Day 3 – Sunday, March 24

Hitler's Hit Parade. Oliver Axer & Susanne Benze. Germany. 1968. 75 mins. Listed as no dialogue, but German lyrics and occasional speech with English subtitles. FIFA link
Taken from pre-war and World War II German film news clips, musical shows, personal family films, and both live action and animated propaganda issued by the government, this film shows the progression of the Nazi ideology as it was gradually disseminated into German culture. The "wholesomeness" of German social norms (love of family, fresh air, sports for physical fitness, togetherness in a social group) is contrasted only subtly at first with "foreign elements that need to be 'retrained'..." that are somehow "other" but not quite defined at first. The shift is gradual, and what starts out as 1930's and 40's happy love duets and kitschy outdoor folk scenes that seem mere German versions of American and British productions slowly take on a darker tone. As Germany goes to war, reporting bad people to the Gestapo (implicitly Jews by their names on their apartment doors) is just a stepping stone to outright prohibitions on Jews, and the beginning of "deportations". As the war effort starts to result in more and more injured soldiers, the shift can be seen to how wondrous German medicine and science is in repairing broken bodies and replacing missing limbs with artificial ones, permitting life and love to go on. The juxtaposing of advertisements for the German Rail Network about how "millions use its services annually" with clips of masses of Jews being loaded into the cattle car trains for the concentration camps are especially ironic. Gradually more of the absurdist propaganda filters in, such as the "peaceful scenes in the Warsaw Ghetto" (prior to liquidation), and "happy" concertgoers and garment factory workers at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The final segment is "Germany awakens which documents the Allied forces having Germans tour the camps to see first-hand what was going on. The shift is gradual, and what starts out as 1930's and 40's happy love duets and kitschy outdoor folk scenes slowly takes on a darker tone.