Joseph Goebbels Ideology

From 1930 until the fall of the Nazi party in 1945, German cinema was influenced by the political and social atmosphere impacted by Nazi ideology that marked Germany during this time period. Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler both saw the value of film as the most explicit, yet artistic and captivating, propaganda medium for Nazi beliefs. Eventually, German cinema was gradually nationalized under Goebbels and became an extension of the Nazi party to further their relay their ideology to German audiences, both in explicit propaganda films and in films with more subtle messages. Goebbels personally oversaw a vast majority of film production, thus a significant amount of films produced in Nazi Germany were infused with his personal ideology and

opinions on political and social institutions. As a result, his role as propaganda minister and personal oversight of the film industry would create a period of German film that focused on the ideal German identity and its correlation to the Nazi ideal of a “perfect nation.”
This project will analyze Joseph Goebbels and his role in the portrayal of the German identity in Nazi films. Its focus will be on the Nazi perception of “Germans” and what “Germans” should strive to embody to be considered a fully functional citizen in Nazi society. Furthermore, this perception of what it means to be “German” will be exemplified by following aspects of Nazi film: the promotion of the völkisch movement and the portrayal of the undesirable “other,” (typically exemplified by Jews) as an antithesis of the “German” citizen. The paper will begin by establishing the Nazi connotation of “German” and its portrayal in film. Second, it will explore how this definition translated into film, exemplified by its celebration of traditional German culture and the völkisch movement. Thirdly, it will compare these portrayals to those of the supposed antonym of “German,” the Jew.
The primary sources for this paper include two films and translated transcripts of Goebbels’ speeches and his diaries.

By analyzing Leni Riefenstahl Triumph of the Will (1935) and Fritz Hippler’s The Eternal Jew (1940), two infamous Nazi propaganda films with which Goebbels was involved in producing, the paper will have a solid foundation to offer a plausible connection between Goebbels’ ideology and Nazi cinema. The project will also use Goebbels’ speeches, articles, and diary entries which serve to have an explicit definition of the German identity in comparison to the inferred definition found through film considering that his views of Germans and German society and the “other” (Jews and communists) are frequent subjects in his writings. Additionally, his personal insights showcase how influential they were in the films he oversaw, thus how permeable Nazi ideology was in German cinema in the 1930s and early 1940s. While the two films are hardly subtle in their message, his personal writings and speeches are valuable reinforcements to the messages the films he oversaw

portrayed.
For secondary sources, the project will utilize analyses of the aforementioned films from political and social standpoints, history of film in the Third Reich, and the role of film in Nazi German society.

The secondary sources are useful to further emphasize the aspects of Nazi ideology present in the propaganda films and Goebbels’ undeniably important role in exaggerating them in the arts, however only one source focuses on Goebbels own ideology and its impact on film, Eric Rentschler’s “The Testament of Dr. Goebbels,” the epilogue to a book on Nazi cinema. The analyses of the films, including Mary Devereux’s “Beauty and Evil,” Frank Tomasulo’s “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema,” and Stig Hornsoj Moller’s . "‘Der Ewige Jude’(1940): Joseph Goebbels' Unequaled Monument to anti-Semitism," are primarily useful in tying in Nazi ideology to films that Goebbels himself helped produced. As a result, by utilizing these secondary sources, the analyses of Joseph Goebbels personal ideology in correlation to Nazi film and the definition of “German” according to Goebbels will have more dimension and effectively emphasizing the project’s

focus.