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Hollywood's Creepy Love Affair With Adolf Hitler, in Explosive New Detail
Uncovered: new evidence of Jewish movie moguls' extensive collaboration with Nazis in the 1930s
Hollywood's Unknown Rescuer
The Rescuer
Adolf Hitler loved American movies. Every night at about 9:00, after the Führer had tired out his listeners with his hours-long monologues, he would lead his dinner guests to his private screening room. The lights would go down, and Hitler would fall silent, probably for the first time that day. He laughed heartily at his favorites Laurel and Hardy and Mickey Mouse, and he adored Greta Garbo: Camille brought tears to the Führer's eyes. Tarzan, on the other hand, he thought was silly.
As it turns out, Hitler's love for American movies was reciprocated by Hollywood. A forthcoming book by the young historian Ben Urwand, to be published by Harvard University Press in October, presents explosive new evidence about the shocking extent of the partnership between the Nazis and major Hollywood producers. Urwand, a former indie rock musician and currently a member of Harvard's prestigious Society of Fellows, takes the subject personally: His parents were Jewish refugees from Egypt and Hungary. Digging through archives in Berlin and Washington, D.C., he has unearthed proof that Hollywood worked together with the Nazis much more closely than we ever imagined.
Urwand has titled his riveting book The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact With Hitler, and as you turn its pages you realize with dismay that collaboration is the only fitting word for the relationship between Hitler and Hollywood in the 1930s. Using new archival discoveries, Urwand alleges that some of the Hollywood studio heads, nearly all of whom were Jewish, cast their lot with Hitler almost from the moment he took power, and that they did so eagerly—not reluctantly. What they wanted was access to German audiences. What Hitler wanted was the ability to shape the content of Hollywood movies—and he got it. During the '30s, Georg Gyssling, Hitler's consul in Los Angeles, was invited to preview films before they were released. If Gyssling objected to any part of a movie—and he frequently did—the offending scenes were cut. As a result, the Nazis had total veto power over the content of Hollywood movies.
What is shocking and new about Urwand's account is its blow-by-blow description of Hollywood executives tailoring their product to meet the demands of the Nazi regime. While Hollywood's relations with the Nazis is not a new subject, the inclination of previous historians like Thomas Doherty, author of Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939, who did not have access to the documents that Urwand has uncovered, has been to let the studio executives off the hook. Like most historians before Urwand, Doherty seconds Jack Warner's self-portrait as an ardent foe of the Nazis, who stopped doing business in Germany because he was appalled by the Nazis' treatment of Jews. But as Urwand alleges here, it wasn't Warner who rejected the Nazis; they rejected him: Hitler dumped Warner Bros. because the studio failed to make the substantial cuts demanded by his consul Gyssling to a movie called Captured!, set in a German-run camp for foreign POWs during World War I. By July 1934, Warner Bros. had been kicked out of Berlin, and the rest of the studios were running scared. Urwand details Hollywood distribution companies faced with having to fire half of their Jewish staff members in Germany and negotiating with the Nazis so that they could hang on to other half. In 1936, all Jews associated with the American film industry in Germany were forced to leave the country. Yet even after this, the studios eagerly kept up their profitable dealings with Hitler's regime.
Many dozens of Hollywood movies were imported into Nazi Germany each year, and they often did stunningly well at the box office. The American movies that the Nazis loved best were those that proclaimed the need for a strong leader. Nazi newspapers were ecstatic to see the "leader principle" illustrated in films like The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Mutiny on the Bounty, Our Daily Bread, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. They found in these blockbuster entertainments sound fascist political lessons leavened by humor—a light American touch that, Nazi reviewers lamented, German movies could never approach. (In 1939 10 Nazi newspaper editors—including the editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official Nazi party newspaper—were treated to a "good will tour" of the MGM studio.) No one was more wholesomely American than the warm-hearted, stammering Jimmy Stewart; but movies like Mr. Smith were welcomed in Germany because they showed that the democratic form of government was inefficient and corrupt.
A film that showed the advantages of democracy over fascism could never be made in Hollywood in the 1930s because of political pressure stemming from Hitler's Germany, whose market was simply too lucrative for the studios to ignore. In 1936 MGM planned to adapt for the screen Sinclair Lewis' novel about a fascist takeover of America, It Can't Happen Here. When Louis B. Mayer called off the project shortly after it started production, the Nazis announced their pleasure with Mayer's decision. Mayer was first tipped off to the danger of making It Can't Happen Here by Will Hays. The Hays Office, Hollywood's censorship bureau, enforced its Movie Production Code "to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized" (as the code put it). Hays admitted that It Can't Happen Here didn't offend according any standards of decency, but he warned that certain foreign governments—i.e., Germany—would be upset by the film.
Even before the Nazis took power, Hollywood was buckling under to German demands. In 1932 a new German regulation, inspired in part by Nazi agitation, appeared: Film producers could have their permits to show their films in Germany revoked if they screened, anywhere in the world, movies whose effect was damaging to Germany's prestige. The intent was to curtail a flourishing genre: movies about World War I that portrayed German officers as scoundrels or sadists (and that often starred Erich von Stroheim, the Silesian Jewish genius who supplied his villainous acting roles with Teutonic growls, barks, and carpet-chewing mannerisms). When Hitler came to power a year later, he used the new law as a way to censor Hollywood movies: to control how they could depict Germans and Jews not only within Germany, but around the world.
Ironically, the man who set the pattern for German interference in American movie making was Carl Laemmle, Sr., head of Universal, who later heroically aided Jewish refugees from his native Germany (see Allison Hoffman's recent Tablet Magazine story). In 1930, Nazis had disrupted the German premiere of Universal's antiwar film All Quiet on the Western Front: Led by Goebbels, they set off stink bombs and let white mice loose in the theaters. After the Nazi riots, Laemmle, a Jew, put an ad in the German newspapers: "I yield to no one in my love for the Fatherland. The fact that I came to America as a boy and built my future in America has never for a moment caused any cessation of my love for the land of my birth." Laemmle agreed to make major cuts to All Quiet on the Western Front, not only for screenings in Germany, but worldwide. The picture was gutted—its savage attack on German militarism wound up on the cutting room floor. The same thing would happen later in the decade to MGM's Three Comrades, again in response to German demands. Other studio heads were less sympathetic than Laemmle to the plight of their fellow Jews, but they shared his wish to keep the German market safe for American movies. Laemmle's personal efforts to save Jews from the Nazis later on may well have been motivated by his guilt at doing the German government's bidding as the head of a major Hollywood studio.
Hollywood's policy of collaboration with the Nazis took more active forms as well. As Jews were systemically excluded from German life and barred from schools and professions, 20th Century Fox released The House of Rothschild (1934), starring George Arliss, the British actor who had earlier played Disraeli. The movie showed how a single Jewish family, headed by its greedy, mean-spirited patriarch Mayer Rothschild, managed to gain control over the finances of Europe and was even able to influence the decisions of governments about war and peace. It was a film that the Nazis might have commissioned themselves.
Continue reading: Five minutes for mass murder
David Mikics is the author, most recently, of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age. He lives in Brooklyn and Houston, where he is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English at the University of Houston.
Land for Peace in the Battle Over Millennia-Old Palestinian Farming Terraces
In the village of Battir, green ideals and cultural heritage override detailed plans for Israel's separation wall
Shameful. Another black eye for capitalistic greed.
I suppose that this may be a case of "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" for some–part of me included. For others–also, I guess, including part of me–, the truth had to be found and was (albeit hurtful) gladly found out.
As an obsessive film buff and particularly obsessed with films about WWII, I am truly horrified and disgusted.
Hollywood has always been a place where money trumps integrity. Urwand exposes the relationship that anyone who has studied the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood knows about. These moguls were the same who tried to burn Citizen Kane and then let HUAC run ragged over their finest artists.
To paraphrase; "It's all about the ratings".
I would have been surprised if Hollywood would not alter content for acceptance to profitability. They obviously still do. Our society has a very bad memory when it comes to our own history. Want to be upset more? Read America's Soul in the Balance.
The biggent shame is that our lack of memory leads to prove George Santiana's saying every day.
Strange to say, but however ignoble their behavior and however bereft of the moral urges that ought to have impelled the studio bosses to exert every possible effort on behalf of Jews and non-Jews threatened by Hitler's rise, this story does refute one dangerous canard started by the likes of Lindbergh and his ilk, and still in circulation today among the fringe–namely, that Jews, particularly those in positions of influence via the media, were belligerently plumping for war on behalf of their co-religionists in Germany before World War II. How very far from the truth that is, apparently; they didn't stand up for Jews at all, anywhere. Far from it, they were apparently trying to appease Hitler and his cronies, albeit on behalf of retaining profitable German box office, although commerce always has been a disincentive to war.
Fascinatingly, and perhaps not coincidentally, it was Jack Warner's stepdaughter, Joy Page, who portrayed the young refugee trying to escape the Nazis in Casablanca.
Just to document my claim, this is a quote from an Evelyn Waugh novel, no philosemite, that he puts in the mouth of a Jewish refugee after World War II. This passage is still cited today on white nationalist sites like Lew Rockwell's, and is even mentioned by mainstream commenters. It's apparently easy for them to forget that it's not actually a Jewish woman speaking, but rather a bigoted English author using the character as a dummy to parrot his own opinions:
"It is too simple to say that only the Nazis wanted war. These Communists wanted it too. It was the only way in which they could come to power. Many of my people wanted it, to be revenged on the Germans, to hasten the creation of the national state… Even good men thought their private honour would be satisfied by war. They could assert their manhood by killing and being killed. They would accept hardships in recompense for having been selfish and lazy. Danger justified privilege. I knew Italians – not very many perhaps – who felt this. Were there none in England?"
So, in Waugh's telling, Jews wanted World War II for revenge and to further their Zionist interests. And yet in truth, the men most in a position of power to influence public opinion, all but silenced any voices arguing in favor of a confrontational stance toward Germany.
I do not think Jewish producers in Hollywood in the 30′s cooperated with Nazi Germany propaganda restrictions just because they were greedy. I think some of them thought that if they had distribution in Germany they might be able to make Germany think better of Americans. Also, they felt pressured by the US government not to offend Nazi Germany. Notably, after he returned from being Ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph Kennedy read the riot act to Hollywood moguls not to offend the Nazi's.
Very few American Jews in the 1930′s felt comfortable in the USA. Certainly, the studio heads did not feel comfortable. Father Couglin was on the radio several times a week and the Dearborn Independent was distributed at Ford dealerships. They could not get money from CA banks, or even Chicago banks, but had to do everything through NYC banks; no one else would lend to them.
Throughout the USA, Jews could not get working capital loans for their businesses, even large corporations controlled by Jews could not get credit from major banks. A whole industry developed because banks would not lend to Jews — factoring and asset based lending began in the 1920′s because banks would not provide loans to Jewish owned firms. RCA and Sears were among the biggest firms in the country, but they could not sell their bonds to most insurance companies, since most insurance companies then would not buy bonds issued by firms headed by Jews. Goldman Sachs earned their reputation by securing financing for General Sarnoff and Julius Rosenwald.
Hollywood continued to be fearful of Anti-Semitism after the War. There's a review of "The Jazz Singer" remake in 1952 on imdb by anthonyrwaldman that explains it all. It's posted below.
Jazz Singer is one of a number of films made in the late 1940′s and 1950 about the Jewish experience in the United States. Other than Crossfire(1947) and Gentleman's Agreement(1947) which dealt with anti-semitism they usually had a musical-theatre background. These films included The Jolson Story(1946), Jolson Sings Again(1949), The Eddy Duchin Story(1951), The Eddie Cantor Story(1953),The Benny Goodman Story(1956) and Margorie Morningstar(1958). The leading actors in these "Jewish" films were always played by non-Jews. For example Larry Parks a non-Jew played Al Jolson and Gene Kelly played Noel Airman in Marjorie Morningstar. This casting was probably done to make the Jewish theme palpable to a mainly non-Jewish audience. The Jazz Singer(1952) is no
different. Danny Thomas was a devout Catholic and Peggy Lee was certainly not Jewish although she plays a non-practicing Jewess in the film. The clue to her background is when she attends the Golding's family meal before entering she says "I haven't been to a sader (passover service) since I left home".
The film is about a cantor's son who has just left the service after seeing action in Korea.His dilemma is whether to become a cantor, a family tradition or to be a
singer in musical theatre. His choice of theatre leads to an inevitable conflict with his father.
However, there is much more to this film than this. This film was made after the Rosenberg trial during the McCarthy whitchhunts and the Hollywood blacklist. Therefore in this film the Jews are shown as good loyal citizens and are quintessentialy American. The synagogue choir would rather play baseball than practice. The cantors friends also talk about baseball in fact one of them is a Major League umpire. The synagogue itself dates back to 1790 and George Washington is said to have visited. Therefore Jews are presented as part and parcel of American society. Nobody in this film has a Eastern European accent. Peggy Lee appeared in very few feature films. In this film you get to see her sing "Lover" and "Just One of
Those Things" wonderful. Danny Thomas is quite credible and he acts and sings the part very well.
The comedic routines could have been left out. Yes, the film is schmaltzy and sentimental but it is well worth seeing. I enjoyed it very much.
Imagine. Those were the same people who made racist films such as "Imitation of Life" and "Pinky," accusing other whites of being too inferior for the honor of their own European ancestry because of partial ancestry from an "inferior race," and denouncing them as "self-hating." What could be more "self-hating" or "passing" than those moguls who cheerfully stood by and did nothing while their people were being slaughtered.
This should not surprise anyone. Social psychologists allied with the Roosevelt administration were overtly and covertly copying Nazi methods of controlling the little guys who were held responsible for Nazism/fascism. They were all populists, and Jewish producers adapted to the reigning populism. On how American progressives appropriated Nazi and German methods of mind management see http://clarespark.com/2010/04/18/links-to-nazi-sykewar-american-style/. "Nazi sykewar American style."
Same old same old. Still going on today, but much much more sophisticated and effective in its anti-Semitism. The Jews are losing the war for hearts and minds because the other side has better propaganda. w w w . kosherslaughter.com
The German Jews formed anti-Zionist groups like the American Council on Judaism. They looked down on Eastern European Jews. They had Nazi tendencies themselves but the Nazi Party was not an equal opportunity employer.
see article
The New World Order – prophetic warning to Jews, Christians & everyone
Hitler used the term New World Order – I saw it on a German newspaper in a museum in Israel. It refers to one world government of the antichrist.
A supernatural prophetic warning appeared in the Boston Globe in 2001; a pix of George W Bush and Tom Ridge, the first DHS head. They were standing in front of a flag and what appeared was not an American flag but a swastika! I and others saw it. It was a supernatural warning from GOD about the fascist spirit behind Homeland Security Hitler called it the REICHLAND – which means Homeland.
God wants the JEWS in ISRAEL. He told me 20 years ago to WARN them to LEAVE. When 911 happened he said TELL THEM NOW!
God never stopped using Prophets. Their job is to warn people. He gave me EZEKIEL 33 which tells him to warn people of Danger.
Urgent Prophetic message to American Jews
Isn't this pretty much what Hollywood does today with China?
Capitalism is hardly at fault here. It leaves plenty of leeway for individual courage. The market itself is a set of choices, very much in keeping with free will.
Socialism (both national and communist) is essentially a moral argument in that it feels the right to encapsulate and control all because it knows whats best for everyone including the destruction of races or classes of people which the leadership feels is detrimental to the whole.
This is a failure of the individual owners and managers of the studios and the absolute evil of the socialist system of Germany.
This is also an example of what Jackie Mason was talking about in the article about him. These were Jews so obsessed with status they were willing to allow their own kind to be destroyed and to serve a power that eventually would destroy them if it won the world domination it was seeking. They did not have to willingly comply. They were still making a fortune of money. You can be absolutely sure there were Jews who would not have done the same in the same circumstance.
English writers of the period were incredibly antisemitic and very talented. Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton, Sax Rohmer, Evelyn Waugh and so on. They also didn't like Asians very much.
Typical American Jewish behavior: from the Hollywood moguls to Rabbi Stephen Wise to Henry Kissinger to Noam Chomsky to the Sulzberger family that owns the New York Times, you can always count on prominent American Jews to ally themselves with Jew-haters, be they Nazi Gemans, Soviet antisemites or Islamic dementos. Luckily in Israel this bunch of kapos, who tout their Jewishness only to ally themselves with Jew-killers, is understood all too well.
No mention of "To Be or Not To Be"?
"They were all populists"
They were all "progressives".
Do you have any doubts about this? Read my segments from Ladislas Farago's book. And the link to the blog on Walter Langer's best-selling book, taking seriously the claim that Hitler carried Rothschild blood. Whatever the personal politics of the moguls, their movies were directed to the (mostly immigrant) masses, who were hardly Republicans in that decade.
Agreed, and I like reading all of them, in varying doses, and in full awareness of the historical context in which they wrote. But some of their less humane writings have become almost canonical for their self-styled successors, who retain their prejudices without having any of their talent. That paragraph above, again, is one that still gets cited, these days as an indictment of neoconservatives and their roll in pushing the Bush administration toward war. Sadly, antisemitism has legs.
Yeah, let's defend the cowards who made money from collaborating with Hitler over exterminating Jews. They were not self-hating Jews, just like Noam Chomsky isn't either. All these people love themselves very much and just hate OTHER Jews.
They were kapos. No wonder that Hollywood continues to collaborate with every dictator under the sun. Exceptions like "Argo" are half-hearted and all too rare.
Asians were fit to be their servants only.
Yes, and oddly enough their viewpoint as to Moslems is consistent with much of the modern pro-Palestinian viewpoint. The Moslems no matter how warlike are misunderstood but honorable people but the Jews are criminally inclined and the Asians seek power through conspiracy. Chesterton even wrote that some of the British Imperialism was due to Jewish financiers as if the British never themselves sought an empire. The hated so-called neocons were invented long before someone came up with the term neoconservative.
Whatever can be said for Hollywood's moguls and Nazi Germany, collaboration would not be one of them. Hollywood of the 1930s was full of former Germans, many of whom were not even Jewish, but who were concerned with Hitler's forceful control over their medium. This is why you can find films like Fritz Lang's "Fury" which is about as great a movie concerning mob-rule as one would ever hope to find and it is also why actors and actresses such as Marlena Dietrich left Germany in droves. If you wanted to be Leni Riefenstahl, you did well. If not, you left as quickly as you could arrange it. However, the author's assertions concerning movies such as "Our Daily Bread" is completely wrong. This King Vidor movie is about communal living or not-so-overt communism and how great it works. Nazis hated communism. By the time "The Great Dictator" came out in 1940, the Nazis ceded their "control" over Hollywood forever and became the laughingstock in film that they should have been from 1933 onward.
How is Hollywood doing now? Are there many brave, poignant, important films now being made about today's totalitarian threats?
What was that about being your own worst enemy ….?
Note that the refugee character is NOT Jewish. In fact, in all of CASBLANCA, which is full of characters trying to escape the Nazis, not one is Jewish. So many of us like to avert our eyes that this really odious movie – made by a bunch of Jews – is widely beloved rather than condemned.
The British romance with the desert was deeply ingrained in the culture, and if you read Doughty, and certainly Lawrence, there was at least some sexual subtext there. The colonies represented, among other things, freedom from Victorian restraint. Chesterton saw himself as an advocate for the Church and viewed rivals for the devotion of the British as legitimate targets. He was critical of Protestants as well, as I recall from one of his Father Brown mysteries.
The Nazi interest in American movies is an example of how much the medium appealed to those who hoped to utilize this "innocent" forum. Hence the Communist interest as well. The Hollywood Ten weren't exactly innocents. But they were fortunate in their opponents. Had the congressional committees not been run by ignorant extremists, the insidious attempts by Hollywood Communists and their fellow travelers to use the medium to serve Communist ideology might have been successfully exposed.
This article is a little overheated. Warner Brothers' representative in Germany was killed in Nazi street violence, and Jack Warner's antipathy to the Nazis was deep-seated and well-earned. It is also useful to point out that he was the only studio head who was a Democrat. The others were all Republicans.
Fox was the only major studio not run by Jews. Darryl F. Zanuck was not Jewish, but Sam Mintz was one of the uncredited screenwriters on "House of Rothschild."
After the war when the conversation changed, Zanuck produced "Gentleman's Agreement" one of the first films about American middle-class anti-Semitism. (The first post-war film on the subject was RKO's "Crossfire," and everybody who worked on it was run out of the business during the Red Scare that followed.)
Which brings us to one major point that the hysterical author has omitted. The great American ticket-buying public of the 1930′s was not terribly philo-Semitic. They tolerated Jews as minstrels and clowns, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, etc. but would probably have sided with screen Nazis against identifiably Jewish victims.
It was not merely European distribution bottlenecks that caused mogul timidity when it came to the Jews, it was a solid knowledge of the prejudices of their good old all-American public.
At the risk of sounding the charge of PERFIDY I have as yet not read this particular book or even heard of its author and I am not acquainted with your reviewer but on both expressions I sense a great lack of historic verisimilitude on the author's part and a curious gullibility on the reviewer's.
Nothing about the Nazi's were socialistic except in name.
So you have a Creepy Love Affair With Adolf Hitler too?
Would you call this idiot just a misunderstood artist too?
Bobby Brown Serves Nine Hours in Jail for Third DUI
To me he is just an out of control drunken idiot.
When did Hollywood stop supporting fascists?
To his great shame, Sears policy of NOT hiring Jews in retail positions — until AFTER WW2 — was the decision of Julius Rosenwald who accepted that most of middle America was Anti-Semetic. He put through that policy after WW1. Rosenwald attempted to redeem himself by vigorously supporting the Jewish refugee service, and after his death in 1932, his foundation supported the UJA and continues to do so today.
Why pick on Hollywood? What would the US retail industry do without China?
Again, why blame Hollywood? The biggest US corporations dealt with Germany until the bitter end.
The studio heads very seriously pictured that the KKK would burn down their theaters in the Midwest and South if they presented anything too controversial. They certainly were threatened with that from time to time. The Production Code was put through not so much to protect the Public, but to protect the movie industry and to protect their property.
I agree that from our perspective the studio heads were cowards, but I think they thought they were acting prudently. Most of them had parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles who had been killed in Pogroms in the Pale of Settlement. Even the most assimilated were not relaxed about being real Americans.
I knew this article would bring out the wingnuts!
Read The Road to Serfdom and then get back to me. It clearly establishes the social origins of the Nazis. It is a tremendous book and was written before the war and was current to the rise of Nazism. It was clearly meant to show that Nazism was not a breakdown in the capitalist system but the outgrowth of the socialistic system Germany had heavily invested in. In fact many saw WW I as the anglo-capitalists versus the German socialists with the Germans in the right.
The socialist programs they pursued and the overall socialistic nature of German society fully establish the Nazis as true socialists. National socialism is simply that. The belief that the nation state alone is sufficient to establish a socialist economy. International socialism believes that the nation state alone can not create a socialist nation. Most socialist nations are somewhere on the axis and some like USSR and China are international socialist in philosophy but had to be national socialist in execution. The worldwide revolution did not follow theirs.
I would also recommend Main Currents in Marxism. National socialism and Communism is very inter-related. The proletariat of Marx are pretty much the master race of the Nazis. They are both the advanced German industrial worker who rightfully should run the world.
Perhaps you would prefer that I return my Ph.D. I didn't establish my website to advance undocumented theories or fantasies. And I didn't know that in this very classy periodical that ad hominems were tolerated.
That's because the height of American Anti-Semitism was at the beginning of the US entry into WW2 and right after the war — 1942 and 1943, 1946 and 1947. Making the refugees Jewish would have meant fewer people in theater seats.
The worst epithet for American politicians in the 1930′s and 1940′s was not being called a Communist, but being called a "N—— Lover", the next worse to that was being called a "Jew Lover", THEN came being called a Communist.
Here is an example of the sophistication of Hollywood's anti-Semitism:
They are getting the masses to hate Jews, slowly and subtley, which is the best way, while our watchdogs, the ADL, and the Wiesenthal Center, choose not to act against this huge threat.
It would be nice if an academic scholar would compare the anti-Zionist rhetoric of today with the antisemitic rhetoric of that era. They are pretty much identical except that the state of Israel did not exist. In many cases a Jewish state was seen as a protection against the Jewish financiers. They would be too busy farming and doing everyday jobs to send the world out to war for their own gain. Well at least Chesterton saw it that way. Its pretty startling and you could simply leave the rants intact and change financiers to Zionists and you could be on MSNBC or NPR or a specific kind of Tablet commenter.
Okay but let's remember that the great Jewish boxers of the time never changed their names, wore the Star of David on their robes (a tradition among Jewish boxers that continues today) and never ever played down their Jewishness. They weren't exactly religious but they were far from ashamed and they still achieved success. Obviously we all can't be as tough as boxers but we don't have to suck up to the enemy either.
*Yawn* Not much "explosive" here. Mayer was anti-socialist, that is why he 69′d Upton Sinclair who had run for Governor of California as a socialist a few years before. It is not suprising that not just the studios but many American companies did business in Germany and also followed their rules so they could distribute movies (or sell their widgets) there in 1936. It was a big, profitable market. If you asked German Jews in 1936 if they should do business in Germany most would have said yes (and there were quite a few German Jewish in Hollywood in the mid-30′s).
Tell us that the studios were doing business in Germany after the US entered World War Two (like Ford and some other companies seem to have done) and then you've got a scandal, but this young historian really hasn't revealed much, at least as near as one can tell by this review.
From what I've read about Hitler and the Third Reich over the years is Hitler had a disdain for American popular culture. (The Nazis weren't too keen on aspects of German culture, given that music, art and books deemed degenerate were banned if not burned).
An innocuous icon as Mickey Mouse was proof enough for the Nazis that American culture was degenerate enough to popularize vermin, so it's hard to imagine that the fuehrer, after a long day of goosestepping and ranting, settling down to watch Steamboat Willie.
You're kidding, right? You equate Marx with Nazism? Either you are an extreme right wing fanatic or totally out to lunch. The social economic system of Nazi Germany followed the European model of Liberal capitalism coupled with incinerators. Not to be confused with American Liberalism, socialism or communism. There was a reason why they went after communists. There was a reason why they hunted down progressives and Jews.
To elaborate on Carl Laemmle's rescue efforts, which are documented in the new exhibition Against the Odds: American Jews and the Rescue of Europe's Refugees, 1933-1941 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, he devoted his time and the considerable assets he had amassed as the founder of Universal Pictures to help family, friends, and strangers from Laupheim and nearby German towns come to the United States during the Nazi period. In a letter he wrote to Secretary of State Cordell Hull dated November 22, 1937, he said: "I am in deep sympathy with the Jews in Germany. I might have been in the same position today as they are if I had not been fortunate enough to come to this country at an early age." Carl Laemmle immigrated to the United States in 1884 at age seventeen. His letter and actions provide a
counterpoint to his All Quiet on the Western Front response and the assertion
that he helped his fellow Jews out of a sense of guilt for "doing the German government's bidding as the head of a major Hollywood studio."
Not to mention the petrodollars financing the propaganda.
And some even later.
These are among the most thoughtful comments I have read about any article.
Absolutely I equate Marxism with Nazism and again I ask you to read the scholarly sources provided. Both Marx and Hitler came from the same German background. Both are supremacist systems. Both have totalitarian ends and both justify the ends by the means. Read the scholarly works I recommended. Equate yourself with some of the best anti-socialist writers like Hayek, Von Mises and Kolakowski and more. It is an absolute eye-opener.
Nazis hunted down competing socialists. Both Stalin and Hitler hunted down Jews. Nazism was an absolutist socialist system with antisemitism grafted to it. Its less virulent cousin was Italian fascism which had more than a few Jewish adherents.
I bet you won't honestly read any of these cited sources. I bet you'd rather troll tea party websites. More fool you.
Not sure German Jews should have recommended to do business in Germany in 1936.
As "early" as April 1933, German law restricted the number of Jewish students at German schools and universities. In the same month, further legislation sharply curtailed "Jewish activity" in the medical and legal professions. The city of Berlin forbade Jewish lawyers and notaries to work on legal matters, the mayor of Munich disallowed Jewish doctors from treating non-Jewish patients, and the Bavarian Interior Ministry denied admission of Jewish students to medical school.
Alson in 1933, at the national level, the Nazi government revoked the licenses of Jewish tax consultants; imposed a 1.5 percent quota on admission of "non-Aryans" to public schools and universities; fired Jewish civilian workers from the army; and, in early 1934, forbade Jewish actors to perform on the stage or screen.
Local governments also issued regulations that affected other spheres of Jewish life: in Saxony, Jews could no longer slaughter animals according to ritual purity requirements, effectively preventing them from obeying Jewish dietary laws.
At their annual party rally held in Nuremberg in September 1935, the Nazi leaders announced new laws which institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. These "Nuremberg Laws" excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or German-related blood." Ancillary ordinances to these laws deprived them of most political rights. Jews were disenfranchised (that is, they had no formal expectation to the right to vote) and could not hold public office.
The Nuremberg Laws did not identify a "Jew" as someone with particular religious beliefs. Instead, the first amendment to the Nuremberg Laws defined anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents as a Jew, regardless of whether that individual recognized himself or herself as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community. Many Germans who had not practiced Judaism or who had not done so for years found themselves caught in the grip of Nazi terror. Even people with Jewish grandparents who had converted to Christianity could be defined as Jews.
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 heralded a new wave of antisemitic legislation that brought about immediate and concrete segregation: Jewish patients were no longer admitted to municipal hospitals in Düsseldorf, German court judges could not cite legal commentaries or opinions written by Jewish authors, Jewish officers were expelled from the army, and Jewish university students were not allowed to sit for doctoral exams.
Other regulations reinforced the message that Jews were outsiders in Germany; for example, in December 1935, the Reich Propaganda Ministry issued a decree forbidding Jewish soldiers to be named among the dead in World War I memorials.
Government agencies at all levels aimed to exclude Jews from the economic sphere of Germany by preventing them from earning a living. Jews were required to register their domestic and foreign property and assets, a prelude to the gradual expropriation of their material wealth by the state. Likewise, the German authorities intended to "Aryanize" all Jewish businesses, a process involving the dismissal of Jewish workers and managers, as well as the transfer of companies and enterprises to non-Jewish Germans, who bought them at prices officially fixed well below market value. From April 1933 to April 1938, "Aryanization" effectively reduced the number of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany by approximately two-thirds.
In the weeks before and during the 1936 Winter and SummerOlympic Games held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Berlin, respectively, the Nazi regime actually toned down much of its public anti-Jewish rhetoric and activities. The regime even removed some of the signs saying "Jews Unwelcome" from public places. Hitler did not want international criticism of his government to result in the transfer of the Games to another country. Such loss would have been a serious blow to German prestige. Likewise, Nazi leaders did not want to discourage international tourism and the revenue that it would bring during the Olympics year.
But of course you're talking about 1936… the ime of the Olympics. Fr a few weeks people believed that everything was OK with the Jews, and everything was business as usual. But German Jews did know what was really happening. Hollywood also knew, as well as Roosevelt who a few year later refused to help Jewish refugees. It's a sad story, and this new investigation is a new step in discovering the real story of the "convenient" antisionism of some American Jews… and how the Hollywood industry was doing business as usual.
Yah, and the reason is a very simple one- the Communists and the Nazis were competing for the same audience. Hunting down the Jews took little more investment- the anti-Semitism that was so prevalent in Europe made Hitler's outright hatred easy to fulfill. Remember, too that many Communist leaders in Germany before 1933 were Jewish. Rosa Luxemburg comes immediately to mind.
Your remark about "liberal capitalism coupled with incinerators" is rather a toss away affair. An awful lot of ignorance there. Just for starters, the incinerators were a move by the German government with an eye towards an efficient Holocaust. That is, if you consider theft, slavery, murder and desecration to be hallmarks of a well run economic model. The SS eventually did manage to make money on the camps. But do you honestly believe that was a useful supplement to Germany's GDP? Trust me on this- if Germany had thought that the then-current economic model wouldn't have worked for them, they would have binned it in a heartbeat. Paraphrasing you, there was a reason Hitler had Dr. Schacht as his Economics Minister. In any event, the ovens had mostly come well after the war had started, by which time the German economy was pretty much a closed loop.
With the Nazis having stolen several pages of the Communist playbook, there really wasn't a lot that separates Hitler from Stalin except pure, deadly jealousy. The Communists just happened to get there first. If you honestly believe Nazism to be a right-wing construct, I suggest you do a little comparison study.
Yeah screw the Jews, let then die, they cost us yo much eh? You sound like a real American Jew, ready to sell European Jews then or Israeli Jews now.
I'm a bit puzzled by the description this article gives of the film "The House of Rothschild". It's about 50 years since I last saw it but I recall a generally Philo-Semitic and pro-Rothschild film, even if the word "Jew" isn't mentioned.
To start with, it commences in Frankfurt during what is clearly a brutal, Anti-Semitic riot. This is an obvious reference to what was going on in Germany when the film was made.
Mayer Anselm Rothschild tells his sons to scatter across Europe, as this is the only way to keep his hard-won fortune safe from the plunderers. He's a bit of a negative stereotype but he's then lost to the narrative, which thereafter concentrates wholly on his son Nathan Mayer, founder of the family's London branch.
Nathan becomes a patriotic, public-spirited Englishman-by-adoption. He's shown as brusque and shrewd but also kindly and (above all) humorous. And he's shown as loving the gentle ways of his adopted homeland and as being dedicated to its safety and welfare.
The war with Napoleon is on and Nathan is shown (rather fancifully) as best buddies with the Emperor's eventual nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, whose armies he's helping to finance and victual.
When Napoleon escapes from Elba, Nathan discusses with his brothers whether they should support a new anti-Napoleon coalition. They're aware that, whilst Napoleon was exiled on Elba, his enemies had encouraged pogroms, particularly in Germany and Austria. So they're tempted not to get involved.
But Nathan is shown explaining to them that Europe will never know peace if the megalomaniac ambitions of one man are allowed to go unchecked. Now you tell me how a 1930s audience was meant to respond to that message?
And then comes the Battle of Waterloo. News from the continent suggests the British are losing and there's a financial scare that threatens to wipe out the stock market. But Nathan, a patriot to the end, stands for many hours at his normal post on the trading floor and commits his entire fortune to British government bonds, thus saving the nation's credit, just as his pal Wellington is saving its honour on the field of battle.
This is NOT a truthful account of what happened. But its inaccuracies are clearly pro-Rothschild.
Meanwhile, what were the Nazis meant to make of the sub-plot in which an aristocratic "Aryan" guards officer woos Nathan's pretty daughter?
I think you support Likud and Bibi. I do not.
The Nuremberg laws copied from the Jim Crow laws of the American South. Some of them are direct German translations of what the laws were on the books in South Carolina and Mississippi.
ALL the Jewish dramatic actors anglicized their names. The public would accept Jewish clowns on screen, but not Jewish heroes.
I am an American Jew in my 50′s. My dad worked for the state of CT from 1946 to 1978. Not until AFTER the Six Day War did my parents feel confident that he would not have to worry about being fired out of the blue for being Jewish.
Jews in America sure did learn from what happened in Germany and pictured that it could happen here, virtually overnight, for decades. People ALWAYS had a to go bag and NEVER kept all their money in the bank or in bank safe deposit boxes.
You picture American Jews as being much more secure in 1930′s America than they were.
An earlier example of caving into German censorship is the Mae West comedy, "She Done Him Wrong", produced by Paramount in 1933. Mae West is about to lose her brothel because the landlord, a disgusting Jewish caricature added into the picture so it could be distributed in Germany, is going to triple the rent.
Most TV presentations of the film and most available videos cut out the scenes with the landlord.
Collaboration is too strong a word, its more a failure to resist.
I saw the House of Rothschild years ago on Israeli TV, and while I know the Nazis used it as propaganda, they also used the Jew Suss which was not written as antisemitic propaganda but was simply misappropriated.
This article neglects to mention the immortal "To Be or Not to Be" 1942 which is anti-Nazi and one of the funniest moves ever made. Also the Great Dictator by Charles Chaplin.
The communist regimes were just as bad as the Nazis and few anti-Capitalists had the courage to stand up to them – or to apolgize for their mistakes.
Thank you for putting everything into the proper proportions!
Yes, all that is true. But the Germans would have probably said engage and try to change the system. Expose them to your culture. That is why so many did not leave in 1933-1938 and why kristalnacht was such a powerful moment.
I would say as first point, it was a war/intruege about germany against the jewish people. We all know what has happened in the past with people of Jewish race.
I just started re-reading a book that changed my life on this issue: 'O Jerusulam, by Larry Collins & Dominique LaPierre.
Changed my life completely and a I tried to follow up checking their stories and findings.
I wish I was born a Jew. I would be proud. But isn't being a Jew just being an Arab? Probably not, because my wife is Muslim from Java, Indonesia. One beautiful daughter.
And my wife, Sari, told me before we got married:
We have the same god but under different names: Elohim, Allah,God, Saratustra, etc, and hence we should try to follow through to the same fundamemtal laws.
Most of us forget most of these fundamental laws I would say. And yet, so easy: The Ten Commandments…. Ten simple guidelines to run our lives.
Not easy, but at least you do not have to go to a Mosque, Churche, Tempel to practice them.
To believe the Germans were ignorant of American culture is simply untrue. It was one of the most sophisticated cultures of its time. They simply chose to hate American culture and Americans. Not all hate is ignorant. It is often very knowing.
I support the right of Jews to live, free and independent. You clearly do not, I've seen enough of your comments. In time of need, i know how much help I would get from you: zero. You would say: "Oh, but it would cost me some money, it would cost me some seats". And perhaps less than zero. Like those pieces of shit movie moguls in '30s, you'd collaborate too.
While I don't like Bibi, if you dislike him then I absolutely like him. Next time I'll vote for him, remembering people like you. Your comments are the best endorsement he can get. And don't delude yourself thinking that the left wing of Israel likes freedom and life any less than the right.
It must be a shocker to you that the majority of Israelis, left and right, want to live and be free – and also that they have an unalloyed contempt for people like you. Well, deal with it, wacko.
You are certainly right, and I would add President F. D. Roosevelt to this list of infamy. But the steel industry wasn't lead by Jews. The movie was, so I have a special contempt for them, as I have for kapos.
Good example! The Jewish boxers had dignity and decency. They were simply better human beings than the court Jews in the movies.
It's pretty obvious that Rick's magnificent head waiter and the gallant old couple trying to speak English are Jews. It's just that no-one mentions it. Did it need mentioning in a world awash with Jewish refugees? Wouldn't anyone capable of reading a newspaper understand who and what they were (whatever their views on the matter)?
And, even if you're angered by this omission, it's surely insufficient to damn a film with such obviously firm anti-Nazi intentions.
To put the omission in perspective, the film also makes it clear that 'Victor Laszlo' is a courageous and charismatic political foe of the Third Reich. But it doesn't tell us anything about his politics. Was he a Socialist, a Communist (probably not), a Social Democrat, a Christian Democrat or what?
For that matter, no-one actually tells us that 'Sam' is African-American. But that too is pretty obvious.
Anyhow, 'Casablanca' clearly wasn't made for distribution in Nazi Germany or, for that matter, Vichy France. It's from a later period than the films discussed in this piece and was aimed primarily at US audiences which needed their commitment to the war boosted. And to most Americans, the war wasn't primarily about Nazi Antisemitism, the full horror of which was yet to be revealed.
Maybe emphasising that the refugees were Jewish or that Laszlo was of a specific political identity might have made the film more effective, both politically or artistically. But I strongly doubt it. Here's looking at you, Kid.
There were undoubtedly similarities between Stalinism and Nazism. And, obviously, both these malign ideologies shared a belief in the "big state". But neither ideology is the inevitable outgrowth of Socialism. Indeed, what most Americans view as Socialism has been successfully practiced for around three quarters of a century across most of the developed world. And, if it's ability to deliver prosperity is now much diminished, the same is even truer of unfettered Capitalism.
The underlying theme of Jewish existence is fear.
Today the American Jewish community is supporting a president that is clearly anti-Israel.
Some in the American Jewish community go so far as to side with Islamist murderers. They use convoluted arguments to do so, but underneath all that is fear.
As some posters have pointed out, Jews were openly despised by a large majority of the American public.
All that said, and even considering that apparently Jews were physically attacked on the streets, and denied admission to top rated universities, it remains a fact that the elite acted in an unforgivably cowardly manner.
It must be remembered that 30% of American population at the time was German.
Nazis were not socialists. They did not nationalize the entire system of production. Indeed, it is a historical fact that Hitler and the entire Nazi party was largely based on fear of Bolshevism. Communists were the first to be sent to concentration camps in 1933 in Dachau.
The industrialists, the aristocrats, the army's high command all supported Hitler because he was anti-Communist.
You should not confuse the fact that both Nazism and Communism are totalitarian systems with equating the two.
Islamists also have certain commonalities with Communism, but they despise Communists.
This is a fascinating article. Unfortunately, Hollywood is still anti-American and anti-Jewish
Again!!! Read the sources I cited. The Road to Serfdom is only one of Amazon's all time best sellers so it is not hard to get. It answered your preconception about the Nazis that existed even prior to WW II.
You are absolutely wrong to assert this in the face of the considerable written arguments to the contrary. Read the books!!!! If you successfully refute the arguments presented you will be a hero to the Left. They have only ignored these arguments not refuted them.
All the authors cited were previously believing socialists who became disillusioned with it but knew precisely what it was. The Nazis were socialists. Learn it, accept it and deal with the consequences.
I don't seem to comprehend how hollywood can be anti-American and Anti-Jewish considering its the output of America with many great Jewish names to its credits. I think at some point, it seems some of us have had reality pulled out from under us to a dangerous degree.
Hollywood is always on the wrong side of the political equation. Yesterday they were Nazi collaborators, and today they are politically correct fascists. What is the difference between Nazism and politically correct fascism? There is no difference. They both create a climate of fear that forces people to pretend to believe things that are obviously not true – with predictable consequences.
The Forward is in bed with Hollywood – they have censored (deleted) my previous comment comparing collaboration with the Nazi to politically correct fascism – which proves my point. Deleting my comment, and burning books amounts to the same thing. Death to all Nazis and all fascists! (Let's see how long it take for the censors to delete this comment.)
How about Palestinians? Don't they also want to live and be free? But then people like you just can't put themselves in their shoes.
True but even if neither ideology is the inevitable outgrowth of Socialism it certainly means that Socialism may not be the morally superior system its advocates portray it to be.
It is an important point because there are plenty of Holocaust studies programs and Holocaust museums that focus on "tolerance" whatever that means but it would be intellectually honest to focus on what role ideology played and whether it is a good idea for Jews to gravitate towards certain systems given what what we know may be the dangers of them. Making the state more prominent in people's lives means handing over a turnkey system to all potential tyrants. The tyrannical personality is always out there. What matters is whether it can find a mechanism for its goals.
There is one other mention of persecution of Jews in Germany from a Hollywood film, and that was the technically pre-war parody "The Great Dictator". That being said, Chaplin has been on the record as saying he would have never produced the film if he had known about the contemporary ghettoization and the eventual "Final Solution".
Yes, of course, a large, interventionist state machine in the hands of a tyrant can be more noxious than a small, economically "hands off" state machine in tyrannical hands . But there's no rule which says that a large state machine is more likely than a small one to develop into a tyranny. The history of the Western World in the decades since World War Two would suggest the opposite.
Conversely, the bloodstained recent history of countries such as Chile show that tyranny is perfectly compatible with a hands-off approach to economic and social issues. Indeed, most states throughout history have been both weak and tyrannical at the same time.
What's important are a country's political culture, the extent of its social capital, the democratic or otherwise nature of its political institutions and the extent of its devotion to civil liberties. And, of course, prosperity and the broad spread of wealth throughout a society are normally also effective bars against tyranny.
The last 100 years have proved beyond doubt that neither the unmitigated command economy nor untrammeled capitalism are capable of providing these social goods on a long term basis. It's incredible that these truths, so obvious to many (most?) of those whom Americans rightly refer to as their "Greatest Generation" have been lost sight of.
As to whether Hitler was a "Socialist"; it's rather like the recurrent internet obsession with him being a Catholic. He was neither of these things. But Nazism did share certain characteristics with Socialism and clearly lacked other of its characteristics. Similarly, it shared certain characteristics with red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism but not others.
Seeking to put the same label on all the different ideological phenomena of which you don't approve might be psychologically gratifying. But life and history are more complex than that. Evil, moreover, has no shortage of faces. And, if you allow yourself to be deluded by over-neat ideological connections, you may fail to recognize a new face of evil until it is too late.
My most recent post was in reply to Habbgun. I'm not sure if it's come out as such
….Jeremiah 29:14…..
I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.
…….Jeremiah 24:6……
For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up.
Hollywood Studio Heads doing something for money? I am shocked, shocked, I tell you!
I left some pretty good sources in other comments. Read them and then refute because they are far better arguments that I can make.Nazis were socialists and your arguments were arguments that were fashionable pre-WWII. Hayek made short order of them in The Road to Serfdom and later writers as well.
Maybe it is psychologically gratifying to label ideologies I don't like as similar but it is probably more psychologically gratifying to give your semi-socialist beliefs or whatever they are some kind of moral superiority. Hiding behind most socialist systems are machine politicians and career bureaucrats getting power they most likely don't deserve and can't handle. Its a truth worth exploring.
Most of them had parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles who had been killed in Pogroms in the Pale of Settlement? That may be an exaggeration. The total number killed in 19th century pogroms was measured in the hundreds (as I recall from reading Walter Lacqueur's History of Zionism) whereas the Jewish population was in the millions.
Also anti-Semitism was not a widespread phenomenon in the South according to Jewish historian Albert Lindemannn. On the contrary. See his account of the the Leo Frank affair in The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank) 1894-1915
Of course it is impossible to exaggerate the atrocities committed against European Jewry by the Nazis and their European collaborators after Hitler came to power. But it is easy to exaggerate the amount of anti-Semitism in America (and even in Europe before Hitler) which only serves to poison Jewish-gentile relations.
I had thought the Pogroms killed many more. It's a relief to know I was misinformed. Thank you.
The House of Rothchild was extensively excerpted in The International Jew, the Nazi propaganda film. (It's available on You Tube.)
Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Hamlet: Act 2, Scene 2
I find this shocking and terribly, terribly sad.
So much for the Jews controlling Hollywood….
"The movie showed how a single Jewish family, headed by its greedy, mean-spirited patriarch Mayer Rothschild, managed to gain control over the finances of Europe and was even able to influence the decisions of governments about war and peace. It was a film that the Nazis might have commissioned themselves."
Obviously you have never actually seen this film, which is pretty much 180 degrees from how you describe it, and quite a powerful work celebrating Jewish self-reliance and opposing intolerance. Nathan Rothschild (who is the main character much more than Mayer) is shown as heroic in both his advocacy for his people and his influence upon, and assistance to, governments opposed to a certain dictator with Europe-wide ambitions (Napoleon, of course). Here's a clue: when Boris Karloff is a supporting character, the villain is NOT George Arliss.
Is the rest of this review equally reliable?
How do you know the refugee character is not Jewish? Casablanca is full of characters who could very easily be Jewish, from S.Z. Sakall's waiter to Marcel Dalio's croupier to the young couple seeking visas… and of course, Victor and Ilsa Laszlo. Perhaps they simply trusted audiences of the day to put two and two together, as readers and viewers today clearly cannot.
As long as I'm at it, it is also worth pointing out that it is not true that The Life of Emile Zola never identifies Dreyfus as Jewish (not that that was really necessary anyway to people who remembered the case, then no further in the past than, say, Watergate is today). It never does so in dialogue, but a closeup of his passport at one point identifies his religion— a clever way to get around a promise to the Hays Office or the studio heads to not call it out in the script, I suspect.
You are quite right; the author doesn't know what he's talking about.
"Don't they also want to live and be free?"
Not when they're blowing themselves up in hospitals or pizza parlors, apparently.
Same old same old? What's that supposed to mean? It's as cynical a remark as I have ever heard. What would it take to surprise you?
Collaboration is too strong a word, its more a failure to resist. I agree collaboration is too strong. Maybe complicit is a better word.
That was gracious. Thank you.
Hollywood said "Never again!"… until Chinese communists started making demands of the studios and they quickly rolled over and gave in. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Interesting article, and reader comments, but there is an elephant in the room no one is discussing, and that's Hollywood's relation to Islam. Seems to me rather like it's older one to the Nazis. Maybe that's not a surprise, for when you strip all the religious stuff out of Islam, you are left with a warrior death cult seeking world domination and the destruction of the Jews. I believe those were the essential goals of the Nazis also.
I have seen many films about the poor suffering Palestinians, but not much about the 800,000 Jewish refugees ;forced out of their homes after Israel was created. I haven't seen much about what has happened to Christian life in Moslem countries, and no one makes stories about the Kurdish genocide, or how Islam came to India. I do seem to hear about the religion of peace a lot.
Islam is the new Nazis, and once again Hollywood avoids its eyes.
Unfortuantely the focus on the Nazis has enabled the progrom to be forgotten and for virulently antisemitic countries to pretend it was just a German problem. . An estimated 100,000 Jews died during the Russian civil war 1918-1921, mainly in the Ukraine .There was widepsread killing of non-Jews too, but the White Russian forces specifically targetted Jews. 300-1000 died in the 1905 Odessa pogrom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odessa_pogroms#1905_Pogrom.
Pogroms were accompanied by widespread rape but Jews tend to prefer to ignore this. the nazis are better remembered because of their meticulous documentation. The pogroms are a forgotten genocide, more like the Armenians.
The Nazis were not some sort of exception, they arose out of stuff that was already going on,
That is obviously a photoshopped pic. Pretty disgraceful to lead off an article using a fake photo.
This is absolute, utter rubbish! Yes, the moguls were afraid of losing the German market, NO, the were not "in love with" Hitler! Go back and really look at 30s films.
This Hollywood story is part of a much bigger picture. If anyone wants to know how extensive the co-operation between National Socialist Germany and Zionism was, check out these three books:
Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: The Untold Story of the Secret Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine; (New York: Macmillan, 1984); Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (London: Croom Helm, 1983); and Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985).
Nazi Germany was Zionism's best friend throughout the 1930′s. Enjoy!
The author claims film producers cooperated with Nazis. Most of the article consists of repeating this this claim in various ways. When it comes to substance, they come up short.
For example, they say, producers edited their films to satisfy Nazis. What was this editing consists of? They did not say. However, they say that Germans stopped dealing with Warner in 1933, exactly because Warner refused to edit the films! So, which was it: did they edit the films, or they did not?
The next accusation is that Hollywood produced films only to glorify strong leaders, and nothing about power of democracy. And they give an example of such a anti-democratic movies: "Mister Smith goes to Washington"! I think, if there was ever a movie about power of American democracy, this is exactly the "Mr. Smith"!
I guess, some self-hating Jews here are on a hunt for a sensation, which would justify their self-hatred.
Indeed some Jewish groups wanted to fight on the side of Hitler because they couldn't come to terms with the Brits who at the time controlled Palestine. They figured if Britain lost the war Jews would have free reign in Palestine.
Remarkable nonsense!
In 1933 the leaders of the World Jewish Congress in Madison Square NY called for a world wide economic boycott on all German export. This declaration of economic war on Germany took place at a time when there was mass unemployment in the country and the new Chancellor had been elected to power less than 3 months previous. And then the Jews kwetsh about Krystal Nacht which was a retaliatory German boycott of Jewish shops. Oy vay gewalt!
Armand Hammer the Jewish industrialist did deals with Stalin and all through the better part of the cold war. He even built the first pencil factory for good old uncle Joe who was in the meantime shipping folks off to the Gulag death camps. There was money to be made. And let's not forget Stalin's willing executioner Lazar Kaganovich another member of the tribe responsible for the death of 7 million Ukranians. Now that was a real Holocaust if ever there was one.
Oooh….Oooh – Frechette is here. This must be the white trash section of the comments page! When do we get to knock over the neighbor's garbage cans because we're bored and yell at the neighbors when they object?…Good times.
Nazis=National Socialists. Communists=International Socialists. Only difference is Hitler did not want to export his brand of Socialism whereas Lenin, Stalin, and the rest of the Commie swine definitely did. They even had a wet dream of turning Spain into a Socialist Republic with their Red Brigades. Western useful idiots joined the side of the Reds. Go figure!
The Nazis kept the universal health care and worker pension system introduced by Bismark in the late 1800s. Those are certainly social programs. There were also programs for the poor such as widows and single mothers. The Winter Werk for instance.
Please note that Wiki is very unreliable when it comes to jewish topics. Who exactly was responsible for the holocaust of the Ukranians? and the post-war holocaust of the Germans? why do some people try to blame the Jews for these events? Millions of Germans were murdered during and after the War and crazy poeple blame the Jews. Read HELLSTORM by Thomas Goodrich to find out what was really going on.
I don't seek moral superiority on this thread. Merely intellectual clarity. Moreover, I'm not a socialist but a Burkean conservative.
Yes, there is a smidgen of truth to Hayek's view of Nazism as having some relationship to socialism. It was certainly part of the early 20th Century revolt against liberal individualism. But there's also a smidgen of truth to the Marxist characterisation of fascism as capitalism with the gloves off.
Ultimately, though, neither of these (rather huge) simplifications is, in itself, sufficient to explain or characterise this horrendous phenomenon.
And, yes, I agree that socialism tends to empower "machine politicians and career bureaucrats". There again, capitalism tends to empower hucksters, bean counters and corporate bullies.
As the mythical Soviet schoolboy explained: "Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, whilst Socialism is exactly the reverse!"
Essentially in agreement with you, Michael.
But I don't think either Victor or Ilse are meant to be Jewish. The point is surely that they're "political" and have had the freedom to choose where they stand vis a vis Nazism.
Victor has become a marked man but Ilse retains her right to choose until she steps onto the plane, leaving Rick and Cpt.Renault to head off and join the Free French.
Had she been Jewish, she wouldn't have had that freedom of choice and much of the film's point would have been lost.
That is a fair assessment and I agree with your assessment of the dirtbags that do well under Capitalism. What I don't like is giving these slobs the means towards greater power. I am not at all shocked at the scandals coming out of the Obama administration. The corrupt machines in Chicago, New York, etc. have always had these issues as a study drumbeat. They have a vested interest in controlling their voting bloc and not representing it. I'm not sure that there is equivalency in systems just because they fail in different ways. The world is imperfect. What matters is the price of failure and certain systems seem to have greater capacity for violence.
We also tend to confuse Capitalism with the market. The
market is where desires meet the way to supply what is believed needed to meet that need. Just because money or stocks or whatever is abolished or controlled doesn't mean the market just ends. It often just means power and submission is the currency that is actually in use.
My biggest concern is that at least the issue is addressed. Jews have tended towards Leftist politics and yet these same politics have been outright dangerous in the worst instances and simply corrupt in others. Many of the worst political machines in urban areas grew out of left wing social activism gone sour or were corrupt to begin with but had a sharp, cynical way of marketing themselves.
If Jews have made bad choices in the past they should learn from then. Too often we hear Leftists give themselves a moral superiority that their actual results do not justify.
I agree completely. New revelations keep coming out. I recommend THE FIFTH DIAMOND by Irene Zisblatt, the unfortunate woman was forced to defecate diamonds for years by the evil nazis. They also did experiments on her to REMOVE her tatoo. I can't undrstand these nazi fanaitcs at all. What is your explanation?.
Amazing how people are prepared to spout lies in such a brazen fashion about Obama and American Jews.
Why not condemn Sophie Scholl because she only devoted a few lines of her writings to the Holocaust?
Nazism is and always will be associated with Nationalism and Corporatism, which the latter has NOTHING to do with capitalism and the aforementioned with sovereignty.
Your Hero Marx was anti- sovereignty and all about Statism.
Pay attention kid and pull your head out of your åss before you suffocate and blame capitalism for it.
Oooh….Oooh -Habbgun has reared his ugly head the Jewish supremacist in denial of Zionist crimes against humanity.
Why do the Jews get blamed for the holocaust of the Gemans? Explain that one to me.
That is their only means to resist the illegal Israeli occupation. According to international law civilians have the right to resist the occupiers. If your sister or mother had to wait for hours at some god forsaken Israeli check point to get to hospital when they were about to give birth what would you do? Or if some Israeli thugs bulldozed your house late at night? I know how I would act. You're problem is you refuse to acknowledge the humanity of the Palestinian people as so many of your tribe.
We seem disconcertingly close to agreement, Habbgum.
Not being American, I don't want to comment too closely on US politics but it seems to me that the American lobbying system gives a respectability and influence to all sorts of interests, in a way that has no real equivalent in other well-established democracies. That said, I would have thought that the Left and Right were equally culpable.
Yes, you can have a market without capitalism. But you can also have capitalism without a market, which is essentially what the Nazis' statist and Autarchic economic policies were heading towards. Hayek saw this as an example of "Socialism", which understandably made Socialists ( with their egalitarian and internationalist perspectives ) bristle.
I agree that Jews have made bad political choices in the past. The most obvious example for this would be the embrace of Marx-Leninism by so many of our brethren. Another, going back a few decades further, was the Jewish love affair with German Nationalism.
Where we would differ is that I would also regard unrestrained capitalism, fiscal austerity and the absence of a social safety net as similarly bad political choices.
Not only have they been proved inadequate by the dismal history of the twentieth century. They also laid the ground for the infinitely worse horrors that Hitler and his pals were to visit on humanity. No Great Depression, No Third Reich. It's as simple as that.
So, the Nazis murdered six million Jews because what exactly?
You are obviously an anti-Semite.
You have much sympathy for Hitler and the Nazis.
Your claim that Hitler did not want to export Nazi ideology is absurd beyond words.
Every country that Hitler and his Nazi troops conquered and colonized, was subjugated to Nazi laws and ideology.
Nothing I said is a lie.
You are entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to my opinion.
Yeah the reference to white trash really hit home. Didn't it my sowwy widdle Frechy……you never get used to hearing it and you hear it a lot don't you. You hear it from people you meet, family members who have given up on you and even from whatever group you run after to try to feel like someone wants you around.
Do you really think that opening the sphincter you call a mouth means anyone takes a slob like you seriously?
Do you really think that no one can tell from your comments that you're here because another account of yours at Club Penguin got blocked after you started cyberbullying eight year old again?
Oh and by the way do you think Palestinians don't look down on you also? Arabs have a lot of pride. They don't hold much regard for white trash. Get it?
Telling the truth about Israel has now become anti Semitism. I'm in good company with Jimmy Carter thank you very much.
Do you know how many non Jews were exterminated during the 1920s and 30s in the Ukraine by Stalin's willing executioner Lazar Kaganovich the Jew? 7 million. Now that was a real holocaust. Mentioning that fact makes one an anti semite in Jewish circles.
No the Jews are losing the hearts and minds because of their policies vis a vis the treatment of the Palestinians. They think international law applies to every nation except theirs.
Did Hitler invade Poland to turn Poles into Nazis? No! How about France after the French declared war on Germany? No!
It is you who is absurd.
And they had less influence and power then than the Jews today who make up 1% of the US population.
Here we go again with the 6 million. How many Christians were murdered by Lenin and Stalin in the 1920s and 30s and who were the willing executioners. Does anyone even know the numbers let alone talk about them.
You are in the company of other anti-Semites.
There are no Jews in the Obama administration.
I'm not seeing any evidence of "collaboration" here — just businesses trying to keep a lucrative market open in a country that we weren't even at war with during the 1930s. But I guess it'll help sell books. Right now we censor films for Chinese audiences in order to gain access to that market. That doesn't mean film studios are "collaborating" with the Chinese or agreeing with their human rights abuses. Keep in mind that we benefit from 20/20 historical hindsight now, and the extent of the Nazi atrocities were not widely known during the 1930s.
I'm not seeing any evidence of "collaboration" here — just businesses trying to keep a lucrative market open in a country that we weren't even at war with during the 1930s. But I guess it'll help sell books. Right now we censor films for Chinese audiences in order to gain access to that market. That doesn't mean film studios are "collaborating" with the Chinese or agreeing with their human rights abuses. Keep in mind that we benefit from 20/20 historical hindsight now, and the extent of the Nazi atrocities were not widely known during the 1930s.
I agree that they're presumably not. But the point is, it's not spelled out about anybody in the movie (except the Nazis).
You lie.
Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of The Treasury; Jacob Lew, Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Alan Krueger, Chair of the Council of Economic Adviser.
I should add that two former Cabinet members, ex-Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and the former White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, are both Jewish.
So what. Next we'll hear looking at a Jew cross eyed is anti Semitism.
…. "A film that showed the advantages of democracy over fascism could never be made in Hollywood in the 1930s because of political pressure stemming from Hitler's Germany, whose market was simply too lucrative for the studios to ignore." …
Is this some kind of Jew staining white-washing that Urwand is promoting? The dirty Jew in Hollywood collaborating with the Nazis – another example of transference of guilt efforts by sick old European holocaust perpetrator sympathies wanting to justify Jew-hatred…
What a load of lies … here's a film made in the 30′s released in the 40′s … you may remember it…it had lot of impact and Urwand ignores it… (perhaps it was banned from his upbringing like the Sound of Music was never shown in Austria..)
The people in the USA profiteering from their Nazi collaboration were
families like the Bush's …
Great Grandfather – merchant of death from WW1 selling 75% of
war's arms to both sides
Grandfather – US senator collaborated with Hitler pardoned for
his treason in WW2
Father – Head of CIA then US president that attacked Iraq
misappropriated oil wealth of nation, murdered 100,000′s of innocents
Son – US president by inheritance that attacked Afghanistan to
spread opiate addiction worldwide, murdered 100,000′s of innocents
As Goebbels said…
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it"
Shame on Urwald & Mikics – they should be shunned for their retarded journalism…
…. "A film that showed the advantages of democracy over fascism could never be made in Hollywood in the 1930s because of political pressure stemming from Hitler's Germany, whose market was simply too lucrative for the studios to ignore." …
Is this some kind of Jew staining white-washing that Urwand is promoting? The dirty Jew in Hollywood dealing with the Nazis – another example of transference of guilt efforts by sick old Europeans holocaust perpetrator sympathisers wanting to justify their Jew-hatred…
What a load of lies … here's a film made in the 30′s released
in the 40′s … you may remember it…perhaps Urwand ignores it…
The people in the USA profiteering from their Nazi collaboration were
families like the Bush's …
Great Grandfather – merchant of death from WW1 selling 75% of
war's arms to both sides
Grandfather – US senator collaborated with Hitler pardoned for
his treason in WW2
Father – Head of CIA then US president that attacked Iraq
misappropriated oil wealth of nation, murdered 100,000′s of innocents
Son – US president by inheritance that attacked Afghanistan to
spread opiate addiction worldwide, murdered 100,000′s of innocents
As Goebbels said…
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it"
Shame on Urwald & Mikics – they should be shunned for their retarded journalism…
"Hollywood's policy of collaboration with the Nazis took more active forms as well. As Jews were systemically excluded from German life and barred from schools and professions, 20th Century Fox released The House of Rothschild (1934), starring George Arliss, the British actor who had earlier played Disraeli. The movie showed how a single Jewish family, headed by its greedy, mean-spirited patriarch Mayer Rothschild, managed to gain control over the finances of Europe and was even able to influence the decisions of governments about war and peace. It was a film that the Nazis might have commissioned themselves."
I can't wait to read the book.
I remember seeing the movie a few years back and thought Rothschild family was portridf from a an antisemitic left wing point of view.
This is even ghastlier.
btw: we need to stop talking about antisemitism in the past tense. Attempts to whitewash current antisemitism in Europe is ongoing in Hollywood (are there any movies being made about the murder of Jewish children in France?
It's also ironic that the NY Times was left out of the picture as it covered up the ongoing Holocaust by burying stories about it in the inner pages.
The Jewish movie studios were in business to make money and the German market for US movies was one of the largest in the world at that time. We should not impose today's standards on events in the 1930′s, when Jews really weren't popular any where in the world. Even San Francisco had real estate developments that contained restrictive covenants and prohibited the sale of properties in the developments to Jews. Most, if not all of the town of Bronxville, NY was off limits to Jews as were many clubs and golf courses. Even the NY Times downplayed German atrocities against Jews throughout the Nazi era. The paper did not want to appear to be "too Jewish".
If you have watched the movie "Casablanca", you may have noticed that there was not a single reference to Jews in the entire movie, which has always seemed very odd to me, considering the number of Jewish refugees in Casablanca in those days (1942). I have no doubt that this was deliberate. Both Jack Warner, the Jewish studio head and Michael Curtiz, the Jewish-Hungarian director (who had moved to Hollywood in 1926) suffered from the same "too Jewish syndrome". Hollywood was created by Jews but every one of the studio bosses knew that the overwhelming percentage of their customers were non-Jews, many of whom did not like Jews.
Yes, you are entitled to your opinion — and others are entitled to point out that your opinion is clownishly ignorant.
Wow. Being a pseudo-amateur-scholar (unlike the author of this piece, who apparently is a 'real' scholar) I try as much as possible to read several credible sources on an issue before commenting. In order of extremism the book appears to be primarily inflammatory ("a former Indie rock musician"? "the young Historian"? Is that a joke?), this article, quasi so, and the New York Times piece that got me here a bit less. What bothers me is that this literary equivalent of yellow journalism, so common today would have the appearance of a serious academic study. From all I can tell, Urwand developed, and has defended a position on this issue — and perhaps done that reasonably well — but it is, nonetheless a position. The actual issue of how complicit or un-complicit Hollywood was in the rise of Nazism — and the word "collaborate" clearly accuses it of complicity — is not a simple issue. It is not merely a question of whether Hollywood did, or did not overtly or implicitly condone Nazism, nor whether certain actors such as Warner developed and promulgated a master narrative about their disgust with the growing tide of evil. It is easy to look back and develop a story line that fits with a particular point of view, it is much harder to imagine the difficulty of trying to do business, make 'good' choices and even live lives while the atrocities of Nazi Germany were being committed. And is it necessary to keep saying that the people who ran Hollywood were themselves Jews – isn't there are certain anti-Antisemitism to that practice?
Where are today's comments?
So was a film of The Brothers Karamazov; was Dostoevsky a Hitler sympathizer?
The same men who demonised Leni Riefenstahl. How interesting…
You are entitled to your own opinion, not to your own facts.
William replied I didn't even know that you able to get paid $8303 in one month
on the internet. did you see this page www.KEP2.com
An even better coverage of this book is here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hollywood-helped-adolf-hitler-with-nazi-propaganda-drive-academic-claims-8679322.html
Here is where the real nitty-gritty is……….
"There was a law in Germany that foreign businesses couldn't export currency. They made an exception for MGM because they were financing the production of German armaments."
Will there be a Hollywood film on this interesting bit of history? Most likely not.
This is just total rubbish.
This is just total rubbish.
inadvertent dup post.
Clare Spark began on the Left, but turned far, far Right. She views the WSJ editorial page as too liberal. She's a libertarian who is for Ayn Rand all the way. Amidst her words and logical conceits, some truth can be seen, but that truth is often obscured by the half-lies and distortions of the Rabid Right that surround her writing.
Much of her output is the Right wing version of the 20 page articles that used to run in the Village Voice and the New York Review of Books in the 1960′s and 1970.s. She's as tortuous to read as Ayn Rand, but with even less humor.
The series I linked on my comment to the review of a forthcoming book does not consist of my "rabid right" opinions, but of quotes from primary sources as compiled by Ladislas Farago, circa 1941. I have a website that is considered by me and to my readers as scholarly and based on primary sources. What are your academic credentials, Big Guy? As for linking my name to Ayn Rand's I have written about her as a product of her time, as historians should. The fact is that social psychologists allied with the New Deal called a halt to the Enlightenment. The materials I have found were not hidden away or imagined, but ignored by the liberal establishment. The reader can draw her own conclusions.
BigGuy is allergic to libertarians? How distressing. I wrote about the marketplace of ideas here: http://clarespark.com/2013/07/04/independence-and-the-marketplace-of-ideas/. "Independence and the marketplace of ideas." It was not meant to be humorous. Free speech is nothing to trifle with.
hmm. Are dizzyizzy and clarespark one?
Are dizzyizzy and clarespark one and the same?
Who is John Galt? Who is Emannuel Goldstein? Does either have anything to say to the other and to us today?
Would Norman Corwin give a damn about them? How about FDR?
So many questions here. WWBBD
I have made no effort to hide my identity, unlike BigGuy. My screen name is ironic and self-deprecating. I have never heard of Sher Zieve and resent being compared to her now that I hae looked her up. I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative, but above all an open-minded scholar. See http://clarespark.com/2013/07/04/independence-and-the-marketplace-of-ideas/. "Independence and the marketplace of ideas."
I really rather doubt that you are open minded. Have you changed your mind about anything at all, recently?
My experience has been that libertarians do not change their views when confronted with well written thought, logic, and empirical observation. Any one contradicting their views is construed to be mentally disturbed and suffering from very
poor perception. If you do NOT behave that way, that's commendable.
I believe we commented back and forth at each other at another website a decade or so ago, but I cannot be sure. I deleted the comment that referenced Sher Zieve.
Obama lived across the street from a synagogue for a decade, his wife's cousin is a rabbi, and the Pritskers provided financial support for his political campaigns. He does not don tefillin at Shacharit every day, but he's been physically closer to Jews than any other President.
Except that your 'opinion' is racist anti-black bullcaca, and you know it. Why is there all this hatred for Obama and his white from white people on the right and left?
Except that most people like yourself still watch the same classic films on pay-TV and home video now and then-have you supported an independent movie by going to see it?
Telling antisemitism has always been antisemitism. Your last paragraph gives it away.
Throughout the entertainment world, " brave, poignant, [and] important" take a back seat to the overarching goal of "don't touch that dial" — filling seats for the current performance and the next one. That's how Hollywood is doing now.
all lies
The racial supremacist Nazis? They banned jazz. Plenty of Germans now listen to rap. Don't whitewash. I know you like Nazis except when the Nazis are Zionists. Good news is that Zionists are not Nazis so you are in the clear.
They banned jazz because you say so. Right. Jazz was not banned in Germany in 1930s before the war. A German friend showed me his record collection from that time. Definitely there are US Jazz renditions played by German orchestras. I spoke to another acquaintance who was a late teen living in Germany at the end of WWII. He also claimed Jazz was not outlawed.
What Zionists are perpetrating against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is recognized as a Crime Against Humanity by the international community of nations. Using phosphor bombs against civilian targets is a War Crime. Also condemned by UN. People got hung at Nuremberg for less. End of conversation. If Germans or anyone else thinks Rap Music is culture they can listen all they want but don't tell me it beats classical music which the older generation of Germans preferred. It has nothing to do with Germans at that time hating US culture.
If you're looking for hate read Nathan Kaufman's book 'Germany Must Perish" You can find it at Brandeis University Library. There is real hate straight out of the Talmud.
Very much to the point except for saying Jews were openly despised. As someone who in his work has travelled the length and breadth of the USA as a material handling specialist, I can assure you that far too many still despise the Jews although many have never met one.
Do not assume that the USA is the new Jerusalem, the only Jerusalem is in Israel.
Meirmoses should go the library or check with Google the sad history of the so-called Jewish elite before and during the second world war. It is a disgrace for which no apology has ever been issued. They have blood on their hands.
Regarding Obama I would not agree that he is consciously anti-Israel, regarding the first lady who certainly a big influence on her husband, I really don't know. However, she and her children did not accompany the President on his highly popular visit to Israel which would have helped to cement an image of family warmth toward's the embattled democracy and ally. Especially as they do accompany the President on may of his other travels. Do not cite security concerns because in Israel the security for such visits is impregnable.
In what way may I ask?
And what are your facts?
Neville, the Jewish vote for Obama was amongst the highest per capita of any white group based on ethnicity and the same was true the second time round despite a strong effort to convince American Jews that the President was bad for Israel. You don't have to take my word for it check the published statistics of the both elections.
I am not sure about the certainty of your statement taking into consideration how many presidents we've had since Independence but I am glad to read that you believe what you say. However, are you equally sure that his physical closeness is mirrored by his feelings to Jews and Israel?
Great stuff but only Royq shows in true perspective the context of the times in which these notable literary giants lived.
It is quite difficult, if not impossible, for persecution complex ridden Jews, to understand that the only way to counter intellectual prejudice is by reasoned argument and noble behavior, not by heated indignant rejection of everything they stand for. This may result in the prejudicially inclined to become even more prejudiced but at least he would be exposed for what he is.
I am enthralled with the poetic magic, ranging from the ethereal to the majestic, of Wagner's music. That does not mean I sympathize with his anti-jewish views but if one studies the life and travails of Wagner it would fit the picture in the context of the times when lived.
As I have previously stated I was educated in one of England's prestigious Public Schools where I never experienced anti-Jewish sentiment or comments from the teaching staff but did from a very few typical school bullies when I was junior.
What my education did give me was the self-confidence to stand up for myself and mine, for what is right and fair and take up the responsibilities of leadership but not to be easily led.
I also learnt that the so called elite respected the Jew who was at the same time a loyal team mate and citizen as well unashamed of being proud of his faith and heritage.
I sense expressions of anti-British bias in many of these comments and a reluctance to recognize some shameful actions of citizens and the administration of the USA who only entered the war thanks to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, otherwise the Bundists would have continued to reign supreme together with American isolationism.
I will look up his diary on Amazon. But could he have been looking at the production and technical quality rather than content? And while it's easy to consider jazz being enjoyed in Berlin nightclubs before the Nazis' rise to power, was that the case afterwards? It's my understanding that the Nazis did not consider jazz and swing acceptable entertainment.
Your precious Wagner isn't worth kissing Verdi's ass. Achtung Baby!
Goebbels was also concerned with propaganda value.
Lazar Kaganovich was a Kommunist Jew responsible for the starvation of 7 million Ukrainians but that doesn't count. And when the Wehrmacht entered Ukraine in 1941 to be welcomed with flowers, bread, and salt by the locals the Jews quetshed why us. Why us indeed!
Interesting. I was unaware of that. Thanks for posting.
That is your opinion which is not shared by a majority of music critics unless you're an Israeli of course.
Achtung in German is be careful. What am I supposed to be careful about.?
Awww…did we hurt your worthless neo-nazi feelings you worthless cow? You know you shouldn't go places you aren't invited and make statements you are not qualified to make statements about. Talmud for instance. You're nothing but a frightened little cyberbully…the lowest part of humanity….and now its caught up to you. Now you know there are people who don't take your crap…who see right through you, you slimy neo-nazi pile of dirt. The funny part of it right now is I know what you're thinking when you read this….being the slimy toad you are you think I'll show everyone what Jews what really think….that's where it gets amusing…I've had people try this in real life and all that happens when I beat on them is that they run to others for protection and say will you let a Jew talk like this. Then what happens? They all say you bring this crap on yourself now you pay….being an annoying slob catches up to you….just because you pretend to care about world events doesn't mean you are not visibly a worthless slob…capiche?
I've actually read that the Ukrainian Catholics who were starved and murdered was well beyond 7 MILION.
Yeah, what a HUGE holocaust that was and nothing ever taught in schools about this….wonder why?
I checked out kosherslaughter.com and I'm really amazed that anyone is buying into that stuff. Sounds truly paranoid to me.
There are BLATANT and VERY direct attacks, insults, and incessant mockery towards Christians in virtually all TV and movies that are made.
Nothing is subliminal or has to be interpreted in any way.
It's all right there and in your face, and the only way these offensive & filthy programs which promote every perversion known to mankind is stopped is when the SPONSORS of the programs get lots of emails form angry viewers….it's all about money taken out of the elites pockets…..
No one gives a damn about respect or *sensitivity* or political-correctness when it comes to Christians.
Although, maybe Christians should take a lesson from the folks at kosherslaughter.com and start SUING the bastards who continue to mock and denigrate the values and beliefs of the majority of Americans.
Total paranoia…how is this even possible?
Hollywood is anti-American….no doubt!! But would you mind showing me which movies or TV shows portray Jews in any other way besides the brilliant, compassionate, witty, innocent bystanders or heroes who might just be a little neurotic at times?
Are you serious?
Frechette — it's all brainwashing. They think that by repeating the same historical fallacies, that the majority of people will just shut up. For a long time now, that's been the case, and it worked. Fortunately, the internet exists and official records and documents can spread through the consciousness of those who have had their brains hijacked by propaganda and illusions.
Try the movie "Act of Valor". The main villian is Jewish. How about "An Education", the cheating lying child molestor is Jewish. Of course there is Drive, the worst hate flm EVER MADE. "Lucky Sleven", the drug dealing drug pushing Rabbi, etc…
Frechette, and Chloe, you are missing two main points here. Ya, a lot more people have died than the Jews, and you only need look at the numbers: 6 million Jews 48 million non Jews in WWII. However, we must go on and on about the Holocaust because when Jew hating becomes extreme, it is the non Jews that always lose the most.
How do you get good Christians to murder Jews or be silent about it ? You have to first figuratively murder Jesus. That is, you have to negate what Jesus represents because his persona represents the opposite of evil.
That is what the Germans did to the German Christians through their propaganda.
Once you kill off Jesus, all hell breaks loose for everyone. And since the majority are non-Jews, they end up suffering more in terms of numbers of casualties.
The best Holocaust movie ever made did not really deal with Jews per se: "Come and See". It is about the murder of civilians in Bellarussia in 1943 by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen. The best movie about any war ever made by far!
Chloe, good propaganda is very very subtle. Not in your face. Think about the best commercials. They never talk about the product. They create a mood associated with the product. Selling hate is just like selling any other product.
Martin, thank you for taking the time to respond to me.
Are you saying that the backlash against Christ and Christians in the media is being done with the direct intention of causing Christians to resent Jews? Further, are you also saying that the ultimate agenda for this hate-mongering is for there to be another war, where many people die?
Now, since every TV show has Jewish writers and producers listed in the ending credits, exactly why would Jewish people be so determined to mock or anger Christians, if they fear consequences so much? What am I missing?
The book Drive was written by James Sallis, but was adapted for the screen by Hossein Amini, an Iranian. The Arabs have invested one billion dollars in Hollywood recently. Go to
w w w . kosherslaughter.com/aasc/node/27 and read up on the director. Also notice the dress of the guy next to Refn in the first picture.
Martin, Why would Jews in Hollywood work with people with this type of agenda? I really don't get it.
Please see this webpage on who controls Hollywood. I'm not posting this to offend you or anyone here. I am posting it, because if ANY of it isn't true, I'd like you to let me know…and lead me to wherever the truth is.
Okay Martin…Just found this page — is this the type of thing you are referring to?
So, are you saying that the Arabs, who are billionaires from selling OIL, are trying to take over Hollywood and turn Americans against the Jews?
Well, if you take Drive for example, there are all sorts of subliminal messages that Driver is Jesus. A ton of them. But Jesus was not a murderer like Driver was. But if Jesus is portrayed as a killer, including Jews, whose agenda would benefit ?
The answer is simple.
Yes they are considered second class victims in certain Western circles. Thanks for your reply.
Ever heard of the Morgenthau Plan which was later renamed JCS 1067? Google it. it was the document used by the US Military Government for the Occupation of Germany from 1945 to 1948. More German civilians died after WWII than during. Some folks now make like it was a day of liberation.
I've heard that HELLSTORM, by Thomas Goodrich, covers aspects of the postwar period. The reviews on amazon are positive. Have you heard of this book?
No I have not but I will try to get it asap. Thank you for the reference and your reply. I did read read Canadian historian's book James Bacque "Crimes and Mercy the Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation 1944-1945″. It deals with some of this. The book was originally not available in the US but I believe one can find it on the internet now.
Ah, yes, as it is said, CJK, "you are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts."
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I note that David Mikics does NOT reveal that he is ALSO published by Harvard University Press, as is Ben Urwand. This is a serious conflict of interest that should have been disclosed at the start of his review.
Of course, by now, The Collaboration has been eviscerated by several experts and Urwand's central claims (including that my great uncle, Louis B. Mayer collaborated), are in tatters. If you are at all interested in the true history of this time, read Thomas Doherty, David Denby, Farran Nehme, Paul Teetor and Mike Greco.
For a wrap up of the entire mishegoss, read Jon Wiener's excellent summary in The Nation or Alexander C. Kafka's briefer essay (not providing links in case they aren't allowed in comments).
Please also visit my blog HollywoodEssays where I provide a complete list of rebuttals and also the troubling Jewish response to Ben Urwand's sensationalist claims.
Except it's all based on lies and inuendo!
The book I mean, not the hundreds of rebuttals to this hateful fabrication by Urwand. What's upsetting is to read so many, many comments that just accept what he says as truth with no evidence nor any intelligent questioning!
I do not know if it's just me or if perhaps everyone else experiencing issues
with your blog. It appears like some of the text within your content are running off the screen.
Can someone else please comment and let me know if this is happening to them too?
This might be a issue with my internet browser because I've had this happen
previously. Thank you
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