Jo Fox,
Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II Cinema.
Oxford: Berg, 2007.
ISBN: 9 781 85973896 2
£17.99 (pb)
368pp
(Review copy supplied by Berg publishers)

The Second World War still continues to exert great fascination on scholars and the public alike, and no aspect of the war appears more fascinating than film propaganda. In recent years we have been presented with so many excellent monographs on British and German wartime cinema by James Chapman, John Ramsden, David Welch and Susan Tegel, among others, it might well be thought there was little more that could be said about the subject. Now, however, with this book, Jo Fox does indeed manage to offer something new and interesting: a detailed comparative study of the film propaganda of the two arch-rivals, Britain and Germany, which offers a number of new insights into the subject. For Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany Fox adopts a historical/empirical approach to analyse the relationship between the two cinemas, comparing their propaganda methods, and exploring the broader issue of the nature of propaganda in both democracies and dictatorships, and how the apparatus for creating and disseminating film propaganda differed in Britain and Germany.

As the author suggests, the propaganda effort of both countries was inextricably linked. The Nazi leaders, and particularly Hitler himself, were convinced that the Allied victory in 1918 was due in no small part to the British propaganda effort. When they came to power in 1933, the Nazis lavished considerable attention on creating their own propaganda machine, and in particular on film which the Great War had shown to be a major channel for mass persuasion. While early Nazi films, like Hans Westmar (Germany 1933) or Hitlerjunge Quex (Germany 1933) were arguably less than successful, the Nazis at least had six years of peace in which to develop and perfect their propaganda technique before the outbreak of war; and this at a time when the British government viewed any form of propaganda with distaste and refused to establish any formal apparatus for the creation and dissemination of film propaganda. Consequently, when the Ministry of Information was created on the eve of war, there was considerable debate about exactly what its function should be: informing the public or using propaganda as an aggressive weapon? Disparaged by politicians and public alike as the ‘Ministry of Mis-information’ or the ‘Ministry of Muddle’, it was not until Brendan Bracken became Minister in 1941 that the Ministry began to function properly and produce effective propaganda – especially in the Film Division under the experienced filmmaker Jack Beddington, and which eventually helped to create some of the most popular and enduring films of British cinema.

However, what is interesting is that while the Nazis lavished so much attention on their cinematic propaganda, the films they produced were remarkably poor – not just because of their noxious content, which on the basis of existing evidence did seemingly help to strengthen audience commitment to the National Socialist ideology, but because viewed today they were so unsubtle, so poorly made and so badly-acted. Once seen who could ever forget the ludicrous singing bomber pilots of Stukas (Germany 1941), or the ham-acting of Ferdinand Marian inJud Suss (Germany 1940). On the other hand, the best of British film propaganda, films like Millions Like Us (UK 1943), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (UK 1943) or The Way Ahead (UK 1944), have become part of the accepted canon of British cinema – powerful, beautifully made representations of the ‘people’s war’ which even today still find an enthusiastic audience when screened on television or marketed on DVD.

There is much of interest in Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany. After a useful and interesting introduction which explores the propaganda apparatus of both countries, Fox examines a number of important themes for film propaganda – how the war was justified, the nature of Blitzkrieg, and the image of the enemy – and then moves on to explore issues such as leadership, victory, defeat and post-war reconstruction. The author adopts a useful comparative method contrasting, for example, the first significant propaganda films of the war, the German Baptism of Fire (1943) with Korda’s The Lion has Wings (UK 1939), in the chapter on justifying the war. While the chapter on Blitzkrieg makes for an interesting comparison between German films which show the might of the German war machine stridently ‘dishing it out’ (Baptism of Fire, Victory in the West, Stukas) and the British response of quietly taking it, not only in documentaries like Britain Can Take It! (1940) but also in the later feature films like The Bells Go Down (1943) and Fires Were Started (1943).

Well-written, comprehensively researched, Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany has much to offer the student of British and German wartime propaganda.

Michael Paris,
University of Central Lancashire, UK.