel Over the White House
Speaker 1: and concluded that the movie was proof that the fewer
Speaker 1: principle was deeply embedded in the human soul that German
Speaker 1: fascism was was emblematic of a greater human truth, because
Speaker 1: even America's democratic traditions hadn't been able to destroy this.
Speaker 1: So like the Nazis watched this movie, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Americans are fascists, Like they just haven't overthrown their
Speaker 1: decadent government. But they feel it too. But they feel
Speaker 1: it too. That's in all of this matter where you are.
Speaker 1: You know, if you try to do the opposite, you're
Speaker 1: gonna end up being like, well, you know what feels
Speaker 1: right though, fascism? Yeah, fuck it. Maybe they're right. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So here's a quote from that German movie reviewer. At
Speaker 1: first the smiling, somewhat complacent parliamentary politician, then the completely
Speaker 1: transformed figure of a man possessed by a holy fanaticism,
Speaker 1: one who sees himself as above all party authority, as leader,
Speaker 1: and as patron of the interests of his entire people
Speaker 1: and all of humanity. So again they see this as
Speaker 1: clearly like, oh, this is just like America, being like,
Speaker 1: what if we had our own Hitler? They love it.
Speaker 1: So movie president fascist even got to commit a mass
Speaker 1: murder of his own. That's part of the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But because it's the thirties, the people he massacres are gangsters.
Speaker 1: They deserve it. Organized criminals. Yeah. Well, he describes these
Speaker 1: people as like the running man. As long as these
Speaker 1: people are like prisoners and jail, who cares they have
Speaker 1: committed a crime, It's okay to kill anybody. Absolutely yeah
Speaker 1: the movie. President describes these organized criminals as quote a malignant,
Speaker 1: cancerous growth eating at the spiritual health of the American people. Uh,
Speaker 1: the only way to deal with gangsters is to eliminate them,
Speaker 1: so that our citizen, pursuing his peaceful way will no
Speaker 1: longer be forced to conduct his business in the shadow
Speaker 1: of extortion and debt. At one point, again meant to
Speaker 1: be a heroic moment, the President gets the head gangster
Speaker 1: and his men into a court martial and sentences them
Speaker 1: all to die. You're the last of the racketeers, he said,
Speaker 1: And why because we have in the White House a
Speaker 1: man who has enabled us to cut the red tape
Speaker 1: of legal procedures and get back to first principles. And
Speaker 1: I for an eye Nick Diamond, who's the head of
Speaker 1: the gangsters. A tooth for a tooth, a life for
Speaker 1: a life. So President movie Fascists sets up a concentration
Speaker 1: camp on Ellis Island and personally oversees the execution of
Speaker 1: all the gangsters. Now had concentration camps already begun. Oh,
Speaker 1: they've been happening for decades and decades in Germany over
Speaker 1: the Nazi Germany. The word Nazi Germany. It happens as
Speaker 1: soon as the Nazis are in power. They started at
Speaker 1: first they have what are called the open air concentration camps,
Speaker 1: but they're building camps this whole period of time. But
Speaker 1: also concentration camps had started. We did a whole episode
Speaker 1: on this, but they were very well established at this point.
Speaker 1: So he lines up all the gangsters because you're camp
Speaker 1: corrupt people, and he's sealing money. Yeah, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to kill you all. And then the Nazi beasts and
Speaker 1: then the Nazis watched this and go, now bear with me,
Speaker 1: what if I think gangster? But let's write ja Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. Um So the Nazis loved this movie v
Speaker 1: but high ranking Nazis like Joseph Gebbels are actually very
Speaker 1: frustrated by it. He liked the movie, but he hated
Speaker 1: how much better American studios were in making fascist propaganda.
Speaker 1: He felt that actual Nazi filmmakers were often absolutely atrocious. Hitler,
Speaker 1: for his part, didn't like propaganda entertainment. Hitler's feeling was
Speaker 1: that quote, it makes me sick when I see political
Speaker 1: propaganda hiding under the guys of art. Let it be
Speaker 1: either art or politics, Jimmy King Kong, or give me
Speaker 1: a newsreel. Don't give me both. Which is why the
Speaker 1: most famous Nazi propaganda film is Triumph of the Will,
Speaker 1: the famous Lennie reefinstall movie. If you've seen clips of
Speaker 1: Germans Nazis marching and Hitler's it's probably from Triumph of
Speaker 1: the Will. It's like the most famous proper explicitly propaganda
Speaker 1: film of all time, but it was not overwhelmingly popular
Speaker 1: in fact in Nazi Germany in the year that Triumph
Speaker 1: of the Will was released nineteen thirty five. In that year,
Speaker 1: nine American films outperformed at the box office. So per
Speaker 1: last episode, when I said, well, they'll all go see
Speaker 1: it if it's American film. That that's not necessarily true. No,
Speaker 1: that will They won't go see a German fascist propaganda movie,
Speaker 1: but they will all go see American movies that are
Speaker 1: regarded as being fat because the American movies are entertaining,
Speaker 1: So so Gabriel over the White House performed the best
Speaker 1: it performed. Well, oh, I thought you said there was
Speaker 1: nine movies that performed better better than Triumph of the World.
Speaker 1: Triumph of the Will actually isn't in the top ten
Speaker 1: most popular movies in Germany that you're released. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was not, because it's it's it's great if you want
Speaker 1: to scare people about how powerful New Germany is. But
Speaker 1: nobody watched that movie and got convinced of anything, right, gotcha, gotcha?
Speaker 1: So I'm going to read a quote from the collaboration
Speaker 1: which is talking about sort of how the Nazis propaganda
Speaker 1: movies were not particularly successful in Nazi Germany. In a sense,
Speaker 1: the most successful Nazi propaganda film of the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: was not Triumph of the Will, commissioned by Hitler, but
Speaker 1: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer produced by Paramount Now.
Speaker 1: The Eyes of the Bengal Lancer was a very popular
Speaker 1: movie at the time in the United States. It was
Speaker 1: nominated for seven Academy Awards. It focused around a unit
Speaker 1: of British cavalrymen defending their headquarters in Bengal from a
Speaker 1: local Indian uprising. Gary Cooper played a leading role the
Speaker 1: bad guy Mohammed Khan was probably the first character in
Speaker 1: history to use the line we have ways to make
Speaker 1: men talk in a torture scene. So that's where that
Speaker 1: that you've heard different variations, that's where that originated from.
Speaker 1: The Nazis loved this movie because it yet again provided
Speaker 1: a perfect depiction of the fewer principle at work. The
Speaker 1: colonel in charge of the British cavalry unit is depicted
Speaker 1: as infalliable. He's not even willing to negotiate with the
Speaker 1: enemy when they capture his own son. One of the
Speaker 1: colonel soldiers criticizes him for this and gets harangued by
Speaker 1: a major who basically outlines Nazi racial theory in a
Speaker 1: few words. Man, you are blind. Have you never thought how?
Speaker 1: For generation after generation, here a handful of men have
Speaker 1: ordered the lives of three million people. It's because he's here,
Speaker 1: and a few more like him, men of his breed
Speaker 1: have made British India men who put their jobs above everything.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't let death move him from it, and he
Speaker 1: won't let love move him from it. When his breed
Speaker 1: of man dies out. That's the end. And it's a
Speaker 1: better breed of man than any of us will ever make.
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting as Erland does that. In the
Speaker 1: German version of this movie, the major says a handful
Speaker 1: of white men protect three hundred Indians from chaos. So
Speaker 1: the movie was actually edited by Hollywood to make it
Speaker 1: more racist for the Nazis. Yeah, watching this movie gave
Speaker 1: Joseph Gebel's the insight that in effective propaganda, a hero
Speaker 1: does not always speak heroically, but he acts heroically. In
Speaker 1: other words, it's more effective to make a propaganda movie
Speaker 1: that doesn't say what it's propagandizing for, that shows it exactly.
Speaker 1: The Life of a Bengal Lancer became one of Hitler's
Speaker 1: favorite movies of all time. The Hitler Youth screened it
Speaker 1: for tens of thousands of young Nazis. Gert Eckert, their leader,
Speaker 1: noted ruefully, it is shameful that our filmmakers lack the
Speaker 1: courage to make a movie like The Lives Live of
Speaker 1: a Bengal Lancer. So when we think of Nazi propaganda,
Speaker 1: we think of triumph of the will. When Nazis thought
Speaker 1: about effective Nazi propaganda. They thought a Gary fucking Cooper ship,
Speaker 1: Thanks Paramount. Yeah, these are not the only pro fascist
Speaker 1: movies made by Hollywood in this time. There was another
Speaker 1: film called Our Daily Bread that was a great example
Speaker 1: of fascism in Hollywood in the thirties. On its surface,
Speaker 1: the film was about a bunch of unemployed men who
Speaker 1: start a farm together. At one point, all the men
Speaker 1: sit down to try to decide how to like organize
Speaker 1: their new society. Right, one guy suggests, basically anarchy where
Speaker 1: everybody's equal. One guy suggested democracy where everybody votes. And
Speaker 1: then one dude's like, what if we make the protagonist
Speaker 1: of the movie. What if he's just in charge of
Speaker 1: us and we all blindly follow whatever he says, And
Speaker 1: then everybody cheers and immediately realize that this is the
Speaker 1: best way to organize. But would they tell you in
Speaker 1: Hollywood that this this also is a response to the depression? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of like, these people don't have anything, so they set
Speaker 1: out to go and make on their own and farm
Speaker 1: their own land and not have to rely on the
Speaker 1: government falling out from under them. Yes, but when they
Speaker 1: have to pick a leader for their group, everything is
Speaker 1: all the different political styles are suggested and they go
Speaker 1: with one guy is just an absolute ruler. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they cheer that like that, Like the Nazis loved Our
Speaker 1: Daily Bread played for fifty five weeks in Nazi Germany,
Speaker 1: like more than a year. Ernst Choral, Production chief of UFA,
Speaker 1: the German film production company, actually wrote a report on
Speaker 1: the movie and basically said that it was such perfect
Speaker 1: fascist propaganda that it seemed like it had been made
Speaker 1: under orders from the propaganda ministry like that. He was like,
Speaker 1: this is such a perfect movie. I feel like Joseph
Speaker 1: Gebel's outlined the plot for them to follow. So the
Speaker 1: Nazis also loved. Mr Smith gost to Washington UH and
Speaker 1: said that it was quote excellent propaganda that riticals corruption
Speaker 1: and parliamentarianism in Washington. Jimmy Stewart don't like that, no, well,
Speaker 1: I mean Jimmy Stewart bombed the Nazis in World War Two.
Speaker 1: But they looked at it and saw, well, here's a
Speaker 1: movie about how shitty democracy is and how one guy
Speaker 1: with a vision has to come in and fix this
Speaker 1: corrupt town. You see that, Like that's that's the key,
Speaker 1: because this means you want to say that they're retrofitting it, right,
Speaker 1: but it's so, but it's also there. It's there, And
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that's scary because this
Speaker 1: is still the way movies work, where it's just if
Speaker 1: you're telling a story, you've got ninety minutes, you're trying
Speaker 1: to get a lot of It's easier to have one person.
Speaker 1: You know, in history it's usually big groups of people
Speaker 1: who make things happen. It's way easier to pick one protagonist.
Speaker 1: But that also these stories that are easy to follow
Speaker 1: also kind of reinforce these attitudes that like you're behind
Speaker 1: one man, get behind one man, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of it is not that there's even direct collaboration going on,
Speaker 1: it's just that the way movies work is entertainment really
Speaker 1: wound up reinforcing Nazi beliefs about how the Untrix fascist
Speaker 1: film kind of right a little bit. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you want to view with that, you could. If The
Speaker 1: Matrix had come out nineteen thirty six, I think the
Speaker 1: Germans would have loved it and also would have seen
Speaker 1: that the Smith as a Jewish stand very racist. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the one, the one we need him, Yeah, he is
Speaker 1: the savior. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's you think too
Speaker 1: much about it and you start to get kind of
Speaker 1: hopeless about the nature of storytelling because there is an
Speaker 1: aspect of it where it's like, well, how do you
Speaker 1: tell a story without reinforcing these things? But also I'm
Speaker 1: saying on some level there has to be some retrofitting.
Speaker 1: But when you but then that's why you get into
Speaker 1: the book, the collaboration where you're like, how much was
Speaker 1: and we do know that lions were at it, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we know that Joseph Gebbels was. He was very
Speaker 1: frustrated by all this because he loved Hollywood movies, but
Speaker 1: he could not get German filmmakers, Nazi filmmakers, to make
Speaker 1: anything that compared to what Hollywood was making. He's lamented
Speaker 1: that German writers have seldom expressed national socialist ideas in
Speaker 1: the relaxed, lively way that we see in the examples
Speaker 1: I have just given. He was talking about the movies
Speaker 1: we've just talked about. Our German writers have been able
Speaker 1: to find the form to depict nationalists into some degree
Speaker 1: national socialist ideas and film, but they have not yet
Speaker 1: mustered up the freedom to shape their work in the
Speaker 1: way I have described naturally, we will continue making films
Speaker 1: about our own history, but something new, entirely new, something
Speaker 1: like our daily bread, would considerably expand our propagandistic abilities.
Speaker 1: So like what Girbel's estating that all of the movies
Speaker 1: that German filmmakers tried to make to embody this fewer
Speaker 1: principle were based on actual figures from history, like they
Speaker 1: would pick a guy like Otto von Bismarck and they
Speaker 1: would make a movie about him to try to like.
Speaker 1: But that Americans seem to be the only people who
Speaker 1: had the ability to just imagine a fascist leader and
Speaker 1: make a movie about him. For whatever reason, the Germans
Speaker 1: could only go back to their history to make propaganda,
Speaker 1: and Americans possessed at the time the seemingly unique ability
Speaker 1: to realistically imagine a dictator, which brings the question, do
Speaker 1: you have to have freedom in order to make truly
Speaker 1: excellent fascist propaganda? Uh? Because the Nazis couldn't. It's weird.
Speaker 1: So Hollywood Studio sold, as I said, sixty five movies
Speaker 1: to Germany nineteen thirty three. This would be their high
Speaker 1: water mark. The tide turned against them on March second,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, when Hollywood had the unmitigated goal to
Speaker 1: produce tar Tarzan the Eighth Man. The movie had actually
Speaker 1: been out for more than a year when the Nazis
Speaker 1: suddenly banned it. Article fifteen had recently been changed, adding
Speaker 1: that films could be banned if they quote harmed national,
Speaker 1: socialist ethical artistic sensibilities. The banning process for Tarzan had
Speaker 1: started when dr Ernst Seeger, the chief censor of Germany,
Speaker 1: had actually objected to the film for a reason I
Speaker 1: think will surprise everybody. So I'm going to read his
Speaker 1: objections to Tarzan the Ape Man. No, no, it's not
Speaker 1: what you'd guess at all. It's nothing racist. Did that
Speaker 1: Tarzan even have long here? I know that movie? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Probably not. I'm a hacking a fraud, so
Speaker 1: I did not not. I did not research that part.
Speaker 1: But here's dr Ernst Seeger expressing his his issues with
Speaker 1: Tarzan the Ape Man. This film is one of those
Speaker 1: Africa pictures that would aim to awaken the thrill of
Speaker 1: sadistic instincts stincts in the spectator by deliberately and subtly
Speaker 1: emphasizing the atrocities in the struggle between humans and animals,
Speaker 1: as well as that between animals of different kinds. It's
Speaker 1: a moral and bestializing effect is illuminated in the fact
Speaker 1: that the audience laughs at the mortal danger of a
Speaker 1: nice little monkey who lets out atrocious death screams while
Speaker 1: clumsily running from a roaring panther, and furthermore titters with
Speaker 1: pleasure when a herd of elephant stampedes through a Negro village,
Speaker 1: and when an elephant hurls a pigmy through the air
Speaker 1: onto the ground, where the unfortunate soul parishes, writing and
Speaker 1: pitiable death, convulsions and shrieks. The cruelty to animals that
Speaker 1: occurred in the making of this picture is a cultural
Speaker 1: disgrace which has been barred from taking place in the
Speaker 1: New Germany because of the animal protection law we have instituted.
Speaker 1: The film law should spare no means in preventing foreign
Speaker 1: pictures of this type from reaching the screen in Germany.
Speaker 1: For the producers of these pictures are breaking the fundamental
Speaker 1: precepts of humanity and their pure obsession with profit not
Speaker 1: what you'd call it, right, Take key cared about animals,
Speaker 1: any care about African people being shown? Well I don't
Speaker 1: think that, yeah, but well he cared about the African
Speaker 1: people he cared about. He hated a scene where a
Speaker 1: Negro what he called a Negro village was destroyed and
Speaker 1: were killed. He was horrified by all this. So this
Speaker 1: isn't that crazy that like some of the worst people
Speaker 1: in history. Also, like we're early on that tip of
Speaker 1: like be nice to animals. They were the first people
Speaker 1: to put through like really modern animal rights laws. It's
Speaker 1: hard for me sometimes to watch like a really old
Speaker 1: movie with the horses, where you're like, I just don't
Speaker 1: give a ship, I don't care what happens. I didn't
Speaker 1: really care about people either, because they got a lot
Speaker 1: of actually just killed at those days. So we're going
Speaker 1: to get into more about tars and the ape man
Speaker 1: and what the Nazis did with that, because the the
Speaker 1: problems wrinkle out from here. So Seeger is not the
Speaker 1: only person with objections movie. He's just the only person
Speaker 1: with not racist objections to the movie. Um, but first
Speaker 1: it is time for some adds and we're back. Those
Speaker 1: were some great ads, fantastic people should take your advice
Speaker 1: on those. Yes, please buy these products indoor services. Now
Speaker 1: we just talked about Seeger's surprising objections to Tarzan the
Speaker 1: eight Man. Well, I wasn't surprising he objected, yeah, but
Speaker 1: surprising that he objected because it was cruel to animals
Speaker 1: and to people, rather than I think so he must.
Speaker 1: I think at this point he would have had to
Speaker 1: have been a member of the party. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he like most people who joined the party. I've
Speaker 1: just never thought of a Nazi and also simultaneously thought,
Speaker 1: good call. Yeah, it's weird, right, I mean, even the
Speaker 1: Nazi clock is we're right once a day. There you go,
Speaker 1: there you go. So everything we just talked about. His wife,
Speaker 1: Seeger thought the movie needed to be banned, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't sure of his own judgment, and so he sent
Speaker 1: the film off to the Propaganda Ministry to basically get
Speaker 1: their input on the matter, and once they reviewed it,
Speaker 1: they concluded that quote this film must be sensor must
Speaker 1: be considered dangerous. The Nazi state has been tirelessly trying
Speaker 1: to awaken in public opinion the highest sense of responsibility
Speaker 1: in the selection of a husband. It has also put
Speaker 1: a great deal of effort into freeing the ideas of marriage, womanhood,
Speaker 1: and motherhood from the superficial distortion of the past epoch,
Speaker 1: which was completely aimed at sexuality and making them honorable again.
Speaker 1: A film that puts pure libido in the foreground, that
Speaker 1: tends to imply that a jungle man, virtually an ape,
Speaker 1: is capable of the noblest impulses of the soul and
Speaker 1: is a worthy marriage partner, certainly runs against the tendencies
Speaker 1: of national socialism with regards to population politics. So there's
Speaker 1: your natural to the marriage is not just between a
Speaker 1: man and a woman, it's between a distinguished man and
Speaker 1: a woman. And you can't show a man who's basically
Speaker 1: an ape winning the affections of a noble German woman
Speaker 1: because they yea, because they aren't of German caliber. Yeah,
Speaker 1: essentially exactly, it's not us. Yeah. So this the propaganda
Speaker 1: ministries problem with this is what you'd expect from the Nazis.
Speaker 1: I'm just weirded out that seegars anyway, So this sort
Speaker 1: of opened the damn from the Nazis banning movies. Um
Speaker 1: secret only banned two or three titles a year previously,
Speaker 1: but after this he went kind of band happy because
Speaker 1: now the president had been set that not only are
Speaker 1: we going to stop movies that are explicitly anti German,
Speaker 1: but we will Yeah, exactly will be in movies if
Speaker 1: we think they will harm our racial instincts, will band
Speaker 1: movies just because we think they present if in any
Speaker 1: way it infringes on what we're trying to do as
Speaker 1: a people, not who we are, not just who we
Speaker 1: are political motives and what we are as a country,
Speaker 1: but just our moral code. To go all the way
Speaker 1: back to me, like, well, no, that's not how anybody
Speaker 1: should behave, Yeah, exactly how a German would act or
Speaker 1: behave or view things exactly. So seeger starts going band
Speaker 1: happy after this. He can's a movie called Blonde Venus
Speaker 1: for being a lax depiction of marriage and morality that
Speaker 1: contradicts the nation's current emphasis on the importance of family.
Speaker 1: He banned scarface not the the first scar face, for
Speaker 1: making criminality look appealing. Do we know anything though about like,
Speaker 1: you know how in our country back in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nards, we had the independence the people who saw
Speaker 1: it on their own to do it. We're like, fuck
Speaker 1: your your rules on what it has to be or whatever.
Speaker 1: Was there that in Germany of of just these like
Speaker 1: not artists were in charge, I mean any of the
Speaker 1: artists who are people who were like I got a
Speaker 1: copy of Scarface and we're gonna watch it. I there
Speaker 1: there may have been, I mean not in a documented
Speaker 1: sense that it felt like any sort of movement or
Speaker 1: collective of people, not that I have any sort of
Speaker 1: information about. Because number one, you know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: having a copy of a film. You have like a
Speaker 1: real at this point, so it's like a sizeable thing.
Speaker 1: But also, like the first couple of years, the Nazis
Speaker 1: are in power there. If you were an artist who
Speaker 1: could be making good movies, you're either out of Germany
Speaker 1: at this point where you're in a camp. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you know that's that's what happened. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: he uh seeger bands scar Face, as I said, for
Speaker 1: making look appealing to be a criminal. He bans all
Speaker 1: horror movies for being immoral and exciting people's bass instincts.
Speaker 1: The Germans were not alone in this, or not alone
Speaker 1: in banning movies. The Fox filment Caravan was banned in
Speaker 1: France for depicting a gypsy and a white man making love.
Speaker 1: Uh So, like how dare they? And we'll get into
Speaker 1: Caravan a little bit, because that's not even what was
Speaker 1: going on. But like everybody's racist back then the Nazis
Speaker 1: are just a couple of steps racist, or there's so
Speaker 1: much more efficient, they're super efficient at it. So by
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, the situation had gotten very dark for
Speaker 1: the Hollywood studios. Dozens of films have been rejected for import,
Speaker 1: costing the studios millions of dollars. The only studios who
Speaker 1: could even afford to stay in Germany by this point
Speaker 1: were MGM, Paramount and twentieth Century Fox. The situation was
Speaker 1: so dire that Douglas Miller, the American Trade Commissioner in Berlin,
Speaker 1: wrote a warning letter back to d C. He said
Speaker 1: it would be unfortunate for German American relations if our
Speaker 1: motion picture companies no longer feel they have any possibility
Speaker 1: of selling films in Germany or any further interest in
Speaker 1: considering the German point of view. He also noted that
Speaker 1: if our film ties with Germany or severed, American film
Speaker 1: companies will jump at the chance of using stories which
Speaker 1: will trade Germany and the Germans in an unfavorable light.
Speaker 1: Not because they desire to injure Germany, but because they
Speaker 1: are hungry for villains and desire a relief from the
Speaker 1: monotony of always using Americans or unnamed foreigners in this connection.
Speaker 1: So the government saw it as a bad thing if
Speaker 1: Hollywood was going to start making anti Nazi movies. And
Speaker 1: that's another important are the US government, Yeah, because they
Speaker 1: didn't want war with Germany. At this point, there were
Speaker 1: still a big we don't want war movement in the
Speaker 1: United States and so there was a real worry that
Speaker 1: solution exactly. And if Hollywood gets kicked out of Germany,
Speaker 1: they're gonna start making anti Nazi films and that's going
Speaker 1: to push us closer to war. So this is another factor.
Speaker 1: It's just important to keep all of this in mind.
Speaker 1: We're thinking about the decisions being made by these people.
Speaker 1: So rather than pack up, the remaining studios decided to
Speaker 1: lean into the Nazis. Um In nineteen thirty seven, Paramount
Speaker 1: picked a manager for their Berlin branch who was a
Speaker 1: strong Nazi Party member. Uh Fritz Steinold, who was the
Speaker 1: gentile manager of MGM Germany, divorced his Jewish wife. She
Speaker 1: was later sent to a concentration camp. No ship. Yeah, wait,
Speaker 1: so this is Paramount. That was MGM. Jim and the Paramounts,
Speaker 1: the one who picked Nazi hired a branch. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: may had him manage their Berlin branch and MGMs branch
Speaker 1: manager divorces his Jewish wife to please the Nazis and
Speaker 1: and she gets Yeah, she winds up in a concentration
Speaker 1: camp and probably dies there. Yeah. I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what happened here, but probably not a good story. Yeah
Speaker 1: what the fund, dude? Yeah? So for what money? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So studios, it's it is important to note that studios
Speaker 1: also tricked the Nazis. Sometimes didn't the jew run MGM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean that that sounded worce. A Jewish
Speaker 1: person ran in Jewish people who still ran back in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and they hired a Nazi, yeah, in Germany for their
Speaker 1: German branch because he would help them with the Nazis. Dude,
Speaker 1: it's messed up. I was almost saying that to that
Speaker 1: person's ghosts. Yeah, like dude, so um, there were also
Speaker 1: it's important to note there were some ways at which
Speaker 1: Hollywood kind of stuck their fingers at the Nazis, Like
Speaker 1: the Nazis were hesitant to accept any movies, and increasingly
Speaker 1: in late thirties just stopped accepting movies with Jewish actors
Speaker 1: in them. So they would lie about they would just
Speaker 1: they would just change the name on the credits so
Speaker 1: that like the Nazis wouldn't notice that they'd snuck Jewish
Speaker 1: people into their movies. So there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: that going on. It's not all one. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: also hired a guy and said, like your life, I
Speaker 1: don't know how good you feel about this marriage, visa,
Speaker 1: your job, but um, we'd like to make some more money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so and you can send her off wherever you want.
Speaker 1: I know where, Yeah, I know where she should go.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's horrible. Oh, it's terrible. So for a while
Speaker 1: thirty seven profits came back up. The film ministry recovered
Speaker 1: there was more money coming in. You're hiring Nazis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're hiring Nazis. It worked out for a little while,
Speaker 1: but then on November ninth and tenth, ninety eight, still
Speaker 1: Knocked happened. This was followed by a corresponding surge in
Speaker 1: official German anti semitism. What happened Chrystal knocked? I don't
Speaker 1: know what that is? The Night of Broken Glass, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It was basically a night where sort of the Nazis
Speaker 1: was the first big massive public all across Germany, like
Speaker 1: pogram against the Jews where synagogues were burnt. Jewish businesses
Speaker 1: were like that. It's called the night of broken Glass
Speaker 1: because so many Jewish businesses had their windows shattered that
Speaker 1: it was just glass. They did like an at home blitzkrieg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly on on the German Jewish people, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people were murdered during Krystal knock. It's a one
Speaker 1: of those marks where things about. So after this happens,
Speaker 1: there's a surge in official anti semitism um. Two weeks
Speaker 1: after Krystal knocked, Darren Griff that Nazi newspaper prints and
Speaker 1: article which is titled one third of Hollywood Stars or Jews,
Speaker 1: and it listed like dozens and dozens of Jewish film
Speaker 1: industry people. One day after the attack listed that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one day after the attack list that, the German
Speaker 1: Propaganda Ministry publishes a black list with the names of
Speaker 1: sixty Hollywood stars on it. They announced that if anyone
Speaker 1: on the list is in any American film, that film
Speaker 1: will not be allowed to enter Germany. Not everyone on
Speaker 1: the list was Jewish. Ernest Hemmingway made it on there,
Speaker 1: so did Bing Crosby. So this is the list you
Speaker 1: want to be on, So good for bing Crosby. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I hear. I thought he was just on
Speaker 1: the list of beating the ship out of his kids.
Speaker 1: He beat the ship out of his kids, and the
Speaker 1: Nazis didn't like him. So when some you lose someone,
Speaker 1: was it was he old blue Eyes? Or is that
Speaker 1: someone else? You're right, you're right? What do they call
Speaker 1: bing Crosby? Um? Please stop? Dad? White Christmas is a
Speaker 1: fun film for the whole family. Yeah, don't pay too
Speaker 1: much attention to the fact that none of the black
Speaker 1: actors have speaking roles. There you go and pay attention
Speaker 1: to the tree. It's you watched that movie again as
Speaker 1: an adult and you notice some troubling things. That sucks too,
Speaker 1: because like there's a lot of the movie that's yeah,
Speaker 1: really fun musical scene, you know, yeah, yeah, but man
Speaker 1: those train scenes where it's like, oh, oh, right, Jim
Speaker 1: Crow is still a thing, right, yeah, Okay, So we're
Speaker 1: hearing that Bing Crosby's nickname was old Growner, which I
Speaker 1: don't approve of the old Growner. Well, right or wrong,
Speaker 1: I'm in here's the bottom line. Everyone needs to go
Speaker 1: watch Will Farrell and John c Radley's recreation of the
Speaker 1: David Bowie being Crosby Christmas Special. It is perfect. I've
Speaker 1: never even heard of this. Well, you saw that. You've
Speaker 1: seen the David Bowie being crossed Christmas? Is that a
Speaker 1: real thing? Yes? Man? What was he happening in Hollywood
Speaker 1: at that seat? Is that bing? Crosby is in London
Speaker 1: visiting his cousin or something like that, and there's a
Speaker 1: knock at the door and it's David Bowie and he says, oh,
Speaker 1: you must be the cousin from overseas. He was like,
Speaker 1: well or wrong, i'men And then he comes into his
Speaker 1: house and then they sing Drummer Boy together, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've either heard, oh I have heard that it's
Speaker 1: a Christmas special. So shot for shot, moment for moment,
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell and John c Riley recreated that Christmas Special.
Speaker 1: What a weird thing. Beautiful. Okay, this is a lot
Speaker 1: of information for me to take in right now. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to pack that one away for later so
Speaker 1: we can finish this. So the Nazis put together this
Speaker 1: blacklist of you know, if any actor on this list
Speaker 1: is in a movie, it cannot come into German and
Speaker 1: they didn't say they were just choose. There's just people
Speaker 1: we don't These are people we don't like a lighting.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are Jews, but they obviously on
Speaker 1: there because he went to the Spanish American War and
Speaker 1: was big not fan of fascists for himself. But you know,
Speaker 1: right right now. Another weird factor that complicates events was
Speaker 1: the fact that companies doing business in Germany couldn't take
Speaker 1: cash they made out of Germany. Um Paramount and twentieth
Speaker 1: Century Fox just invested the money they made in Germany
Speaker 1: and local cameraman in film stock and would record Nazi
Speaker 1: rallies and stuff and then would sell that footage to
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. And that's how they made
Speaker 1: a profit. Kind of laundered it. Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was like it was back out saying, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you had to do something. You couldn't take the money
Speaker 1: directly out of it, right. MGM found a different tactic.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to read another quote from the collaboration.
Speaker 1: In December nineteen thirty eight, one month after Christal knocked,
Speaker 1: MGM discovered a way to export its profits more effectively.
Speaker 1: An American Trade commissioner explained the process MGM first loaned
Speaker 1: the money to certain German firms where credit was badly needed.
Speaker 1: MGM then received bonds in exchange for the loan, and
Speaker 1: finally sold these bonds abroad at a loss of around
Speaker 1: which was a substantial approvement over previous losses. There was
Speaker 1: just one catch. Do you want to guess what the catches?
Speaker 1: You want to guess what these firms are doing funding
Speaker 1: the Nazis? I don't know. The firms in question, the
Speaker 1: American Trade Commissioner said, are connected with the armament industry,
Speaker 1: especially in the Sue Dayton territory or Austria. In other words,
Speaker 1: the largest American motion picture company helped to finance the
Speaker 1: German war machine. Jesus, that's how they're getting their money
Speaker 1: out of Germany, loaning money to the people making German guns.
Speaker 1: That's not Hollywood, no man, it's dark. Um. Do you
Speaker 1: remember gamer Gate? Yes? Yeah, I'm assume most people listening
Speaker 1: remember gamer Gate. If if you spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time reading the complaints that supporters of that movement made,
Speaker 1: you ran into the idea that film criticism, or that
Speaker 1: criticism of any kind was bad, that critics shouldn't point
Speaker 1: out problems in games or flaws or troubling trends that
Speaker 1: these are in lematic of that they should instead just
Speaker 1: describe what happens in the game directly. They would have
Speaker 1: agreed with Joseph Gebbel's because at the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six he made film criticism illegal in Germany and
Speaker 1: mandated film description instead. Here's an excerpt from one of
Speaker 1: those reviews. The American film Honolulu is full of humorous ideas,
Speaker 1: refreshingly fast paced, and contains dance sequences, catching me and
Speaker 1: gags about mistaken identity. A very pleasant entertainment. It is
Speaker 1: gratifying that it is able to bring harmless amusement to
Speaker 1: these serious times. That sounds like one of my pitches
Speaker 1: when I'm not trying to sell something. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: things that happened that people find funny. There are mistaken
Speaker 1: identities in the movie. Now, Technicolor presented an issue for
Speaker 1: the Nazis uh, and that's actually presented an issue for
Speaker 1: racists everywhere because when Technicolor came out, Hollywood realized, like,
Speaker 1: white people look boring, So let's start casting people who
Speaker 1: aren't white in our movies because it's exciting because now
Speaker 1: we can actually have people with different skin tones and
Speaker 1: it will register. And so people who are not white
Speaker 1: sore in representation in Hollywood when technicolor becomes a thing,
Speaker 1: and the Nazis do not like this. So this is
Speaker 1: a big issue for the Nazis that like technicolor means
Speaker 1: that people who aren't white are increasingly characters. They want
Speaker 1: one tone, they want one tone. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: whole thing with the Nazis. So we're going to get
Speaker 1: into how this has an impact on you know, this
Speaker 1: supposed collaboration. But first ads, you know, you all know
Speaker 1: the game. It's adds. Listen and we're back and we're
Speaker 1: talking about technicolor and the rash of non white characters
Speaker 1: it brought to Hollywood, which was great for actors, movies,
Speaker 1: and art. As a concept in human history, not welcome
Speaker 1: by Nazis, not welcome by Nazis. They were not a
Speaker 1: big fan of this. A good example is the movie Ramona.
Speaker 1: In this movie, an Indian chief named Alessandro rescues a
Speaker 1: white woman stuck in a tree. They fall in love,
Speaker 1: but it's quickly revealed that Ramona's mom isn't her real mom,
Speaker 1: and that her actual mom was an Indian squaw, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually race mixing, but she was part Indian.
Speaker 1: But even this was too much for the Nazis. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well they're not white people, yeah, exactly, and they're in
Speaker 1: a movie, that's what which were they though? Was this
Speaker 1: one of those deals for Hollywood? I'm sure it was, right,
Speaker 1: like it's fucking thirty years later, John Wayne would play
Speaker 1: Gang of Scotts. Now. Thanks to the German love of
Speaker 1: Karl May, particularly Hitler's love of Karl May, Ramona was
Speaker 1: allowed to play Karl May was a German. He wrote
Speaker 1: books about the wild West that had hit was Hitler's
Speaker 1: favorite thing in the world. We have a whole episode
Speaker 1: about it. But so this movie was allowed to play
Speaker 1: because the Nazis kind of had a thing about Native Americans.
Speaker 1: But a movie they banned was The Gypsy Princess, which
Speaker 1: portrayed the love of a white man for a Gypsy woman.
Speaker 1: It was an explicitly anti racist and pro mixed marriage movie,
Speaker 1: which is pretty ballsy from the mid thirties, but of course,
Speaker 1: you know the Nazi Well, actually, weirdly enough, this movie
Speaker 1: didn't make it into Germany and past the sensors at
Speaker 1: least for a while, like they caught it after it
Speaker 1: had already been released. Erlan thinks that this was got
Speaker 1: through because the sensors were basically they had hit a
Speaker 1: point in censorship in Germany where they were just looking
Speaker 1: at the casts and scanning from mentions of the Nazi Party,
Speaker 1: and if the cast was okay and there was no
Speaker 1: mention in the Nazi Party, a lot of stuff slipped through.
Speaker 1: So that is important some movies because like this movie
Speaker 1: that's pro mixed marriage runs a Nazi Germany for a
Speaker 1: little while, so it's not a one sided picture. Although
Speaker 1: I don't think the people who made the Gypsy Princess
Speaker 1: Number one, that's a pretty racist title today. Um, you
Speaker 1: have to think of things in their timeline. Someone in
Speaker 1: the mid thirties making a movie that says mixed marriage
Speaker 1: is good, that's that's brave at the time. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: I don't think they were explicitly trying to change opinions
Speaker 1: in Nazi Germany. They were trying to change opinions in America,
Speaker 1: and it just so happened that the movie slipped through.
Speaker 1: A Few movies did get into Germany that like included
Speaker 1: racial things that the Nazis were against and there were
Speaker 1: even some moments in various movies where veiled critiques of
Speaker 1: Nazi policies made it past the censors. This stuff, however,
Speaker 1: had a negligible impact on the German populace because it
Speaker 1: was easy to ignore. This would not have been the
Speaker 1: case with a proposed movie based off of Sinclair Lewis's
Speaker 1: book It Can't Happen Here, which you've definitely seen some
Speaker 1: quotes and selections from It Can Have It Here spread
Speaker 1: on Twitter recently as a result of certain things in
Speaker 1: modern American politics. It's a very famous book, and it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that Sinclair's wife was a woman named Dorothy Thompson.
Speaker 1: She is the female journalist who I end our episode
Speaker 1: on the non Nazi Bastards behind Hitler with one of
Speaker 1: her quotes. She had actually interviewed Hitler back in Berlin
Speaker 1: before he reached total power, and had written very brutal
Speaker 1: things about him. Now, in fairness, she didn't She considered
Speaker 1: his political career doomed to failure. She never thought he
Speaker 1: was going to become dictator, but once he did, she
Speaker 1: dedicated herself to tearing him apart in the international press.
Speaker 1: She was kicked out of Germany and nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: and became one of Hitler's most strident pre war critics.
Speaker 1: The collaboration quotes one line in particular from her pre
Speaker 1: Dictator interview with Hitler, and I think it's worth reading
Speaker 1: out here. So this is Dorothy Thompson talking about Hitler.
Speaker 1: If you want to gauge the strength of the Hitler movement,
Speaker 1: imagine that in America, an order with the tongue of
Speaker 1: the late Mr Bryan, Williams Jennings Bryan and the histrionic
Speaker 1: power of Amy McPherson who I don't know who, that is,
Speaker 1: combined with the publicity gifts of Edward Burnet's and Ivy Lee,
Speaker 1: should manage to unite all the farmers with all the
Speaker 1: white color unemployed, all the people with salaries under three
Speaker 1: thousand a year who have lost their savings and bank
Speaker 1: collapses in the stock market, and they're being pressed for
Speaker 1: payments on the ice box and the radio, the louder
Speaker 1: evangelical preachers, the American Legion, the d A R, the
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan, the w C t U, Matthew Wall,
Speaker 1: Senator Bora, and Henry Ford. Imagine that and you will
Speaker 1: have some idea of what the Hitler movement in Germany means.
Speaker 1: So this is the kind of writer that Dorothy Thompson is,
Speaker 1: and she becomes quite famous as an anti Hitler activist.
Speaker 1: This drives her husband, Sinclair Lewis, crazy, and he writes
Speaker 1: it Can't Happen Here so that he can be seen
Speaker 1: as a more prominent anti Hitler voice than his wife.
Speaker 1: I mean that's one version of Iran sharpening, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, we got a good piece of anti
Speaker 1: fascist literature out of it. That's useful, but it's done
Speaker 1: in the vein. And I'll show this broad Yeah, the
Speaker 1: most misogynistic piece of anti Nazi propaty ever ever CONCEIVEE
Speaker 1: What inspired you to write this life and allow a
Speaker 1: woman to be perceived as better than me? My wife's
Speaker 1: too famous, I'm Sinclair Lewis. Yeah. So he wrote it
Speaker 1: Can't Happen Here, and it sold very well, but that
Speaker 1: was still just a couple of hundred thousand copies. So
Speaker 1: when Hollywood starts talking about maybe adapting it to a film,
Speaker 1: he gets excited because this means his book is going
Speaker 1: to be shared to away wider audience. Millions of people
Speaker 1: might get these ideas and he does seem to genuinely
Speaker 1: want to try to warn Americans about the danger of fascism.
Speaker 1: Now the mill the movie got a script that a
Speaker 1: lot of people think was a fantastic script. Lewis didn't
Speaker 1: write it, somebody else adapted it. It's apparently got a
Speaker 1: very good script, and it includes lines like this from
Speaker 1: the main character, a guy named Dremus, who is a
Speaker 1: journalist who initially falls for the American fascist candidate and
Speaker 1: then later winds up fighting against him. Quote, all us
Speaker 1: lazy minded daremus as are responsible. I used to think
Speaker 1: that wars and depressions were brought on by diplomats and bankers.
Speaker 1: They were brought on by US liberals because we did
Speaker 1: nothing to stop them. So it's like there's some fucking
Speaker 1: potent ship screen, right. The only thing worse than evil
Speaker 1: is the proposed stampine. Let it happen exactly. So this
Speaker 1: is set to be a pretty great anti Nazi movie,
Speaker 1: pretty bold movie, but it worries some people. One of
Speaker 1: those people is a guy named William finnsch Riber, who
Speaker 1: is the chair of the film Committee for the Central
Speaker 1: Conference of American Rabbis. He writes to Mayor of MGM
Speaker 1: about why they shouldn't go through with producing this movie. Quote.
Speaker 1: I have considered the problem at great length, and I
Speaker 1: am of the opinion that a film version of that story,
Speaker 1: howsoever interpreted and directed, will have anything but a beneficial
Speaker 1: effect upon the Jewish problem. More and more, I am
Speaker 1: convinced that during these highly critical days for the Jewish
Speaker 1: people here and elsewhere, we ought not to thrust the
Speaker 1: jew and his problems too much into the limelight. I
Speaker 1: am quite sure that any interpretation of the story made
Speaker 1: by your film will be forceful and certainly not seemingly
Speaker 1: detrimental to the Jewish cause. But there are times when
Speaker 1: to say nothing is better than to say something favorable.
Speaker 1: So this is not an ill considered thing. This guy
Speaker 1: is thinking about it, and you can't. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got to think about like happened with that the Rothchild movie,
Speaker 1: Like this is what this guy is worried about, and
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a legitimate worry. I happen to
Speaker 1: think it would have been better for history if the
Speaker 1: movie had been made, but it was not. It was
Speaker 1: canceled on February six, day before Valentine's The day before
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day, Yeah, that's no love. Sinclair Lewis was not
Speaker 1: happy about this. He said, the hell am I supposed
Speaker 1: to beat this woman? That's his quote. You guys are
Speaker 1: really fucking my marriage here, No gotta, I'm even angrier
Speaker 1: at my wife. No, he actually said something poign and profound.
Speaker 1: What we've been talking about today. The world today is
Speaker 1: full of fascist propaganda, which definitely was cover that this episode.
Speaker 1: The Germans are making one pro fascist film after another,
Speaker 1: designed to show that fascism is superior to liberal democracy.
Speaker 1: But Mr Hayes actually says that a film cannot be
Speaker 1: made showing the horrors of fascist and extolling the advantages
Speaker 1: of liberal democracy because Hitler and Mussolini might ban other
Speaker 1: Hollywood films from their countries. If yep, democracy is certainly
Speaker 1: on the defensive when two European dictators, without opening their
Speaker 1: mouths or knowing anything about the issue, can shut down
Speaker 1: an American film. I wrote, it can't happen here, but
Speaker 1: I begin to think it certainly does. It certainly can
Speaker 1: good quote? Yeah, good quote. He's saying it can. It
Speaker 1: can be influenced here. Yeah. Hitler's not even saying canceled
Speaker 1: this movie. We just know that it will fuck things up,
Speaker 1: so we're canceling it because we're scared. Which again, the
Speaker 1: people who attack been Irwan for saying this is a
Speaker 1: collaboration will say, well, the Nazis didn't even say anything
Speaker 1: about a movie like this. Rwan's argument is that basically
Speaker 1: the Nazis had already trained Hollywood so well that they
Speaker 1: didn't need to actively. Exactly, the mouse had touched the
Speaker 1: cheese enough times, exactly, thank you for bringing mice into
Speaker 1: this again. Always yeah, it's important if they're not here,
Speaker 1: they're in that damn movie theater because the Nazis let
Speaker 1: them loose. Right, It always ties back to Nazis. So now.
Speaker 1: The late nineteen thirties in general seemed to show a
Speaker 1: real shift in how Hollywood censorship occurred. Rather than having Jisling,
Speaker 1: who was the German censor who's in in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: whether having him review movies and suggest changes, studio executives
Speaker 1: started cutting films as they made them, simply because they
Speaker 1: knew what the Germans wouldn't accept. I want that money,
Speaker 1: damn right, then fund their war machine and then get
Speaker 1: our money back a loss, which is still pretty good,
Speaker 1: still pretty good. I don't want to think too much
Speaker 1: about that. What the money is buying? That's the Russians problems.
Speaker 1: Hey is that your new wife? Oh boy? Yeah. So
Speaker 1: a Warner Brothers movie about the Drive us a fair
Speaker 1: Ever heard of the Drives affair? H Is that Mr
Speaker 1: Holland's opus? No, it's a It's one of the most
Speaker 1: famous moments in the history of anti Semitism. Alfred Dright
Speaker 1: I think Alfred was his first name. Drivers was definitely
Speaker 1: his last name. He was a Jewish French military officer
Speaker 1: pre before World War One who was a key used
Speaker 1: of selling military secrets I think to the Germans um
Speaker 1: and he was likely innocent, but there was a big
Speaker 1: show trial about it. It's a big because like anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: French anti Semitism played a huge role in it, and
Speaker 1: it was a very famous thing at this point in
Speaker 1: history because it was not all that distant. It was
Speaker 1: anyone on the street probably would have known the broad
Speaker 1: detailed and the amount of time that news stories would
Speaker 1: stay in our conscious then. So Warner Brothers makes a
Speaker 1: movie about the dry Fist affair, which is again one
Speaker 1: of the most important moments in the history of anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: The movie does not contain the word Jew or any
Speaker 1: references to not once. Yeah, they cut them all out.
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers cut Warner executives cut those out before they
Speaker 1: even showed it to the Germans because they knew, they
Speaker 1: knew that wouldn't be okay. The Nazis were very aware
Speaker 1: of how effective they had been, and being Nazis, they
Speaker 1: pushed for even more control over gives them an inch,
Speaker 1: that's what Nazis do. On April first, ninety seven April falls.
Speaker 1: But not actually because just they just warned sixty people
Speaker 1: involved in a movie called The Road Back, which was
Speaker 1: a sequel to All Quiet on the Rest and Front,
Speaker 1: that if they were in that movie, if the movie
Speaker 1: got made, Germany would ban any future movies any member
Speaker 1: of the cast worked on in the future, like everyone
Speaker 1: in that cast would be black bald from being in
Speaker 1: a movie. Exactly exactly, so the studio made twenty one
Speaker 1: cuts to The road Back in a desperate attempt to
Speaker 1: please Jistling in the Germans. Rather than the movie had
Speaker 1: originally criticized German militarism, and they changed the film to
Speaker 1: just criticize all militarism anywhere in the world, like it's
Speaker 1: not happening. Germans happy anyway, No, and it did not.
Speaker 1: Jiling banned Universal from working in Germany and they had
Speaker 1: to pull out of the country even after they made
Speaker 1: twenty one cuts to the film. Right, yeah, Now, there
Speaker 1: were several attempts in the late thirties to make The
Speaker 1: Mad Dog of Europe, which was that movie we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier in other Nazi movies, but they were all defeated.
Speaker 1: Uh F Scott's. Fitzgerald actually helped write a script for
Speaker 1: a nihilistic movie about soldiers in post war Germany titled
Speaker 1: Three Comrades that would had one of its main characters
Speaker 1: murdered by Nazis. At one point in the script, a
Speaker 1: character was supposed to shout, there's more to fight for,
Speaker 1: better than food, better than peace, democracy, freedom, a new Germany.
Speaker 1: Isn't that worth fighting for? But MGM executives deleted all
Speaker 1: references to Nazis and democracy from the final film. I
Speaker 1: felt like that we cut democracy right out of that M. No,
Speaker 1: that's not going to sell, not in Germany. Three Comrades
Speaker 1: also had included a scene where a sympathetic character identifies
Speaker 1: as Jewish and expresses a deep love of Germany and
Speaker 1: a faith that their home country will protect them. MGM
Speaker 1: cut that two when they showed just slaying the film
Speaker 1: for the first time. He loved it. How could he not.
Speaker 1: The film had basically been made for his specific tastes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's also the version they released here. They didn't
Speaker 1: do like, yeah, continental versions. Yeah, I mean they would
Speaker 1: do slightly different versions, but those things were cut out
Speaker 1: in the American version too, because again they're cutting the
Speaker 1: stuff before they even send it to the sensor. As
Speaker 1: late as nineteen forty, movies that were thought to inflame
Speaker 1: German sentiment were banned or heavily edited to remove all
Speaker 1: references to Hitler and Jews. The first movie that might
Speaker 1: be described as anti Nazi wasn't released until May nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine. It was called Confessions of a Nazi Spy
Speaker 1: and it was about an actual Nazi spying ring that
Speaker 1: had been busted in the East Coast of the United
Speaker 1: States not that long before. Who did huh Nazis No no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean who released it? Oh geez uh. I don't
Speaker 1: think it was made by one of the studios. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would guess that was involved in Germany at the time.
Speaker 1: Got made but it wasn't. It wasn't even a big
Speaker 1: deal because number one, it was talking about an actual
Speaker 1: historic thing that had happened, and number two, it still
Speaker 1: pulled all of its punches. They were moved. Any sort
Speaker 1: of references to Jewish people or Nazi hatred of Jewish people, like,
Speaker 1: none of that made it into the final cut, and
Speaker 1: in fact, from what we can tell, the Nazis actually
Speaker 1: kind of like this movie. Um Joseph Gebel's in particular,
Speaker 1: was thrilled to see an actor playing him in the film.
Speaker 1: The Gebel's in the movie Confessions of a Nazi Spy
Speaker 1: said this, there is to be a slight change in
Speaker 1: our methods from now on. National socialism in the United
Speaker 1: States stressed itself in the American flag and must appear
Speaker 1: to be a defensive Americanism. But at the same time
Speaker 1: our aim must always beat it as credit conditions there
Speaker 1: in the United States, and in this way and make
Speaker 1: life in Germany admired and wished for, and the ensuing
Speaker 1: chaos we will be able to take control. So that's
Speaker 1: Joseph Gebbel's in the movie. He only had two minutes
Speaker 1: on screen in this film, but he he loved it. Gebels.
Speaker 1: The actual Gebels wrote in his diary, I myself play
Speaker 1: a main role, and not even a particularly unpleasant one,
Speaker 1: But I do not consider the film dangerous. Otherwise it
Speaker 1: arouses fear in our enemies rather than anger and hate.
Speaker 1: So the one movie pre World War Two that could
Speaker 1: almost be considered anti Nazi, the Nazis think makes them
Speaker 1: look cool. Yeah that's right. Yeah, you're damn right. We will. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So as friendly as Hollywood seemed in nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 1: to the Nazis, there was at least one major anti
Speaker 1: Nazi production underway. The Great Dictator Charlie Chaplin, had started
Speaker 1: production in nineteen thirty eight. Now Hitler knew about some
Speaker 1: of this, and he knew that they were contin uwing
Speaker 1: attempts to make anti Nazi pictures. He could kind of
Speaker 1: see the winds changing. So on January nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: he gave an infamous speech. One quote from it is
Speaker 1: very well known to students of the Holocaust, as it's
Speaker 1: often seen as some of the first evidence that Hitler
Speaker 1: was planning genocide. He said, quote, if international finance, jewelry
Speaker 1: inside or outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations
Speaker 1: once more into a world war. The result will not
Speaker 1: be the Bolshevization of the Earth and thereby the victory
Speaker 1: of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
Speaker 1: What I didn't realize until I read Erlin's book is
Speaker 1: that later in the same speech, Hitler also said this
Speaker 1: and the announcement of American film companies of their intention
Speaker 1: to produce anti Nazi, i e. Anti German films will
Speaker 1: only lead our German producers creating anti Semitic films in
Speaker 1: the future, which you know they did. Yeah. So MGM
Speaker 1: was the first of the big studios to actually make
Speaker 1: a straight up anti Nazi film. It was called The
Speaker 1: Moral Storm and it was which is the more. Also
Speaker 1: had the guy whose wife got sent off to Yeah
Speaker 1: yeah uh uh this year did and The Mortal Storm
Speaker 1: was released in mid nineteen forty, So that's the first
Speaker 1: actual anti Nazi film that's made. Yeah. MGM was banned
Speaker 1: in Germany in August nineteen forty. Paramount followed one month
Speaker 1: later on September twelfth, nineteen forty. And that is when
Speaker 1: this collaboration officially ends. In September of nineteen forty. So
Speaker 1: up until that point, Hollywood is doing their damnedest to
Speaker 1: work with the Nazis now. As I stayed it at
Speaker 1: the top of this podcast, the anti Nazi films, newsreels,
Speaker 1: and cartoons from World War Two are still famous today.
Speaker 1: But the truth is that collaboration or not, the American
Speaker 1: film industry did not turn on the Nazis until the
Speaker 1: war they brought to Europe created box office receipts. The
Speaker 1: start of World War Two reduced foreign revenue by half
Speaker 1: for Hollywood, and in the end, that's what it took
Speaker 1: to make Hollywood sour on the Nazis. Well one, not
Speaker 1: Germany might be gone, yeah right, nobody's there's watching movies.
Speaker 1: But also they control Europe now, so none of our
Speaker 1: movies are allowed in it. France, whatever, pause that we're
Speaker 1: fighting a war, so the people in our own country
Speaker 1: want to see movies where we're anti Nazi. Well, we
Speaker 1: weren't fighting because we get into it into the December
Speaker 1: seven December seven one. But it is important to note
Speaker 1: that like Germans or like sorry that Hollywood, all the
Speaker 1: stuff they're famous for, the anti fascist stuff they're famous for,
Speaker 1: happened after there was no chance of making another Diamond Germany.
Speaker 1: You know, with the exception of one Charles mother fucking Chaplain.
Speaker 1: So Charlie was not a fan of the Nazis, and
Speaker 1: the Nazis hated Charlie Chaplin because they were sure he
Speaker 1: was Jewish, even though he absolutely was not. One Nazi paper,
Speaker 1: the guy feels Jewish, man, he feels it. Look at him,
Speaker 1: Look at him. Come on, he looks just like Hitler.
Speaker 1: He's got to Jewish. I'm not I'm not watching this stuff.
Speaker 1: One Nazi paper called him quote a disgusting Jewish acrobat,
Speaker 1: which Acre off. Now. Chaplin had visited Berlin last in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one as part of a publicity tour for
Speaker 1: his movie City Lights, and the Nazi press had basically
Speaker 1: gone to war with him. They branded him as a
Speaker 1: quote anti German warmonger and also an American film jew.
Speaker 1: American film Jew. Yeah. Video of Chaplain in Berlin was
Speaker 1: also used, like American film Jew. He's an American film Jew.
Speaker 1: I don't care. It might say he's not keeping, but
Speaker 1: I'm telling you American film Jew. Video of Chaplain in
Speaker 1: Berlin during this visit was also used in that propaganda
Speaker 1: flick The Eternal Jew, which we talked about earlier. The
Speaker 1: narrator in that scene says, it cannot be denied that
Speaker 1: one part of the German people enthusiastically applaud the foreign
Speaker 1: Jews who come to Germany the deadly foes of their race.
Speaker 1: During a shot of a crowd cheering Chaplain, which again,
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin was not Jewish. They never got that through
Speaker 1: their heads, not not once. Yeah. When Chaplin decided to
Speaker 1: make The Great Dictator, he used his own money to
Speaker 1: fill moment because no studio would agree to make this movie,
Speaker 1: he used his own production house. Thus, bypassing the studios
Speaker 1: entire apocalypse. Now, yeah, exactly, and Chaplin actually risked getting
Speaker 1: all of Hollywood films banned in Germany for doing this
Speaker 1: work because he started in nineteen thirty eight. Now, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the film wasn't finished until because Chaplin was a perfectionist.
Speaker 1: Here's an exerpt from his autobiography where he talks about
Speaker 1: sort of the how people's attitudes changed during the process
Speaker 1: of him trying to make this. Halfway through making The
Speaker 1: Great Dictator, I began receiving alarming messages from United artists.
Speaker 1: They had been advised by the Hayes office that I
Speaker 1: would run into censorship trouble. Also, the English office was
Speaker 1: very concerned about an anti Hitler picture and doubted whether
Speaker 1: it could be shown in Britain. But I was determined
Speaker 1: to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at. More
Speaker 1: worrying letters came from the New York Office imploring me
Speaker 1: not to make the film, declaring it that it would
Speaker 1: never be showed in England or America. But I was
Speaker 1: determined to make it, even if I had to hire
Speaker 1: halls myself to show it. Before I had finished The Dictator,
Speaker 1: England declared war on the Nazis. Then suddenly the Holocaust again,
Speaker 1: the breakthrough in Belgium, the collapse of the Imagine Old Line,
Speaker 1: the stark and ghastly fact of Dunkirk, and France was occupied.
Speaker 1: The news was growing gloomier. England was fighting with her
Speaker 1: back to the wall. Now our New York office was
Speaker 1: wiring frantically, hurry up with your film. Everyone is waiting
Speaker 1: for it. So it's a tale of three acts in
Speaker 1: that one quote, right, yeah, yeah. Unlike most of our episodes,
Speaker 1: this one ends with a hero. The Great Dictator was
Speaker 1: not the first anti Nazi movie to come out of Hollywood.
Speaker 1: It was the second or the third depending on your
Speaker 1: but it was the first good anti Nazi movie to
Speaker 1: come out of Hollywood, and it was also singular among
Speaker 1: it was the first movie to depict violence towards in
Speaker 1: the murder of Jews by the Nazis. Yeah, so thank you,
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, no ship man, Yeah, good guy hell yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he had to do it all himself. He was
Speaker 1: literally like, I'll create this, this has to be done,
Speaker 1: and there is some evidence that he regretted it later.
Speaker 1: There must be laughed, hit, there must be laughed at,
Speaker 1: which he came to question that later in life, just
Speaker 1: because of how horrible the Holocaust was. He wondered, like,
Speaker 1: was it but we need to person that's what he
Speaker 1: thought before. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: I don't think he was wrong. Like Keyans and Nuck
Speaker 1: are definitely the guys who are rightist in this. They're
Speaker 1: the two people who fucking tried. Yeah everyone else. You know,
Speaker 1: you can either say whether or not you think it's
Speaker 1: a collaboration. But Hollywood certainly fell down on their job
Speaker 1: to sort of defend the ideals of the society they
Speaker 1: sent them to until until the tea was gone, not them. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. They sucked the teat until the tea
Speaker 1: was gone. That's fucked up, man. Yeah, and just for
Speaker 1: money for money. But also, and you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to put any sort of like you have to
Speaker 1: care because of who you are. I mean, everybody's entitled
Speaker 1: to their own opinion and viewpoint. But it's just hard
Speaker 1: for me. And I'll say a full disclosure, I'm not Jewish.
Speaker 1: I'm fine with someday being an American film hyphen jew.
Speaker 1: But the idea that these these companies, these production companies,
Speaker 1: these studios are being run by people who are Jewish,
Speaker 1: and then they keep putting money over the persecution that
Speaker 1: they I have a hard time believing they weren't aware of.
Speaker 1: And it's again, I tried to make sure I presented
Speaker 1: there there were legitimate reasons for the Jewish community to
Speaker 1: worry that addressing the issue at all would make things worse.
Speaker 1: I get that, but some of it doesn't, not all,
Speaker 1: and not in all every case we've we've gone over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to keep profiting from the Nazis, right,
Speaker 1: you could not. You could decide we shouldn't make a movie, right,
Speaker 1: now because it will inflame things. But we're not going
Speaker 1: to get movies and nobody did that. They're a principle
Speaker 1: Morald stand could have been taken and it was not
Speaker 1: other than by Zanuck of twentieth century and who also
Speaker 1: did business in Germany. So he's all made money off
Speaker 1: the Nazis and Chaplain who legitimately did not try too,
Speaker 1: who was pretty stridently anti Nazi from day zero. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you this and you can say it past.
Speaker 1: We're not getting into that on this episode, Dan, But
Speaker 1: how far are we from major Hollywood studios that directly
Speaker 1: attack our current I mean like a cartoon about but
Speaker 1: I mean like a big movie The Post Try The
Speaker 1: Post did it without doing it. I don't think it
Speaker 1: can be that far right. I don't think so um,
Speaker 1: nor that I think that there's anybody who doesn't want to.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that. I don't think it's a particularly
Speaker 1: will be a particularly brave thing to do in our
Speaker 1: current cultural climate because there's so much so many people
Speaker 1: are making fun of the president right now. What scares
Speaker 1: me more is China, which not to say not to
Speaker 1: compare the Chinese government to the Nazi government, because there's
Speaker 1: no comparing the modern Chinese to the Nazis. But you
Speaker 1: have a case where a government does have a troubling
Speaker 1: human rights record is doing really bad. They don't even
Speaker 1: exactly and they've locked a million weager Muslims up in
Speaker 1: one of their areas. Probably you don't know if there's
Speaker 1: really a million person concentration camp in China, but there's
Speaker 1: some evidence that that's being done, and Erik Prince is involved.
Speaker 1: But we do know that this is a government with
Speaker 1: a troubling history of human rights abuse. And Hollywood also
Speaker 1: is totally dependent upon China, like it is a huge deal.
Speaker 1: So my question is, if something in the future happens
Speaker 1: where the Chinese government is caught doing something terrible, does
Speaker 1: Hollywood blacklist any mentioned from that out of the knowledge
Speaker 1: that it will cut out the Chinese market um? And
Speaker 1: also would the Chinese government be willing to cut Hollywood
Speaker 1: entirely out of China in order to make that kind
Speaker 1: of statement. We don't know what would happen, but I
Speaker 1: will say based on this, I don't expect any more
Speaker 1: courage out of the modern studio heads in Hollywood then
Speaker 1: we got out of the ones in the thirties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't either, so damn dude. And then the war
Speaker 1: started and everybody wanted to make their anti yeah, and
Speaker 1: then and then Mickey Mouse is fighting Hitler as opposed
Speaker 1: to entertaining him. Yeah, yeah, huh, yep, this is crazy,
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel, you want to plug some plug doubles? Sure.
Speaker 1: I'd like to let everybody know if you go to
Speaker 1: Daniel van Kirk dot com or you follow me on
Speaker 1: any social media platform where I'm at Daniel van Kirk,
Speaker 1: I might be coming to your area. The first leg
Speaker 1: of my Together tour starts in Houston and then heads
Speaker 1: over to Austin, Dallas, Lafayette and Baton Rouge, So, Texas,
Speaker 1: and Louisiana. And that's just the first leg. I'm also
Speaker 1: going to be doing some more Southeast stuff than the
Speaker 1: Northeast and the Midwest and keep going around, so check
Speaker 1: for those legs to be added. You can do all
Speaker 1: that at Daniel van Kirk dot com or follow me
Speaker 1: at Daniel van Kirk and listen to the podcast that
Speaker 1: I do. Well you say hello to my old hometown
Speaker 1: Dallas for me, I will. I don't go back there
Speaker 1: in the summer ever. You don't want to swim through it. No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's why I moved to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: so I don't have to live through another Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's a humidity. Yeah, you're yeah, swimming through it as right,
Speaker 1: it's your everyone lives inside an armpit for seven months. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: I right, okay, just two letters. You can find my
Speaker 1: book on Amazon, A Brief History of Vice. You can
Speaker 1: find this podcast and all of the sources for this
Speaker 1: episode and including Ben's wonderful book The Collaboration, on our
Speaker 1: website Behind the Bastards dot com. You can also find
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