In this episode of Fascism on Film, we discuss Hitler’s Hollywood (2017), a documentary examining German cinema under National Socialism from 1933 to 1945. We look at how the Nazi regime first tried overt propaganda films—box-office failures that audiences largely rejected—before shifting toward musicals, comedies, melodramas, and historical epics designed to deliver Nazi ideology through entertainment. Instead of slogans and symbols, these films express the attitudes of National Socialism: self-sacrifice, ethnic belonging, duty to the Reich, and a fantasy of harmony through obedience.

We talk about how the industry was gradually centralized under UFA, how many of Germany’s best artists fled the country, and how those who remained either adapted, complied, or fully embraced fascist values. What’s left is a vast body of cinema that’s historically revealing but, as we discuss, aesthetically hollow—films that feel drained of life by the oppressive system that produced them.

We explore specific examples like Request Concert and The Great Love, films that present themselves as romances or screwball comedies while quietly reinforcing traditional gender roles, loyalty to the homeland, and the idea that personal happiness must be sacrificed for the Reich. We also examine the contradictions at the heart of fascist propaganda: the enemy portrayed as weak yet existentially dangerous, Nazis insisting on their strength while casting themselves as perpetual victims, and the constant creation of fantasy worlds meant to feel natural and inevitable.

We also look at the most extreme propaganda works—The Eternal Jew, Jud Süß, Hans Westmar—and the modern German practice of restricting them, discussed in the documentary Forbidden Films. These works remain deeply disturbing, and we talk about why they should be approached only with clear historical context.

From there, we draw connections to Hollywood. We compare Reich cinema to American propaganda during and after World War II, including anti-fascist and anti-communist films, and consider how allegory and coded critique appear in works like Joseph Losey’s The Boy with the Green Hair. We also explore how American films still absorb and promote political messaging—sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly—in movies like Back to the Future, Top Gun, and the recent Twisters, which presents a vision of American identity scrubbed clean of climate change, yet full of patriotic optimism.

We close with reflections on the strange, intense relationship between the Third Reich and cinema, the disagreements among historians about how much creative control Goebbels actually exercised, and why most Nazi-era films remain unsettling—or simply unwatchable. Next episode, we take on one of these propaganda works directly: Hans Westmar.