Nazism and propaganda cinema
Nazism created an elaborate propaganda system in the cinema. The cinema became the ideal tool to empower the regime and manipulate the masses. Hitler prohibited foreign films so that the German people could not perceive what was happening abroad. When censoring foreign cinema, the Nazi regime wanted the media to show only their perception as unique and manipulate the truth of the facts. Jewish actors, directors and screenwriters were deported to exclude the Jewish society from the film industry. The Nazi regime intended to lock the public in a bubble, (manipulating cinematographic productions at their convenience). From 1930, the cinema became a means of popular entertainment and achieved a massive acceptance in the German people. Cinema played an important role in the imposition of Nazi ideology in German society. In 1930, the German National Workers’ Party planned to use films as propaganda, by first setting a film department for the first time. The Nazi film industry had an important role in deceiving its own people.
Joseph Goebbels is considered one of the greatest manipulators in history due to the important role that had as "Minister of Popular Illustration and Propaganda". Goebbels used cinema to offer biased information to achieve control and mastery of the Nazi regime over the population. Promoting fear against concrete groups and encouraged the population to fight the enemy.
According to Goebbels, we educate people according to a common worldview with the help of films, radio and the press, which the Führer sees how the most important tools of popular leadership.
Slavinsky, Amanda (2011)
Goebbels intended to nationalize German cinematographic production and distribution. Goebbels took advantage of art and entertainment as a means of political power. Goebbels knew that to achieve an effective propaganda instrument I had to create entertaining national cinema and emphasize the government. Goebbels
created patriotic films to highlight nationalist values. Established a romantic perspective about the importance of defending the country. "The Jew Süs" was a fiction drama produced by Goebbels (Hitler’s commission), in 1940.
According to Goebbels himself, it was "the film Antijudía par excellence". It is a perfect example of art and propaganda that served for Nazi interests and mass manipulation. A work that used the culture of the Aryan people to promote the values of Nazi culture and distort reality.
According to Pérez, Mariana (2016), was presented as a quality film, also achieving a wide public success (more than 20 million viewers). In fact, it was one of the few declared anti -Semitic films that achieved the support of the German public.
Innocent voices (2004)
In the film, Goebbels intended to remove the feelings and emotions of the public, showing Süs’s actions. The film captivated the public, showing innocent German girls raped and full of lies. Süs is a character with dirty tactics that affect innocent characters and that has catastrophic consequences for the people. The film is dedicated to describe in detail, its dirty tactics to climb positions, becoming the right hand of the Duke. Süs manages to deceive the German people and intends to destroy the Aryan spirit. Goebbels creates empathy for the affected characters and repudiation for the actions of Süs. The public is horrified when Süs torture the Germans (shown graphically) or makes sexual insinuations to the cutting ladies. Süs is the perfect example of a character that must be excluded from German society, since it only creates chaos. The film represents a symbol of nationality and the struggle of the survival of the Nazi people.
The film tells a half truth, which becomes a repeated truth a thousand times. It is the perfect example of the repetition of anti -Semitic and Nazis ideas constantly. The film does not intend to show absurd lies, but a transfigured truth through a historical fact. The film is based on Joseph Soss Oppenheimer, a 18th -century Jew (Duke Carlos de Wurtember), which was executed. This fact is a historical falsification, since in reality the true Süs was unjustly blamed. Goebbels took this fact and transfigured it as a reality. With this historical fact, it aims to exaggerate a situation.
The truth was distorted according to the convenience of the interests of the Nazi regime. The Nazi regime used all the necessary resources to be imposed on social thought. Süs is a perverse and inhuman being. The film shows how all Germans are equal and different Jews. Goebbels use the dramatization of this historical fact as a means to get its end and to be a credible fact. In this film, there is no more details about what happened and reality is only manipulated. This historical fact is transfigured and presented without giving more explanations or complete data about what happened. Solid arguments were not provided, but there is a collective imaginary where all blocks. Goebbels gives its own version about the facts and transforms information to its convenience.
Goebbels used the interests of the people so that the message was more easily understood. The description of the characters showed who the villain was and who was the good of the story. The Jew was the villain and the German the good of history. With this, the differences between Germans and Jews are highlighted. The German intended to defend his people and Süs ruin him. In the film, Süs is shown as the enemy who intends to ruin the nationalist values of the German people. The characteristics attributed to Süs are based on the anti -Semitic stereotypes of the Jews: greed, cunning, greed, malice and hypocrisy. The images of the filming showed the characteristics attributed to the characters. The image of the pure woman raped and the evil Jew by desecrating a land that does not belong to her and violating pure innocence. It is easy to understand who the enemy is and who is the good of history, in addition to associating who is the main enemy of history. Errors were awarded to Jews and tried to generate powerful hate emotions to promote the support and maintenance of regime’s power.
Goebbels intended to impose a subtle message, since his film, "the eternal Jew", did not achieve his mission. In "The Eternal Jew", the Jews were shown as monsters in an exaggerated way. Goebbels did not want the film of "The Jew Süs" to be perceived as garbage propaganda and wanted it to be credible. Through the characteristics attributed to the characters, he intended to indirectly highlight the hatred of the Jews. Thanks to the fact that the message was subtle, it was effective and plausible. In addition, the message was more easily understood. Goebbels tried to hide the tone of the film, showing the film as a subtle reflection of reality. But it was not enough to show it, but represented with immoral actions to give credibility to political discourse.
In the film we see how the Jews are an obstacle to the survival and prosperity of the German people. The woman who violates in bed (with a star of David), is represented as a goodwill that is stained by a Jew. Similarly, the husband and father of the woman who are tortured, represent the evil that a single Jew can cause throughout the people. The raped woman represents the Aryan Purity and the Jew The enemy who wants to ruin her.
Goebbels seduced the masses through the instincts and emotions of the people. The public is moved when the German people suffer the fatal consequences of Süs’s actions. Similarly, when he dies of hunger, while Süs enjoys all his wealth. In this film, we can see how the German people join to lynch and punish Süs. Goebbels’ cinematographic productions intended to impose the Nazi regime, exalt nationalism and foster racism.
According to Goebbels, the great art lies in educating without revealing the purpose of education, so that the educational function is fulfilled without the subject of such education realizing that it is being educated, which constitutes in truth the real purpose ofthe advertising.
(Gubern, 2004)
Goebbels use escapism to educate, which was distracting the population with entertainment, while perceiving a political message. Through this film, Goebbels sought to educate the masses and that unconsciously obeyed the party, regardless of the individual’s individuality. It was a form of Nazi indoctrination. The public thought he was watching a movie, but in reality he was being indoctrinated and educated. The film was an introduction to Nazi ideology, without the audience being aware. Goebbels use Nazi ideology in the film as a unity symbol. Through the film the audience is manipulated, demonstrating that it is the obligation and duty of the German to end the Jew or if he will break the unit.
The Jew was the public enemy who took any value to the people, since goodwill corrupted. Süs makes the duke comet adultery, lift taxes, dissolve the power of the court and yield land. In the film he showed how the Jew was threatening public well -being and deserved to be displaced. Süs has control of decisions and total authority, passing over the Duke. All Süs decisions are tyrannas, so it deserves to be annihilated. When moving to Süs, the people have control again.
Süs is a charismatic, but manipulative character and has perverse ends. The Jew is represented as a normal person abroad, but perverse in the background. The Jew is represented as a strange parasite, which must be retained in the ghettos to prevent the weakness of the Aryans. The Jew represents the betrayal of the Aryan people and the one who threatens the law. Süs is the one that is corrupting a integral society, through political or sexual deceptions and intrigues.
The message was simple. He who was a foreigner or disagreed with Nazi ideology, did not belong to the German community. The one who did not agree, did not have nationalist and cultural values. The one who did not agree was like Süs and did not love his homeland. Süs was the enemy who broke with the national unity symbol. The film portrays Süs as the enemy that corrupted German identity and could influence the bad decisions of the Duke. Süs had to be eliminated, so that he would not influence his whole society with his bad example. The ARIA unit is represented when the people signs a treaty that excludes the Jews from their lands. When all the people bind to find and lynch to Süs, the unity and spirit is restored again. Similarly, when all the people bind to witness the hanging of Süs and shout with joy. Süss is a greedy, ambitious man, who abuses German wives, exploiter of the town and the cause of all the evils of the community. Through a tax load without mercy, he lives as a king enjoying wealth, while the people dies of hunger.
According to Suchi, Marina (2015), Goebbels saw that he could appear to Süss as an arrogant Jew who infiltrated the Germans to snatch what his own was. He already had the most important piece in his cinematographic anti -Semitic propaganda.
Magnet (2015)
The German people have a struggle with the internal enemy that is represented by Süs. The internal enemy has to be expelled to reign peace. By proclaiming the definitive expulsion of the Jews, good triumphs over evil and the people
strengthens. The Jew is the enemy who can manipulate or deceive a whole people. A single Jew is able to attempt with the tranquility, austerity and prosperity of an entire people. It is responsible for all evils and problems to the Jew. Süs is represented as an inhuman being and his portrait is disfigured in an anti -Semitic way, so that the audience would perceive it as the common enemy. The Jew is represented as an inhuman being, for perverse purposes. In the film, we can see the Aryan people as a conglomerate of working and noble people, abused by the power and ambition of the Jewish people who come to destroy them.
According to Pérez, Mariana (2004), Süs is a treacherous, even with his own community (other Jews come to warn that he is walking along a wrong path, however he will make deaf ears), chameleonic (he gets to detach himself from his culture with suchTo impersonate as authentic German, although it will never get it, because following racist thinking, the other German characters are capable of "smell" to kilometers) and internationalist (for national socialism, something unthinkable, in fact in the figure ofHis can be seen the figure of contemporary international Jewish bankers).
Innocent voices (2004)
In the film we see that Süs is the cause of every evil that happens to the characters. All Süs negative qualities stand out in the movie. In the film, the negative qualities of the Jew are exaggerated. The Jew is presented as a threat to the German people. The film aims to denounce the disgust of the Jewish individual, through Süs’s deceptions. By expelling all Jews and prohibiting relationships in the treaty, it is intended to avoid any evil. When representing the immoral actions of Süs, Nazis ideas are given likelihood. The film intended to intensify hatred towards the enemy.
The objective of the film was to attack the Jews, showing that they broke with the unity and nationalism of the Aryan people. The Jew was represented as the great enemy, the cause of all the evils of the German people. The most notorious example is when it is pronounced: “Let’s throw the Kurfürstendamm Jews! Let’s throw the last Jews from Germany!". The Jew was the enemy that had to be expelled or eliminated to stop any irreversible damage. The film was aimed to unmask the Jew as an ideological and racial enemy.
Goebbels intended to teach that defending the nation and the community of the enemy is more important than the same individual. In the film, the heroism and superiority of the German people are above the individual. The German people have to defend and demonstrate that it watches over citizen well -being. Goebbels wanted to eliminate any reason and logic, to get the audience to be guided by emotions.
The public does not stop to make an analysis of what is happening and only focuses on the hatred that the villain of the film causes. The public does not stop to think if the fact he perceives is true. The public gets carried away by collective hysteria and does not stop to think if the film is reasonable. The public does not stop to think if the information he perceives represents reality. In addition, it was wanted to convince that regime’s decisions were correct for common well -being.
In the film it shows how to execute Süs was a responsible action to save the people from a greater evil. Goebbels intended that the decisions of the Nazi regime were accepted and necessary among the people. Süs represents the opposite of the interests of the Aryan population, therefore it has no right due to their betrayal. The Jew represents the fear of attempting against common well -being.
Goebbels sought to face a common enemy, through ethnic hate towards the Jew. Through the guilt towards the Jew, it was intended to return to return the national unity, as well as guarantee security to the German people. On the other hand, for the Jew there was nothing more than punishment, consequences and violence.
Bibliography:
- The Jew Soss. University of the Andes. Research Group on History of Ideas in Latin America. ISSN 1856-9927. Mérida. January-December, No. 11, 2017. Reviews, pp. 190-223.
- The Jew Süß. Francisco Javier Moro Albacete. History School. University of the Andes.
- The wandering myth: the figure of the Jew in Franco’s cinema. Carolina Rúa Fernández, José Manuel Rúa Fernández.
- The wandering myth. Rúa Fernández, C.;Rúa Fernández, J.M. com. and soc. 23 (1) 2018: 197-212.
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