The Third Reich on Screen, 1929-2015

For over eighty years, we've seen the many faces of the Third Reich on screen, in documentaries, newsreels, and especially fictional stories ranging from comedies and musicals to war films, horror and science fiction (and even westerns!); a great many of these comment as much on the filmmakers and the nation the film was made as much as they do Nazism itself. Hollywood and other filmmakers would use the image of the brutal Nazi as an all-purpose villain in escapist adventures set during and after the war, but just as often use him to attack the evil he symbolized. Through studio files, Production Code office correspondence, and the works of noted historians and film critics, I'll reveal many of the behind-the-scenes machinations in the making of these films, whether produced in Hollywood, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or the Eastern Block nations. Also included are concise biographies of several military and political figures who are the subject of several productions using Nazi characters, from Adolf Hitler to Adolf Eichmann, and compare how the cinema version differs from real-life. But especially, you'll see how the cinematic world viewed these killers in their various guises and how they depicted the ultimate evil to befall the twentieth century from its inception to the present day.