Part Two: How Hollywood Helped The Nazis

In Part Two: How Hollywood Helped The Nazis, Robert is joined again by Daniel Van Kirk and they continue to discuss the influence Nazism had on Hollywood.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mhm, and we're back. I'm Robert Evans, and this is
Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything
you don't know about the very worst people in all
of history. And today this is the second part of
a two part episode on the Nazis and Hollywood. My

(00:20):
guest today is Daniel van Kirk, and we are both
A fan suggested Tapatio derritos to us and they're amazing.
We're eating them right now, really really good. Yeah. I
did not want this in my life and now I'm
never gonna be able to get rid of. I'm gonna
take these two parties. Oh they're amazing. I'm gonna tell
people to have parties so that I can take them
to them. Like, I want to get through the rest

(00:41):
of this episode as quickly as possible so I can
binge eat the rest of these delicious tapato wanting more
and on fire again. We have not received a scent
from the Dorrito's company. This is all just free enthusiasm
over their products. Um so, Daniel, you should probably plug
your stuff for the four listeners who aren't gonna listen
to part one and are going to jump into part
two and part one so that that is an approach.

(01:07):
I want to let everybody know that they can listen
to me on the Dumb People Tom podcast, which is
show that I host and the Squad Brothers do as well.
And then I have another podcast called pen Pals, and
that is why Scovill and myself reading people's letters. You
sound us anything you want, we write you back audibly.
We say it's your podcast. We just talked about it.
And then I have a show called Hindsight where I

(01:28):
have creators, comedians, producers, directors, writers. They bring through photos
from any chapter of their life and we just talked
about the context of their life when each photo was taken.
Speaking of context, let's talk about the context of the
nineteen thirties now. In the first episode, we talked about
how the early German sensor's basically threatened Hollywood with cutting

(01:48):
them off, getting Germany off from the movies entirely unless
they made certain changes to the movies in order to
make them more palatable for for Germans. And you know,
this led to Hollywood not attacking the Nazis directly and
really not even really mentioning Judaism. The Nazis ramped up
there control and they ramped up the profitability for Hollywood

(02:09):
at the same time, and it was a gradual thing
where they'd ask for one thing and then a little
bit later that asked for another, and that's how they
do it. Yeah, And we also talked about The House
of Rothschild, the movie made to be a rebuke of
anti Semitism that also kind of wound up being a
little bit anti Semitic, to which all credit to the
knock He's the only guy so far, he's done the
right thing, but yeah, he could be like, tell me

(02:31):
who did it worse than me? Because I'm the only
one at this point? Is this better than nothing? You
prefer this to nothing? So it's important to note, like again,
one of the big questions here is what were the
studios collaborating directly with the Nazis or were they were
they just appeasing the Nazis in the same way that
everybody was appeasing the Nazis in the thirties, And in

(02:52):
order to sort of answer that question, one of the
things that's important to note is that the US has
has always had, and still has a pretty virulent ashist movement.
We've been seeing a lot more of that in the
last year or so, but it was particularly prominent in
the nineteen thirties, and even in Hollywood there were a
lot of fascist sympathizers. This was made very evident by
the production of a movie called Gabriel over the White House.

(03:14):
It was probably the first explicitly fascist fictional movie of
all time. Um the basic premise is that a president
suffers a terrible car accident and undergoes a personality change.
Uh he goes in front of Congress, castigates them for
wasting America's money, and then demands them to declare a
national emergency and vote him absolute power. While he's chastising

(03:36):
Congress for fucking up the country, somebody calls him a dictator,
and he snaps back, I believe in democracy as Washington, Jefferson,
and Lincoln believed in democracy, and if what I planned
to do in the name of the people makes me
a dictator, then it is a dictator. Based on Jefferson's
definition of democracy, a government for the greatest good of
the greatest number. So none of this is a satire,

(03:59):
although some people have tried to say that, since this
is not presented as a bad thing either. He's the hero,
the president who takes dictatorial control of the country to
fix its problems is the hero. But see's so crazy
because he says that thing where he says, what do
you say Jefferson's definition? Yeah, the greatest good for the
greatest number of people. Yeah, But the the ending to that,
the rebuttal to that is the greatest good for the

(04:21):
greatest number of people without their choice. Yeah, without them
having any sort of saying that. Yeah, that doesn't come
up in the movie. So the film that or the
movie was based off of a book, and the book
was had been written by a british Man during a
long boat ride who basically wondered to himself a Britishman

(04:42):
during a long boat ride. Yeah, I wondered, wouldn't it
be great if America became fascist? That was basically his
his Yeah, I mean he thought it wouldn't be Now
he'd never ever been to America when he wrote this book.
He's got a lot of it. Never need to go
to America to write a book about it. Yeah, So
he writes this book and will Liam Randolph Hurst loves it,

(05:02):
and William Randolph Hurst is like, this motherfucker's got to
be a movie. So Hurst is the dude who decides
to make this into a movie, the guy who wants
to run everything. Yeah. So Hayes, the chief censor, was
also actually the only person who raised any objection to
the contents of Gabriel over the White House. He worried
that people might quote regarded as a direct indictment of

(05:23):
the plurility and falliability of today's government machinery and personnel,
and that only by a blow in the head of
the president and its consequent acts of a deranged man
is enough righteousness and wisdom put into the executive branch
of the government to lead. So that's his problem, is
that like it's saying, well, you're saying the government so
fun that the president needs a head injury to be
good at being the president. So Hayes complains and changes

(05:45):
are made to the film. They don't make the film
any less fascistic. Instead, they make it clear to the
viewer that rather than being addled in his accent, the
president has been taken over by God who is using
him as a conduit to save the nation. Lines that
emphas sized his supernatural power were added. This is one
of the people who knows the president of this movie
talking about so what if he What if it wasn't

(06:08):
so much about him getting injured, but but just spiritually
woke in the name of Jesus Christ. Yeah, what if
he's a vessel for God that takes over the country
and turns into a dictatorship. That's a better idea. I'm
William hayes sensor. So here's a line of someone talking
about the president in the movie that was added as
a result of Hayes's suggestions. Quote, there's something about him,
something new and terribly strange, which deprives you of volition

(06:31):
or of any capacity to act and think for yourself.
It is easier to give way than to continue fighting
for your ego. You become content to serve, to serve,
and wait his pleasure. Again, this is not portrayed as horrifying.
It's a good thing. It's good that the President's godly
aura has taken over your mind, dictating our government. So

(06:53):
Gabriel over the White House was unique at the time
because it was the first big Hollywood production to actually
address the Great Depression. For the first couple of years
of the Depression, Hollywood had avoided commenting on the issues
of the day in any of their movies, thinking it
would be a bad idea if they were seen as
trying to wade into politics or social issues. So I
wasn't even thinking about that. That That the impressions going on too.
And this is the first major studio movie to address

(07:16):
the country's economic problems posits fascism as a solution. But see,
isn't that sign of the vacuum that was also happening
in the nies in Germany? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's
the same. There's like this vacuum here for like a
need of like pick us up. Yeah, And it's it's
evidence that the same trends that put Hitler into power

(07:37):
could have easily put a fascist into power in the
United States because clearly people are thinking along those lines.
Wouldn't be great if some strong guy could just come
along and fix with the answers. Yeah, it's always a
threat like that. Like Germany wasn't the only country that
the current running through it? Um So. Gabriel over the
White House premiered in Berlin in February of ninety four. Obviously,

(07:57):
it passed the censors. The Nazis of this movie. It
played for fifty and consecutive days in its first run. Ironically,
Hayes's changes actually put the movie more in line with
a key Nazi concept, fewer princip or the leader principle.
This is sort of the core of Nazism, Like one
of the core kernels of Nazi ideology is the fewer principle. Um.

(08:19):
It evolved out of the Social Darwinis theories of a
guy named Herman Groff caser Ling, who felt that certain
individuals were quote born to rule. The book Darker Legacies
of the Law in Europe sites the work of a
guy named Huber who gives a good explanation of the
fewer principles. So I'm going to quote that in the
Fewer the essential laws of the Vulcan, which is the
people come into manifestation. By allowing these essential laws to emerge,

(08:41):
he sets up the great common objectives that have to
be realized. The fewer embodies the overall will of the
people as an objective historical quantity. So the idea of
the fewer principle is that like, there's this the will
of the people can become manifest in a man, and
it's almost a supernatural thing, and he's chosen by destiny
to embody the people's will, which is exactly what Hayes

(09:03):
has changes had made it from like the president gets
hurt in the head and it makes him more decisive
to God chooses the president to be the vessel of
American from the viewpoint of the people. Not only is
he of us, he is us. Yeah, he is. He
speaks we speak through him. Exactly. So Hayes had inadvertently
made Gabriel Over the White House even better Nazi propaganda

(09:24):
as a result of his censorship, which hopefully was an accident. Yeah,
I think it was an accident. Mulligan on that. Yeah,
we'll give him Mulligan on accidentally making Nazi propaganda. Who
hasn't you know we all trial accidentally was so a
Nazi newspaper doubt and grief, which means the attack. Let
a man named Brandon. Yeah, it's the Nazi, the attack

(09:47):
and the like somebody in the writer's room for a
Nazi should have been little on the nose. We're calling
ourselves a little on the nose. They love that ship.
So a Nazi reviewer reviewed Gabriel Over the White House
and concluded that the movie was proof that the fewer
principle was deeply embedded in the human soul that German
fascism was was emblematic of a greater human truth, because

(10:10):
even America's democratic traditions hadn't been able to destroy this.
So like the Nazis watched this movie, they're like, oh,
the Americans are fascists, Like they just haven't overthrown their
decadent government. But they feel it too. But they feel
it too. That's in all of this matter where you are.
You know, if you try to do the opposite, you're
gonna end up being like, well, you know what feels
right though, fascism? Yeah, fuck it. Maybe they're right. Uh yeah,

(10:36):
So here's a quote from that German movie reviewer. At
first the smiling, somewhat complacent parliamentary politician, then the completely
transformed figure of a man possessed by a holy fanaticism,
one who sees himself as above all party authority, as leader,
and as patron of the interests of his entire people
and all of humanity. So again they see this as
clearly like, oh, this is just like America, being like,

(10:58):
what if we had our own Hitler? They love it.
So movie president fascist even got to commit a mass
murder of his own. That's part of the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But because it's the thirties, the people he massacres are gangsters.
They deserve it. Organized criminals. Yeah. Well, he describes these
people as like the running man. As long as these
people are like prisoners and jail, who cares they have

(11:21):
committed a crime, It's okay to kill anybody. Absolutely yeah
the movie. President describes these organized criminals as quote a malignant,
cancerous growth eating at the spiritual health of the American people. Uh,
the only way to deal with gangsters is to eliminate them,
so that our citizen, pursuing his peaceful way will no
longer be forced to conduct his business in the shadow
of extortion and debt. At one point, again meant to

(11:42):
be a heroic moment, the President gets the head gangster
and his men into a court martial and sentences them
all to die. You're the last of the racketeers, he said,
And why because we have in the White House a
man who has enabled us to cut the red tape
of legal procedures and get back to first principles. And
I for an eye Nick Diamond, who's the head of
the gangsters. A tooth for a tooth, a life for
a life. So President movie Fascists sets up a concentration

(12:05):
camp on Ellis Island and personally oversees the execution of
all the gangsters. Now had concentration camps already begun. Oh,
they've been happening for decades and decades in Germany over
the Nazi Germany. The word Nazi Germany. It happens as
soon as the Nazis are in power. They started at
first they have what are called the open air concentration camps,
but they're building camps this whole period of time. But

(12:28):
also concentration camps had started. We did a whole episode
on this, but they were very well established at this point.
So he lines up all the gangsters because you're camp
corrupt people, and he's sealing money. Yeah, and I'm going
to kill you all. And then the Nazi beasts and
then the Nazis watched this and go, now bear with me,

(12:48):
what if I think gangster? But let's write ja Yeah,
yeah exactly. Um So the Nazis loved this movie v
but high ranking Nazis like Joseph Gebbels are actually very
frustrated by it. He liked the movie, but he hated
how much better American studios were in making fascist propaganda.

(13:11):
He felt that actual Nazi filmmakers were often absolutely atrocious. Hitler,
for his part, didn't like propaganda entertainment. Hitler's feeling was
that quote, it makes me sick when I see political
propaganda hiding under the guys of art. Let it be
either art or politics, Jimmy King Kong, or give me
a newsreel. Don't give me both. Which is why the
most famous Nazi propaganda film is Triumph of the Will,

(13:32):
the famous Lennie reefinstall movie. If you've seen clips of
Germans Nazis marching and Hitler's it's probably from Triumph of
the Will. It's like the most famous proper explicitly propaganda
film of all time, but it was not overwhelmingly popular
in fact in Nazi Germany in the year that Triumph
of the Will was released nineteen thirty five. In that year,
nine American films outperformed at the box office. So per

(13:56):
last episode, when I said, well, they'll all go see
it if it's American film. That that's not necessarily true. No,
that will They won't go see a German fascist propaganda movie,
but they will all go see American movies that are
regarded as being fat because the American movies are entertaining,
So so Gabriel over the White House performed the best
it performed. Well, oh, I thought you said there was

(14:17):
nine movies that performed better better than Triumph of the World.
Triumph of the Will actually isn't in the top ten
most popular movies in Germany that you're released. Yeah, it
was not, because it's it's it's great if you want
to scare people about how powerful New Germany is. But
nobody watched that movie and got convinced of anything, right, gotcha, gotcha?

(14:39):
So I'm going to read a quote from the collaboration
which is talking about sort of how the Nazis propaganda
movies were not particularly successful in Nazi Germany. In a sense,
the most successful Nazi propaganda film of the nineteen thirties
was not Triumph of the Will, commissioned by Hitler, but
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer produced by Paramount Now.

(14:59):
The Eyes of the Bengal Lancer was a very popular
movie at the time in the United States. It was
nominated for seven Academy Awards. It focused around a unit
of British cavalrymen defending their headquarters in Bengal from a
local Indian uprising. Gary Cooper played a leading role the
bad guy Mohammed Khan was probably the first character in
history to use the line we have ways to make
men talk in a torture scene. So that's where that

(15:21):
that you've heard different variations, that's where that originated from.
The Nazis loved this movie because it yet again provided
a perfect depiction of the fewer principle at work. The
colonel in charge of the British cavalry unit is depicted
as infalliable. He's not even willing to negotiate with the
enemy when they capture his own son. One of the
colonel soldiers criticizes him for this and gets harangued by

(15:42):
a major who basically outlines Nazi racial theory in a
few words. Man, you are blind. Have you never thought how?
For generation after generation, here a handful of men have
ordered the lives of three million people. It's because he's here,
and a few more like him, men of his breed
have made British India men who put their jobs above everything.
He wouldn't let death move him from it, and he

(16:03):
won't let love move him from it. When his breed
of man dies out. That's the end. And it's a
better breed of man than any of us will ever make.
And it's worth noting as Erland does that. In the
German version of this movie, the major says a handful
of white men protect three hundred Indians from chaos. So
the movie was actually edited by Hollywood to make it

(16:25):
more racist for the Nazis. Yeah, watching this movie gave
Joseph Gebel's the insight that in effective propaganda, a hero
does not always speak heroically, but he acts heroically. In
other words, it's more effective to make a propaganda movie
that doesn't say what it's propagandizing for, that shows it exactly.
The Life of a Bengal Lancer became one of Hitler's

(16:47):
favorite movies of all time. The Hitler Youth screened it
for tens of thousands of young Nazis. Gert Eckert, their leader,
noted ruefully, it is shameful that our filmmakers lack the
courage to make a movie like The Lives Live of
a Bengal Lancer. So when we think of Nazi propaganda,
we think of triumph of the will. When Nazis thought
about effective Nazi propaganda. They thought a Gary fucking Cooper ship,

(17:14):
Thanks Paramount. Yeah, these are not the only pro fascist
movies made by Hollywood in this time. There was another
film called Our Daily Bread that was a great example
of fascism in Hollywood in the thirties. On its surface,
the film was about a bunch of unemployed men who
start a farm together. At one point, all the men
sit down to try to decide how to like organize
their new society. Right, one guy suggests, basically anarchy where

(17:36):
everybody's equal. One guy suggested democracy where everybody votes. And
then one dude's like, what if we make the protagonist
of the movie. What if he's just in charge of
us and we all blindly follow whatever he says, And
then everybody cheers and immediately realize that this is the
best way to organize. But would they tell you in
Hollywood that this this also is a response to the depression? Yeah,
of like, these people don't have anything, so they set

(17:59):
out to go and make on their own and farm
their own land and not have to rely on the
government falling out from under them. Yes, but when they
have to pick a leader for their group, everything is
all the different political styles are suggested and they go
with one guy is just an absolute ruler. Yeah, and
they cheer that like that, Like the Nazis loved Our

(18:19):
Daily Bread played for fifty five weeks in Nazi Germany,
like more than a year. Ernst Choral, Production chief of UFA,
the German film production company, actually wrote a report on
the movie and basically said that it was such perfect
fascist propaganda that it seemed like it had been made
under orders from the propaganda ministry like that. He was like,

(18:40):
this is such a perfect movie. I feel like Joseph
Gebel's outlined the plot for them to follow. So the
Nazis also loved. Mr Smith gost to Washington UH and
said that it was quote excellent propaganda that riticals corruption
and parliamentarianism in Washington. Jimmy Stewart don't like that, no, well,
I mean Jimmy Stewart bombed the Nazis in World War Two.
But they looked at it and saw, well, here's a

(19:02):
movie about how shitty democracy is and how one guy
with a vision has to come in and fix this
corrupt town. You see that, Like that's that's the key,
because this means you want to say that they're retrofitting it, right,
but it's so, but it's also there. It's there, And
this is one of the things that's scary because this
is still the way movies work, where it's just if
you're telling a story, you've got ninety minutes, you're trying

(19:23):
to get a lot of It's easier to have one person.
You know, in history it's usually big groups of people
who make things happen. It's way easier to pick one protagonist.
But that also these stories that are easy to follow
also kind of reinforce these attitudes that like you're behind
one man, get behind one man, and so a lot
of it is not that there's even direct collaboration going on,

(19:46):
it's just that the way movies work is entertainment really
wound up reinforcing Nazi beliefs about how the Untrix fascist
film kind of right a little bit. I mean, if
you want to view with that, you could. If The
Matrix had come out nineteen thirty six, I think the
Germans would have loved it and also would have seen
that the Smith as a Jewish stand very racist. But yeah,

(20:08):
the one, the one we need him, Yeah, he is
the savior. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's you think too
much about it and you start to get kind of
hopeless about the nature of storytelling because there is an
aspect of it where it's like, well, how do you
tell a story without reinforcing these things? But also I'm
saying on some level there has to be some retrofitting.

(20:29):
But when you but then that's why you get into
the book, the collaboration where you're like, how much was
and we do know that lions were at it, and like, yeah,
and we know that Joseph Gebbels was. He was very
frustrated by all this because he loved Hollywood movies, but
he could not get German filmmakers, Nazi filmmakers, to make
anything that compared to what Hollywood was making. He's lamented

(20:53):
that German writers have seldom expressed national socialist ideas in
the relaxed, lively way that we see in the examples
I have just given. He was talking about the movies
we've just talked about. Our German writers have been able
to find the form to depict nationalists into some degree
national socialist ideas and film, but they have not yet
mustered up the freedom to shape their work in the
way I have described naturally, we will continue making films

(21:14):
about our own history, but something new, entirely new, something
like our daily bread, would considerably expand our propagandistic abilities.
So like what Girbel's estating that all of the movies
that German filmmakers tried to make to embody this fewer
principle were based on actual figures from history, like they
would pick a guy like Otto von Bismarck and they
would make a movie about him to try to like.

(21:36):
But that Americans seem to be the only people who
had the ability to just imagine a fascist leader and
make a movie about him. For whatever reason, the Germans
could only go back to their history to make propaganda,
and Americans possessed at the time the seemingly unique ability
to realistically imagine a dictator, which brings the question, do
you have to have freedom in order to make truly

(21:58):
excellent fascist propaganda? Uh? Because the Nazis couldn't. It's weird.
So Hollywood Studio sold, as I said, sixty five movies
to Germany nineteen thirty three. This would be their high
water mark. The tide turned against them on March second,
nineteen thirty four, when Hollywood had the unmitigated goal to
produce tar Tarzan the Eighth Man. The movie had actually

(22:19):
been out for more than a year when the Nazis
suddenly banned it. Article fifteen had recently been changed, adding
that films could be banned if they quote harmed national,
socialist ethical artistic sensibilities. The banning process for Tarzan had
started when dr Ernst Seeger, the chief censor of Germany,
had actually objected to the film for a reason I
think will surprise everybody. So I'm going to read his

(22:39):
objections to Tarzan the Ape Man. No, no, it's not
what you'd guess at all. It's nothing racist. Did that
Tarzan even have long here? I know that movie? I
don't know. Probably not. I'm a hacking a fraud, so
I did not not. I did not research that part.
But here's dr Ernst Seeger expressing his his issues with
Tarzan the Ape Man. This film is one of those

(23:01):
Africa pictures that would aim to awaken the thrill of
sadistic instincts stincts in the spectator by deliberately and subtly
emphasizing the atrocities in the struggle between humans and animals,
as well as that between animals of different kinds. It's
a moral and bestializing effect is illuminated in the fact
that the audience laughs at the mortal danger of a
nice little monkey who lets out atrocious death screams while
clumsily running from a roaring panther, and furthermore titters with

(23:24):
pleasure when a herd of elephant stampedes through a Negro village,
and when an elephant hurls a pigmy through the air
onto the ground, where the unfortunate soul parishes, writing and
pitiable death, convulsions and shrieks. The cruelty to animals that
occurred in the making of this picture is a cultural
disgrace which has been barred from taking place in the
New Germany because of the animal protection law we have instituted.

(23:45):
The film law should spare no means in preventing foreign
pictures of this type from reaching the screen in Germany.
For the producers of these pictures are breaking the fundamental
precepts of humanity and their pure obsession with profit not
what you'd call it, right, Take key cared about animals,
any care about African people being shown? Well I don't
think that, yeah, but well he cared about the African

(24:05):
people he cared about. He hated a scene where a
Negro what he called a Negro village was destroyed and
were killed. He was horrified by all this. So this
isn't that crazy that like some of the worst people
in history. Also, like we're early on that tip of
like be nice to animals. They were the first people
to put through like really modern animal rights laws. It's

(24:26):
hard for me sometimes to watch like a really old
movie with the horses, where you're like, I just don't
give a ship, I don't care what happens. I didn't
really care about people either, because they got a lot
of actually just killed at those days. So we're going
to get into more about tars and the ape man
and what the Nazis did with that, because the the
problems wrinkle out from here. So Seeger is not the

(24:48):
only person with objections movie. He's just the only person
with not racist objections to the movie. Um, but first
it is time for some adds and we're back. Those
were some great ads, fantastic people should take your advice

(25:09):
on those. Yes, please buy these products indoor services. Now
we just talked about Seeger's surprising objections to Tarzan the
eight Man. Well, I wasn't surprising he objected, yeah, but
surprising that he objected because it was cruel to animals
and to people, rather than I think so he must.
I think at this point he would have had to
have been a member of the party. I don't know

(25:30):
if he like most people who joined the party. I've
just never thought of a Nazi and also simultaneously thought,
good call. Yeah, it's weird, right, I mean, even the
Nazi clock is we're right once a day. There you go,
there you go. So everything we just talked about. His wife,
Seeger thought the movie needed to be banned, but he
wasn't sure of his own judgment, and so he sent

(25:51):
the film off to the Propaganda Ministry to basically get
their input on the matter, and once they reviewed it,
they concluded that quote this film must be sensor must
be considered dangerous. The Nazi state has been tirelessly trying
to awaken in public opinion the highest sense of responsibility
in the selection of a husband. It has also put
a great deal of effort into freeing the ideas of marriage, womanhood,
and motherhood from the superficial distortion of the past epoch,

(26:14):
which was completely aimed at sexuality and making them honorable again.
A film that puts pure libido in the foreground, that
tends to imply that a jungle man, virtually an ape,
is capable of the noblest impulses of the soul and
is a worthy marriage partner, certainly runs against the tendencies
of national socialism with regards to population politics. So there's
your natural to the marriage is not just between a

(26:36):
man and a woman, it's between a distinguished man and
a woman. And you can't show a man who's basically
an ape winning the affections of a noble German woman
because they yea, because they aren't of German caliber. Yeah,
essentially exactly, it's not us. Yeah. So this the propaganda
ministries problem with this is what you'd expect from the Nazis.

(26:58):
I'm just weirded out that seegars anyway, So this sort
of opened the damn from the Nazis banning movies. Um
secret only banned two or three titles a year previously,
but after this he went kind of band happy because
now the president had been set that not only are
we going to stop movies that are explicitly anti German,
but we will Yeah, exactly will be in movies if

(27:21):
we think they will harm our racial instincts, will band
movies just because we think they present if in any
way it infringes on what we're trying to do as
a people, not who we are, not just who we
are political motives and what we are as a country,
but just our moral code. To go all the way
back to me, like, well, no, that's not how anybody

(27:42):
should behave, Yeah, exactly how a German would act or
behave or view things exactly. So seeger starts going band
happy after this. He can's a movie called Blonde Venus
for being a lax depiction of marriage and morality that
contradicts the nation's current emphasis on the importance of family.
He banned scarface not the the first scar face, for
making criminality look appealing. Do we know anything though about like,

(28:05):
you know how in our country back in the early
nineteen nards, we had the independence the people who saw
it on their own to do it. We're like, fuck
your your rules on what it has to be or whatever.
Was there that in Germany of of just these like
not artists were in charge, I mean any of the
artists who are people who were like I got a
copy of Scarface and we're gonna watch it. I there

(28:27):
there may have been, I mean not in a documented
sense that it felt like any sort of movement or
collective of people, not that I have any sort of
information about. Because number one, you know, you're talking about
having a copy of a film. You have like a
real at this point, so it's like a sizeable thing.
But also, like the first couple of years, the Nazis
are in power there. If you were an artist who

(28:47):
could be making good movies, you're either out of Germany
at this point where you're in a camp. Yeah, I
mean you know that's that's what happened. Um so yeah,
he uh seeger bands scar Face, as I said, for
making look appealing to be a criminal. He bans all
horror movies for being immoral and exciting people's bass instincts.
The Germans were not alone in this, or not alone

(29:10):
in banning movies. The Fox filment Caravan was banned in
France for depicting a gypsy and a white man making love.
Uh So, like how dare they? And we'll get into
Caravan a little bit, because that's not even what was
going on. But like everybody's racist back then the Nazis
are just a couple of steps racist, or there's so
much more efficient, they're super efficient at it. So by

(29:31):
nineteen thirty six, the situation had gotten very dark for
the Hollywood studios. Dozens of films have been rejected for import,
costing the studios millions of dollars. The only studios who
could even afford to stay in Germany by this point
were MGM, Paramount and twentieth Century Fox. The situation was
so dire that Douglas Miller, the American Trade Commissioner in Berlin,
wrote a warning letter back to d C. He said

(29:51):
it would be unfortunate for German American relations if our
motion picture companies no longer feel they have any possibility
of selling films in Germany or any further interest in
considering the German point of view. He also noted that
if our film ties with Germany or severed, American film
companies will jump at the chance of using stories which
will trade Germany and the Germans in an unfavorable light.
Not because they desire to injure Germany, but because they

(30:13):
are hungry for villains and desire a relief from the
monotony of always using Americans or unnamed foreigners in this connection.
So the government saw it as a bad thing if
Hollywood was going to start making anti Nazi movies. And
that's another important are the US government, Yeah, because they
didn't want war with Germany. At this point, there were
still a big we don't want war movement in the
United States and so there was a real worry that

(30:35):
solution exactly. And if Hollywood gets kicked out of Germany,
they're gonna start making anti Nazi films and that's going
to push us closer to war. So this is another factor.
It's just important to keep all of this in mind.
We're thinking about the decisions being made by these people.
So rather than pack up, the remaining studios decided to
lean into the Nazis. Um In nineteen thirty seven, Paramount
picked a manager for their Berlin branch who was a

(30:57):
strong Nazi Party member. Uh Fritz Steinold, who was the
gentile manager of MGM Germany, divorced his Jewish wife. She
was later sent to a concentration camp. No ship. Yeah, wait,
so this is Paramount. That was MGM. Jim and the Paramounts,
the one who picked Nazi hired a branch. Yeah, they
may had him manage their Berlin branch and MGMs branch

(31:20):
manager divorces his Jewish wife to please the Nazis and
and she gets Yeah, she winds up in a concentration
camp and probably dies there. Yeah. I don't know exactly
what happened here, but probably not a good story. Yeah
what the fund, dude? Yeah? So for what money? Yeah?
So studios, it's it is important to note that studios
also tricked the Nazis. Sometimes didn't the jew run MGM. Yeah,

(31:43):
and I don't mean that that sounded worce. A Jewish
person ran in Jewish people who still ran back in Hollywood,
and they hired a Nazi, yeah, in Germany for their
German branch because he would help them with the Nazis. Dude,
it's messed up. I was almost saying that to that
person's ghosts. Yeah, like dude, so um, there were also

(32:06):
it's important to note there were some ways at which
Hollywood kind of stuck their fingers at the Nazis, Like
the Nazis were hesitant to accept any movies, and increasingly
in late thirties just stopped accepting movies with Jewish actors
in them. So they would lie about they would just
they would just change the name on the credits so
that like the Nazis wouldn't notice that they'd snuck Jewish
people into their movies. So there's a little bit of
that going on. It's not all one. Yeah, but you

(32:26):
also hired a guy and said, like your life, I
don't know how good you feel about this marriage, visa,
your job, but um, we'd like to make some more money. Yeah,
so and you can send her off wherever you want.
I know where, Yeah, I know where she should go.
Yeah that's horrible. Oh, it's terrible. So for a while

(32:47):
thirty seven profits came back up. The film ministry recovered
there was more money coming in. You're hiring Nazis. Yeah,
you're hiring Nazis. It worked out for a little while,
but then on November ninth and tenth, ninety eight, still
Knocked happened. This was followed by a corresponding surge in
official German anti semitism. What happened Chrystal knocked? I don't
know what that is? The Night of Broken Glass, I'm sorry.

(33:09):
It was basically a night where sort of the Nazis
was the first big massive public all across Germany, like
pogram against the Jews where synagogues were burnt. Jewish businesses
were like that. It's called the night of broken Glass
because so many Jewish businesses had their windows shattered that
it was just glass. They did like an at home blitzkrieg. Yeah,
exactly on on the German Jewish people, and a lot

(33:30):
of people were murdered during Krystal knock. It's a one
of those marks where things about. So after this happens,
there's a surge in official anti semitism um. Two weeks
after Krystal knocked, Darren Griff that Nazi newspaper prints and
article which is titled one third of Hollywood Stars or Jews,
and it listed like dozens and dozens of Jewish film

(33:52):
industry people. One day after the attack listed that. Yeah,
and one day after the attack list that, the German
Propaganda Ministry publishes a black list with the names of
sixty Hollywood stars on it. They announced that if anyone
on the list is in any American film, that film
will not be allowed to enter Germany. Not everyone on
the list was Jewish. Ernest Hemmingway made it on there,

(34:15):
so did Bing Crosby. So this is the list you
want to be on, So good for bing Crosby. And yeah,
I mean I hear. I thought he was just on
the list of beating the ship out of his kids.
He beat the ship out of his kids, and the
Nazis didn't like him. So when some you lose someone,
was it was he old blue Eyes? Or is that

(34:36):
someone else? You're right, you're right? What do they call
bing Crosby? Um? Please stop? Dad? White Christmas is a
fun film for the whole family. Yeah, don't pay too
much attention to the fact that none of the black
actors have speaking roles. There you go and pay attention

(34:57):
to the tree. It's you watched that movie again as
an adult and you notice some troubling things. That sucks too,
because like there's a lot of the movie that's yeah,
really fun musical scene, you know, yeah, yeah, but man
those train scenes where it's like, oh, oh, right, Jim
Crow is still a thing, right, yeah, Okay, So we're

(35:20):
hearing that Bing Crosby's nickname was old Growner, which I
don't approve of the old Growner. Well, right or wrong,
I'm in here's the bottom line. Everyone needs to go
watch Will Farrell and John c Radley's recreation of the
David Bowie being Crosby Christmas Special. It is perfect. I've

(35:40):
never even heard of this. Well, you saw that. You've
seen the David Bowie being crossed Christmas? Is that a
real thing? Yes? Man? What was he happening in Hollywood
at that seat? Is that bing? Crosby is in London
visiting his cousin or something like that, and there's a
knock at the door and it's David Bowie and he says, oh,
you must be the cousin from overseas. He was like,
well or wrong, i'men And then he comes into his

(36:03):
house and then they sing Drummer Boy together, which I'm
sure you've either heard, oh I have heard that it's
a Christmas special. So shot for shot, moment for moment,
Will Ferrell and John c Riley recreated that Christmas Special.
What a weird thing. Beautiful. Okay, this is a lot
of information for me to take in right now. I'm

(36:25):
gonna have to pack that one away for later so
we can finish this. So the Nazis put together this
blacklist of you know, if any actor on this list
is in a movie, it cannot come into German and
they didn't say they were just choose. There's just people
we don't These are people we don't like a lighting.
A lot of them are Jews, but they obviously on
there because he went to the Spanish American War and

(36:45):
was big not fan of fascists for himself. But you know,
right right now. Another weird factor that complicates events was
the fact that companies doing business in Germany couldn't take
cash they made out of Germany. Um Paramount and twentieth
Century Fox just invested the money they made in Germany
and local cameraman in film stock and would record Nazi
rallies and stuff and then would sell that footage to

(37:06):
the rest of the world. And that's how they made
a profit. Kind of laundered it. Yeah, yeah, it was.
It was like it was back out saying, but yeah,
you had to do something. You couldn't take the money
directly out of it, right. MGM found a different tactic.
And I'm going to read another quote from the collaboration.
In December nineteen thirty eight, one month after Christal knocked,
MGM discovered a way to export its profits more effectively.

(37:28):
An American Trade commissioner explained the process MGM first loaned
the money to certain German firms where credit was badly needed.
MGM then received bonds in exchange for the loan, and
finally sold these bonds abroad at a loss of around
which was a substantial approvement over previous losses. There was
just one catch. Do you want to guess what the catches?
You want to guess what these firms are doing funding

(37:50):
the Nazis? I don't know. The firms in question, the
American Trade Commissioner said, are connected with the armament industry,
especially in the Sue Dayton territory or Austria. In other words,
the largest American motion picture company helped to finance the
German war machine. Jesus, that's how they're getting their money
out of Germany, loaning money to the people making German guns.

(38:12):
That's not Hollywood, no man, it's dark. Um. Do you
remember gamer Gate? Yes? Yeah, I'm assume most people listening
remember gamer Gate. If if you spend a lot of
time reading the complaints that supporters of that movement made,
you ran into the idea that film criticism, or that
criticism of any kind was bad, that critics shouldn't point

(38:33):
out problems in games or flaws or troubling trends that
these are in lematic of that they should instead just
describe what happens in the game directly. They would have
agreed with Joseph Gebbel's because at the end of nineteen
thirty six he made film criticism illegal in Germany and
mandated film description instead. Here's an excerpt from one of
those reviews. The American film Honolulu is full of humorous ideas,

(38:56):
refreshingly fast paced, and contains dance sequences, catching me and
gags about mistaken identity. A very pleasant entertainment. It is
gratifying that it is able to bring harmless amusement to
these serious times. That sounds like one of my pitches
when I'm not trying to sell something. Yeah, there are
things that happened that people find funny. There are mistaken
identities in the movie. Now, Technicolor presented an issue for

(39:21):
the Nazis uh, and that's actually presented an issue for
racists everywhere because when Technicolor came out, Hollywood realized, like,
white people look boring, So let's start casting people who
aren't white in our movies because it's exciting because now
we can actually have people with different skin tones and

(39:41):
it will register. And so people who are not white
sore in representation in Hollywood when technicolor becomes a thing,
and the Nazis do not like this. So this is
a big issue for the Nazis that like technicolor means
that people who aren't white are increasingly characters. They want
one tone, they want one tone. That's kind of the

(40:02):
whole thing with the Nazis. So we're going to get
into how this has an impact on you know, this
supposed collaboration. But first ads, you know, you all know
the game. It's adds. Listen and we're back and we're
talking about technicolor and the rash of non white characters
it brought to Hollywood, which was great for actors, movies,

(40:25):
and art. As a concept in human history, not welcome
by Nazis, not welcome by Nazis. They were not a
big fan of this. A good example is the movie Ramona.
In this movie, an Indian chief named Alessandro rescues a
white woman stuck in a tree. They fall in love,
but it's quickly revealed that Ramona's mom isn't her real mom,
and that her actual mom was an Indian squaw, so
it wasn't actually race mixing, but she was part Indian.

(40:49):
But even this was too much for the Nazis. Yeah, yeah,
well they're not white people, yeah, exactly, and they're in
a movie, that's what which were they though? Was this
one of those deals for Hollywood? I'm sure it was, right,
like it's fucking thirty years later, John Wayne would play
Gang of Scotts. Now. Thanks to the German love of

(41:10):
Karl May, particularly Hitler's love of Karl May, Ramona was
allowed to play Karl May was a German. He wrote
books about the wild West that had hit was Hitler's
favorite thing in the world. We have a whole episode
about it. But so this movie was allowed to play
because the Nazis kind of had a thing about Native Americans.
But a movie they banned was The Gypsy Princess, which

(41:31):
portrayed the love of a white man for a Gypsy woman.
It was an explicitly anti racist and pro mixed marriage movie,
which is pretty ballsy from the mid thirties, but of course,
you know the Nazi Well, actually, weirdly enough, this movie
didn't make it into Germany and past the sensors at
least for a while, like they caught it after it
had already been released. Erlan thinks that this was got

(41:52):
through because the sensors were basically they had hit a
point in censorship in Germany where they were just looking
at the casts and scanning from mentions of the Nazi Party,
and if the cast was okay and there was no
mention in the Nazi Party, a lot of stuff slipped through.
So that is important some movies because like this movie
that's pro mixed marriage runs a Nazi Germany for a
little while, so it's not a one sided picture. Although

(42:15):
I don't think the people who made the Gypsy Princess
Number one, that's a pretty racist title today. Um, you
have to think of things in their timeline. Someone in
the mid thirties making a movie that says mixed marriage
is good, that's that's brave at the time. Yeah, But
I don't think they were explicitly trying to change opinions
in Nazi Germany. They were trying to change opinions in America,
and it just so happened that the movie slipped through.

(42:38):
A Few movies did get into Germany that like included
racial things that the Nazis were against and there were
even some moments in various movies where veiled critiques of
Nazi policies made it past the censors. This stuff, however,
had a negligible impact on the German populace because it
was easy to ignore. This would not have been the
case with a proposed movie based off of Sinclair Lewis's
book It Can't Happen Here, which you've definitely seen some

(43:00):
quotes and selections from It Can Have It Here spread
on Twitter recently as a result of certain things in
modern American politics. It's a very famous book, and it's
worth noting that Sinclair's wife was a woman named Dorothy Thompson.
She is the female journalist who I end our episode
on the non Nazi Bastards behind Hitler with one of
her quotes. She had actually interviewed Hitler back in Berlin

(43:20):
before he reached total power, and had written very brutal
things about him. Now, in fairness, she didn't She considered
his political career doomed to failure. She never thought he
was going to become dictator, but once he did, she
dedicated herself to tearing him apart in the international press.
She was kicked out of Germany and nineteen thirty four
and became one of Hitler's most strident pre war critics.

(43:41):
The collaboration quotes one line in particular from her pre
Dictator interview with Hitler, and I think it's worth reading
out here. So this is Dorothy Thompson talking about Hitler.
If you want to gauge the strength of the Hitler movement,
imagine that in America, an order with the tongue of
the late Mr Bryan, Williams Jennings Bryan and the histrionic
power of Amy McPherson who I don't know who, that is,
combined with the publicity gifts of Edward Burnet's and Ivy Lee,

(44:03):
should manage to unite all the farmers with all the
white color unemployed, all the people with salaries under three
thousand a year who have lost their savings and bank
collapses in the stock market, and they're being pressed for
payments on the ice box and the radio, the louder
evangelical preachers, the American Legion, the d A R, the
Ku Klux Klan, the w C t U, Matthew Wall,
Senator Bora, and Henry Ford. Imagine that and you will

(44:23):
have some idea of what the Hitler movement in Germany means.
So this is the kind of writer that Dorothy Thompson is,
and she becomes quite famous as an anti Hitler activist.
This drives her husband, Sinclair Lewis, crazy, and he writes
it Can't Happen Here so that he can be seen
as a more prominent anti Hitler voice than his wife.
I mean that's one version of Iran sharpening, I guess.

(44:46):
I mean, yeah, we got a good piece of anti
fascist literature out of it. That's useful, but it's done
in the vein. And I'll show this broad Yeah, the
most misogynistic piece of anti Nazi propaty ever ever CONCEIVEE
What inspired you to write this life and allow a
woman to be perceived as better than me? My wife's
too famous, I'm Sinclair Lewis. Yeah. So he wrote it

(45:08):
Can't Happen Here, and it sold very well, but that
was still just a couple of hundred thousand copies. So
when Hollywood starts talking about maybe adapting it to a film,
he gets excited because this means his book is going
to be shared to away wider audience. Millions of people
might get these ideas and he does seem to genuinely
want to try to warn Americans about the danger of fascism.
Now the mill the movie got a script that a

(45:29):
lot of people think was a fantastic script. Lewis didn't
write it, somebody else adapted it. It's apparently got a
very good script, and it includes lines like this from
the main character, a guy named Dremus, who is a
journalist who initially falls for the American fascist candidate and
then later winds up fighting against him. Quote, all us
lazy minded daremus as are responsible. I used to think

(45:49):
that wars and depressions were brought on by diplomats and bankers.
They were brought on by US liberals because we did
nothing to stop them. So it's like there's some fucking
potent ship screen, right. The only thing worse than evil
is the proposed stampine. Let it happen exactly. So this
is set to be a pretty great anti Nazi movie,
pretty bold movie, but it worries some people. One of

(46:12):
those people is a guy named William finnsch Riber, who
is the chair of the film Committee for the Central
Conference of American Rabbis. He writes to Mayor of MGM
about why they shouldn't go through with producing this movie. Quote.
I have considered the problem at great length, and I
am of the opinion that a film version of that story,
howsoever interpreted and directed, will have anything but a beneficial
effect upon the Jewish problem. More and more, I am

(46:34):
convinced that during these highly critical days for the Jewish
people here and elsewhere, we ought not to thrust the
jew and his problems too much into the limelight. I
am quite sure that any interpretation of the story made
by your film will be forceful and certainly not seemingly
detrimental to the Jewish cause. But there are times when
to say nothing is better than to say something favorable.
So this is not an ill considered thing. This guy

(46:56):
is thinking about it, and you can't. You know, you've
got to think about like happened with that the Rothchild movie,
Like this is what this guy is worried about, and
it's it's a it's a legitimate worry. I happen to
think it would have been better for history if the
movie had been made, but it was not. It was
canceled on February six, day before Valentine's The day before

(47:17):
Valentine's Day, Yeah, that's no love. Sinclair Lewis was not
happy about this. He said, the hell am I supposed
to beat this woman? That's his quote. You guys are
really fucking my marriage here, No gotta, I'm even angrier
at my wife. No, he actually said something poign and profound.

(47:43):
What we've been talking about today. The world today is
full of fascist propaganda, which definitely was cover that this episode.
The Germans are making one pro fascist film after another,
designed to show that fascism is superior to liberal democracy.
But Mr Hayes actually says that a film cannot be
made showing the horrors of fascist and extolling the advantages
of liberal democracy because Hitler and Mussolini might ban other

(48:04):
Hollywood films from their countries. If yep, democracy is certainly
on the defensive when two European dictators, without opening their
mouths or knowing anything about the issue, can shut down
an American film. I wrote, it can't happen here, but
I begin to think it certainly does. It certainly can
good quote? Yeah, good quote. He's saying it can. It

(48:25):
can be influenced here. Yeah. Hitler's not even saying canceled
this movie. We just know that it will fuck things up,
so we're canceling it because we're scared. Which again, the
people who attack been Irwan for saying this is a
collaboration will say, well, the Nazis didn't even say anything
about a movie like this. Rwan's argument is that basically
the Nazis had already trained Hollywood so well that they

(48:47):
didn't need to actively. Exactly, the mouse had touched the
cheese enough times, exactly, thank you for bringing mice into
this again. Always yeah, it's important if they're not here,
they're in that damn movie theater because the Nazis let
them loose. Right, It always ties back to Nazis. So now.
The late nineteen thirties in general seemed to show a
real shift in how Hollywood censorship occurred. Rather than having Jisling,

(49:10):
who was the German censor who's in in Los Angeles,
whether having him review movies and suggest changes, studio executives
started cutting films as they made them, simply because they
knew what the Germans wouldn't accept. I want that money,
damn right, then fund their war machine and then get
our money back a loss, which is still pretty good,
still pretty good. I don't want to think too much

(49:32):
about that. What the money is buying? That's the Russians problems.
Hey is that your new wife? Oh boy? Yeah. So
a Warner Brothers movie about the Drive us a fair
Ever heard of the Drives affair? H Is that Mr
Holland's opus? No, it's a It's one of the most
famous moments in the history of anti Semitism. Alfred Dright

(49:52):
I think Alfred was his first name. Drivers was definitely
his last name. He was a Jewish French military officer
pre before World War One who was a key used
of selling military secrets I think to the Germans um
and he was likely innocent, but there was a big
show trial about it. It's a big because like anti Semitism,
French anti Semitism played a huge role in it, and
it was a very famous thing at this point in

(50:13):
history because it was not all that distant. It was
anyone on the street probably would have known the broad
detailed and the amount of time that news stories would
stay in our conscious then. So Warner Brothers makes a
movie about the dry Fist affair, which is again one
of the most important moments in the history of anti Semitism.
The movie does not contain the word Jew or any
references to not once. Yeah, they cut them all out.

(50:35):
Warner Brothers cut Warner executives cut those out before they
even showed it to the Germans because they knew, they
knew that wouldn't be okay. The Nazis were very aware
of how effective they had been, and being Nazis, they
pushed for even more control over gives them an inch,
that's what Nazis do. On April first, ninety seven April falls.

(50:55):
But not actually because just they just warned sixty people
involved in a movie called The Road Back, which was
a sequel to All Quiet on the Rest and Front,
that if they were in that movie, if the movie
got made, Germany would ban any future movies any member
of the cast worked on in the future, like everyone
in that cast would be black bald from being in
a movie. Exactly exactly, so the studio made twenty one

(51:20):
cuts to The road Back in a desperate attempt to
please Jistling in the Germans. Rather than the movie had
originally criticized German militarism, and they changed the film to
just criticize all militarism anywhere in the world, like it's
not happening. Germans happy anyway, No, and it did not.
Jiling banned Universal from working in Germany and they had
to pull out of the country even after they made

(51:42):
twenty one cuts to the film. Right, yeah, Now, there
were several attempts in the late thirties to make The
Mad Dog of Europe, which was that movie we talked
about earlier in other Nazi movies, but they were all defeated.
Uh F Scott's. Fitzgerald actually helped write a script for
a nihilistic movie about soldiers in post war Germany titled
Three Comrades that would had one of its main characters
murdered by Nazis. At one point in the script, a

(52:04):
character was supposed to shout, there's more to fight for,
better than food, better than peace, democracy, freedom, a new Germany.
Isn't that worth fighting for? But MGM executives deleted all
references to Nazis and democracy from the final film. I
felt like that we cut democracy right out of that M. No,
that's not going to sell, not in Germany. Three Comrades
also had included a scene where a sympathetic character identifies

(52:26):
as Jewish and expresses a deep love of Germany and
a faith that their home country will protect them. MGM
cut that two when they showed just slaying the film
for the first time. He loved it. How could he not.
The film had basically been made for his specific tastes. Yeah,
and that's also the version they released here. They didn't
do like, yeah, continental versions. Yeah, I mean they would
do slightly different versions, but those things were cut out

(52:48):
in the American version too, because again they're cutting the
stuff before they even send it to the sensor. As
late as nineteen forty, movies that were thought to inflame
German sentiment were banned or heavily edited to remove all
references to Hitler and Jews. The first movie that might
be described as anti Nazi wasn't released until May nineteen
thirty nine. It was called Confessions of a Nazi Spy
and it was about an actual Nazi spying ring that

(53:10):
had been busted in the East Coast of the United
States not that long before. Who did huh Nazis No no, no, no,
I mean who released it? Oh geez uh. I don't
think it was made by one of the studios. Uh, yeah,
I would guess that was involved in Germany at the time.
Got made but it wasn't. It wasn't even a big
deal because number one, it was talking about an actual

(53:30):
historic thing that had happened, and number two, it still
pulled all of its punches. They were moved. Any sort
of references to Jewish people or Nazi hatred of Jewish people, like,
none of that made it into the final cut, and
in fact, from what we can tell, the Nazis actually
kind of like this movie. Um Joseph Gebel's in particular,
was thrilled to see an actor playing him in the film.

(53:52):
The Gebel's in the movie Confessions of a Nazi Spy
said this, there is to be a slight change in
our methods from now on. National socialism in the United
States stressed itself in the American flag and must appear
to be a defensive Americanism. But at the same time
our aim must always beat it as credit conditions there
in the United States, and in this way and make
life in Germany admired and wished for, and the ensuing
chaos we will be able to take control. So that's

(54:13):
Joseph Gebbel's in the movie. He only had two minutes
on screen in this film, but he he loved it. Gebels.
The actual Gebels wrote in his diary, I myself play
a main role, and not even a particularly unpleasant one,
But I do not consider the film dangerous. Otherwise it
arouses fear in our enemies rather than anger and hate.
So the one movie pre World War Two that could

(54:34):
almost be considered anti Nazi, the Nazis think makes them
look cool. Yeah that's right. Yeah, you're damn right. We will. Yeah,
So as friendly as Hollywood seemed in nineteen thirty nine
to the Nazis, there was at least one major anti
Nazi production underway. The Great Dictator Charlie Chaplin, had started
production in nineteen thirty eight. Now Hitler knew about some

(54:58):
of this, and he knew that they were contin uwing
attempts to make anti Nazi pictures. He could kind of
see the winds changing. So on January nineteen thirty nine,
he gave an infamous speech. One quote from it is
very well known to students of the Holocaust, as it's
often seen as some of the first evidence that Hitler
was planning genocide. He said, quote, if international finance, jewelry
inside or outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations

(55:20):
once more into a world war. The result will not
be the Bolshevization of the Earth and thereby the victory
of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
What I didn't realize until I read Erlin's book is
that later in the same speech, Hitler also said this
and the announcement of American film companies of their intention
to produce anti Nazi, i e. Anti German films will
only lead our German producers creating anti Semitic films in

(55:43):
the future, which you know they did. Yeah. So MGM
was the first of the big studios to actually make
a straight up anti Nazi film. It was called The
Moral Storm and it was which is the more. Also
had the guy whose wife got sent off to Yeah
yeah uh uh this year did and The Mortal Storm
was released in mid nineteen forty, So that's the first

(56:06):
actual anti Nazi film that's made. Yeah. MGM was banned
in Germany in August nineteen forty. Paramount followed one month
later on September twelfth, nineteen forty. And that is when
this collaboration officially ends. In September of nineteen forty. So
up until that point, Hollywood is doing their damnedest to

(56:26):
work with the Nazis now. As I stayed it at
the top of this podcast, the anti Nazi films, newsreels,
and cartoons from World War Two are still famous today.
But the truth is that collaboration or not, the American
film industry did not turn on the Nazis until the
war they brought to Europe created box office receipts. The
start of World War Two reduced foreign revenue by half
for Hollywood, and in the end, that's what it took

(56:47):
to make Hollywood sour on the Nazis. Well one, not
Germany might be gone, yeah right, nobody's there's watching movies.
But also they control Europe now, so none of our
movies are allowed in it. France, whatever, pause that we're
fighting a war, so the people in our own country
want to see movies where we're anti Nazi. Well, we
weren't fighting because we get into it into the December

(57:11):
seven December seven one. But it is important to note
that like Germans or like sorry that Hollywood, all the
stuff they're famous for, the anti fascist stuff they're famous for,
happened after there was no chance of making another Diamond Germany.
You know, with the exception of one Charles mother fucking Chaplain.

(57:33):
So Charlie was not a fan of the Nazis, and
the Nazis hated Charlie Chaplin because they were sure he
was Jewish, even though he absolutely was not. One Nazi paper,
the guy feels Jewish, man, he feels it. Look at him,
Look at him. Come on, he looks just like Hitler.
He's got to Jewish. I'm not I'm not watching this stuff.

(57:54):
One Nazi paper called him quote a disgusting Jewish acrobat,
which Acre off. Now. Chaplin had visited Berlin last in
nineteen thirty one as part of a publicity tour for
his movie City Lights, and the Nazi press had basically
gone to war with him. They branded him as a
quote anti German warmonger and also an American film jew.

(58:18):
American film Jew. Yeah. Video of Chaplain in Berlin was
also used, like American film Jew. He's an American film Jew.
I don't care. It might say he's not keeping, but
I'm telling you American film Jew. Video of Chaplain in
Berlin during this visit was also used in that propaganda
flick The Eternal Jew, which we talked about earlier. The

(58:40):
narrator in that scene says, it cannot be denied that
one part of the German people enthusiastically applaud the foreign
Jews who come to Germany the deadly foes of their race.
During a shot of a crowd cheering Chaplain, which again,
Charlie Chaplin was not Jewish. They never got that through
their heads, not not once. Yeah. When Chaplin decided to
make The Great Dictator, he used his own money to
fill moment because no studio would agree to make this movie,

(59:03):
he used his own production house. Thus, bypassing the studios
entire apocalypse. Now, yeah, exactly, and Chaplin actually risked getting
all of Hollywood films banned in Germany for doing this
work because he started in nineteen thirty eight. Now, unfortunately,
the film wasn't finished until because Chaplin was a perfectionist.
Here's an exerpt from his autobiography where he talks about

(59:23):
sort of the how people's attitudes changed during the process
of him trying to make this. Halfway through making The
Great Dictator, I began receiving alarming messages from United artists.
They had been advised by the Hayes office that I
would run into censorship trouble. Also, the English office was
very concerned about an anti Hitler picture and doubted whether
it could be shown in Britain. But I was determined
to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at. More

(59:45):
worrying letters came from the New York Office imploring me
not to make the film, declaring it that it would
never be showed in England or America. But I was
determined to make it, even if I had to hire
halls myself to show it. Before I had finished The Dictator,
England declared war on the Nazis. Then suddenly the Holocaust again,
the breakthrough in Belgium, the collapse of the Imagine Old Line,
the stark and ghastly fact of Dunkirk, and France was occupied.

(01:00:06):
The news was growing gloomier. England was fighting with her
back to the wall. Now our New York office was
wiring frantically, hurry up with your film. Everyone is waiting
for it. So it's a tale of three acts in
that one quote, right, yeah, yeah. Unlike most of our episodes,
this one ends with a hero. The Great Dictator was
not the first anti Nazi movie to come out of Hollywood.

(01:00:27):
It was the second or the third depending on your
but it was the first good anti Nazi movie to
come out of Hollywood, and it was also singular among
it was the first movie to depict violence towards in
the murder of Jews by the Nazis. Yeah, so thank you,
Charlie Chaplin, no ship man, Yeah, good guy hell yeah. Yeah.
And he had to do it all himself. He was

(01:00:48):
literally like, I'll create this, this has to be done,
and there is some evidence that he regretted it later.
There must be laughed, hit, there must be laughed at,
which he came to question that later in life, just
because of how horrible the Holocaust was. He wondered, like,
was it but we need to person that's what he
thought before. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, and I

(01:01:11):
I don't think he was wrong. Like Keyans and Nuck
are definitely the guys who are rightist in this. They're
the two people who fucking tried. Yeah everyone else. You know,
you can either say whether or not you think it's
a collaboration. But Hollywood certainly fell down on their job
to sort of defend the ideals of the society they
sent them to until until the tea was gone, not them. Yep, yep,

(01:01:35):
that's exactly right. They sucked the teat until the tea
was gone. That's fucked up, man. Yeah, and just for
money for money. But also, and you know, I'm not
trying to put any sort of like you have to
care because of who you are. I mean, everybody's entitled

(01:01:57):
to their own opinion and viewpoint. But it's just hard
for me. And I'll say a full disclosure, I'm not Jewish.
I'm fine with someday being an American film hyphen jew.
But the idea that these these companies, these production companies,
these studios are being run by people who are Jewish,

(01:02:17):
and then they keep putting money over the persecution that
they I have a hard time believing they weren't aware of.
And it's again, I tried to make sure I presented
there there were legitimate reasons for the Jewish community to
worry that addressing the issue at all would make things worse.
I get that, but some of it doesn't, not all,
and not in all every case we've we've gone over. Yeah,

(01:02:38):
you don't have to keep profiting from the Nazis, right,
you could not. You could decide we shouldn't make a movie, right,
now because it will inflame things. But we're not going
to get movies and nobody did that. They're a principle
Morald stand could have been taken and it was not
other than by Zanuck of twentieth century and who also
did business in Germany. So he's all made money off

(01:03:00):
the Nazis and Chaplain who legitimately did not try too,
who was pretty stridently anti Nazi from day zero. Let
me ask you this and you can say it past.
We're not getting into that on this episode, Dan, But
how far are we from major Hollywood studios that directly
attack our current I mean like a cartoon about but

(01:03:22):
I mean like a big movie The Post Try The
Post did it without doing it. I don't think it
can be that far right. I don't think so um,
nor that I think that there's anybody who doesn't want to.
I'm not saying that. I don't think it's a particularly
will be a particularly brave thing to do in our
current cultural climate because there's so much so many people

(01:03:43):
are making fun of the president right now. What scares
me more is China, which not to say not to
compare the Chinese government to the Nazi government, because there's
no comparing the modern Chinese to the Nazis. But you
have a case where a government does have a troubling
human rights record is doing really bad. They don't even
exactly and they've locked a million weager Muslims up in

(01:04:03):
one of their areas. Probably you don't know if there's
really a million person concentration camp in China, but there's
some evidence that that's being done, and Erik Prince is involved.
But we do know that this is a government with
a troubling history of human rights abuse. And Hollywood also
is totally dependent upon China, like it is a huge deal.
So my question is, if something in the future happens

(01:04:25):
where the Chinese government is caught doing something terrible, does
Hollywood blacklist any mentioned from that out of the knowledge
that it will cut out the Chinese market um? And
also would the Chinese government be willing to cut Hollywood
entirely out of China in order to make that kind
of statement. We don't know what would happen, but I
will say based on this, I don't expect any more

(01:04:46):
courage out of the modern studio heads in Hollywood then
we got out of the ones in the thirties. Yeah,
I don't either, so damn dude. And then the war
started and everybody wanted to make their anti yeah, and
then and then Mickey Mouse is fighting Hitler as opposed
to entertaining him. Yeah, yeah, huh, yep, this is crazy,

(01:05:09):
all right, Daniel, you want to plug some plug doubles? Sure.
I'd like to let everybody know if you go to
Daniel van Kirk dot com or you follow me on
any social media platform where I'm at Daniel van Kirk,
I might be coming to your area. The first leg
of my Together tour starts in Houston and then heads
over to Austin, Dallas, Lafayette and Baton Rouge, So, Texas,

(01:05:30):
and Louisiana. And that's just the first leg. I'm also
going to be doing some more Southeast stuff than the
Northeast and the Midwest and keep going around, so check
for those legs to be added. You can do all
that at Daniel van Kirk dot com or follow me
at Daniel van Kirk and listen to the podcast that
I do. Well you say hello to my old hometown
Dallas for me, I will. I don't go back there
in the summer ever. You don't want to swim through it. No, No,

(01:05:53):
I don't know. That's why I moved to Los Angeles
so I don't have to live through another Yeah. No,
it's a humidity. Yeah, you're yeah, swimming through it as right,
it's your everyone lives inside an armpit for seven months. Yeah. So,
I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at
I right, okay, just two letters. You can find my
book on Amazon, A Brief History of Vice. You can

(01:06:15):
find this podcast and all of the sources for this
episode and including Ben's wonderful book The Collaboration, on our
website Behind the Bastards dot com. You can also find
us on Twitter and Instagram at at bastards pod. So like,
subscribe and rate, and more than anything, just buy a
bunch of t shirts. Buy a bunch of T shirts
from t public dot com slash behind the Bastards. I

(01:06:36):
love about