Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (9 page)

While Hitler spoke, Erik Hanussen needed to be silenced. He was a Jew, and no one could ever know that a Jew had anything to do with Hitler’s success. Hanussen had also lent thousands of marks to Nazi leaders, including Hermann Göring, and none of them intended to repay their debts.

He was killed on 25 March 1933,
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probably by the SA. His body, hastily buried in a field on the outskirts of Berlin, was discovered in late April. Hitler’s image was preserved at all costs; Fascist dictatorships depend upon a cult of personality, and Hitler’s personality was masterminded by Goebbels and protected by the stormtroopers.

Much like today’s lucrative merchandising of celebrities, Hitler
became highly marketable. Buttonhole souvenirs of his portraits sold in their thousands, as did albums into which were stuck postcard-sized photos of Hitler and other important members of the National Socialists. His pictures appeared on handkerchiefs, hand mirrors and ties. There was a brand of canned herring called ‘Good Adolf’. Ashtrays and beer mugs were decorated with the swastika, and money boxes were made in the shape of SA caps. ‘The masses need an idol,’ said Hitler,
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and he gave them one – himself.

There were still five million unemployed. Hitler launched the ‘battle of work’, touring the country to spread confidence among an uncertain populace. It was a tour that was more about image than actual productivity. He was filmed with a shovel, beginning work on the autobahn, a project prepared long before he came to power, and he laid the foundation stone for the new House of German Art in Munich. His popularity soared as the feeling spread that, at long last, life was improving for everyone under Hitler.

But there were those whose lives were to be blighted. In the spring of 1933 the first concentration camps were set up. At first, concentration camps were for the internment of political prisoners – that is, anyone who opposed Nazi policy in thought or deed. In time they became camps for torture, slave labour and ultimately extermination. While political prisoners suffered terror behind barbed wire, the ordinary folk joined in communal singing and family fun. Being German was like being in one big happy family, only nobody talked about the black sheep in the camps.

In March 1933 Joseph Goebbels was named Minister of Information and Propaganda, becoming ‘the agent for the
Führer
and chancellor for everything that is concerned with the cultural and artistic side of life’. He declared that there had been a crisis in the country that had been intellectual as well as material and economic. ‘This will continue’, he said, ‘until we have the courage to reform the German cinema right to its roots.’
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In a number of speeches, Goebbels pronounced that the role of the German cinema was to serve as the ‘vanguard of the Nazi military’ as they set forth to conquer the world.
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Culture, and the cult of celebrity, was to be at the heart of conquest. It was also at the centre of Hitler’s and Goebbels’s political views; instead of policies, they gave the
Volk
art which, they claimed, would serve their needs – but only after they had been rescued from the clutches of the Jews. The Nazification of culture, and of all institutions, was under way. It was decreed that only those with German citizenship could practise a profession, and all Jews and foreigners were excluded from the film and cinema industry. Jewish music was banned, and Jewish musicians and entertainers were not allowed to perform except to Jewish audiences, and then only if they were members of the
Jüdischer Kulturbund
(the Jewish Cultural Union), set up in 1933. Its membership was made up of over 1,300 male and 700 female artists, musicians and actors fired from German institutions. It eventually grew to about 70,000 members,
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but of course, in time, the
Jüdischer Kulturbund
would be curbed.

Not all Germans agreed with the regime’s ban on Jews. Wilhelm Furtwängler, the distinguished conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, wrote in an open letter in the
Vossische Zeitung
on 11 April 1933 that Jews were ‘genuine artists’, such as Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer and Rolf Reinhardt. Both Walter and Klemperer had already left Germany after threats that their concerts would be disrupted and the halls burned down, and because both musicians had international reputations they were able to pursue careers abroad, unlike other lesser-known musicians.
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Furtwängler argued in his open letter to Goebbels that the only distinction was the difference between ‘good and bad’ artists. Goebbels was an admirer of Furtwängler and had often praised him publicly and privately; in response to the conductor’s open letter he thanked Furtwängler for the ‘many hours of genuinely formative, great, and often overwhelming art’ which he had given to ‘his political friends and hundreds of thousands of good Germans’. But he declared, ‘There can be no art in the absolute sense, as it is understood by liberal democracy,’ and without directly referring to Jews he justified the exclusion of ‘rootless’ and ‘destructive’ artists from performing in Germany.
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Perhaps in part because of his admiration for Furtwängler, but also to a large degree his intention to mollify the famous conductor, Goebbels allowed Jewish musicians in the Berlin Philharmonic to continue performing with the orchestra, and personally assigned Furtwängler the privilege of conducting the orchestra at prominent state occasions. Nonetheless, in 1935 the Jewish musicians in the Berlin Philharmonic were finally excluded, and in that year Furtwängler’s Jewish secretary Berta Geissmar escaped to Britain.
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Most Germans preferred to turn a blind eye to what was really going on. On 1 April 1933, while Winifred Wagner and daughter Friedelind lunched at the Reich Chancellery with Hitler, out on the street organised violence raged against the Jews for the first time as shops and business owned by Jews were boycotted.
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Jewish lawyers and judges were physically prevented from reaching the courts, and some prominent Jews were rounded up by the SA and disappeared into concentration camps.

Hitler declared, ‘So this state and this Reich may exist in future millennia, we can be happy in the knowledge that this future belongs entirely to us.’ In actuality, he believed the future belonged entirely to himself.

L
ike Hitler, Joseph Goebbels was starstruck by movie stars, but what struck him even harder was the potential of films for the cause. Although music was his greatest love among the arts, he favoured cinema, not just because of its artistic and technical achievements but because it had become the universal medium of the age – and it could be controlled. A film, unlike a concert, or even a stage play, can be edited, scored and ready for screening in one complete form – total control – and Goebbels always had the final say on what finished form all films could be seen in, or not seen at all. His object was to ensure the world saw German films that portrayed the German people in a positive light, and that the German people saw only films that were of a wholesome nature in keeping with National Socialist policies. Films of the Reich did not need to be political to be effective propaganda. Both Goebbels and Hitler loved films that were larger than life, such as romantic sagas and historical epics. They both also saw cinema as being something much more than a form of entertainment. They intended to turn it into a powerful tool for social engineering.

Goebbels needed UFA, which was owned by publishing tycoon Alfred Hugenberg. Before Hugenberg owned it, UFA had long faced financial disaster due to various factors including the readjustment of the Reichsmark after a period of hyperinflation, and the failure to invest profits in infrastructure, as well as high production costs on films such as
Metropolis
. In 1925 the company was saved by a four-million-dollar loan from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount in Hollywood and an American distribution deal giving UFA 50 per cent of income from their own films shown in America. But America blocked most German films
and brought UFA to the brink of closure. In the minds of Hitler and Goebbels, this was a Jewish conspiracy.

The company was rescued in 1927 when Alfred Hugenberg, the leader of the German National Party, bought it and immediately instituted reforms. His trusted deputy Ludwig Klitzsch, who effectively ran the company, paid off the loan to Hollywood, and established a system of production with producers under contract. Hitler struck a deal with Alfred Hugenberg, appointing him as his Minister of Agriculture and Economics in his Cabinet in exchange for his studio; within weeks of the
Machtergreifung
Hugenberg had turned UFA over to Hitler, who gave it to Goebbels to control. Some 3,000 Jews were immediately banned from working at UFA.

One of the most high-profile casualties was producer Erich Pommer, who, with director Erik Charell, also a victim of the cull, had produced
Der Kongreß tanzt
(
The Congress Dances
), which was Germany’s most successful film of 1931. Fortunately, Pommer had foreseen the possible consequences of the Nazis’ takeover and had taken steps to protect his professional and personal future. Although he had received assurance from Ludwig Klitzsch in 1932 that UFA would not discriminate against Jews, Pommer, unconvinced, negotiated with the Fox Film Corporation (later to become 20th Century-Fox) the foundation of a European production subsidiary in Germany or France.

Recognising that Pommer could prove invaluable to the new UFA regime, Goebbels had the Foreign Office suggest to Pommer that he could be awarded honorary Aryan status if he remained active in the national cinema industry. When Pommer’s son, John, was banned along with all Jewish students from the forthcoming May Day parade, Pommer asked the Foreign Office negotiators how they could expect him to work in a country where his son was not good enough to march with his peers. He requested – and received – an exit permit and the necessary endorsements on his passport that would enable him to leave the country. He left that evening on the Berlin–Paris Express but fearing Goebbels might attempt to
block his departure, he told his driver to travel to Hanover to meet his train, from where Pommer drove unchallenged into France to work for the Fox Film Corporation, which eventually led to him going to New York.

Another cinematic art form that offered tremendous propaganda possibilities was the documentary. Hitler had long been aware of the value of capturing major events on film, partly to elevate his own public persona, which he was still in the process of evolving, and also to record his rise to power using the most modern techniques available. By the summer of 1933 he had almost achieved his goal of seizing complete power. To bring Hitler’s greatest gift – the spectacle of a Nazi rally – to the masses, he decided that the fifth Nazi Party rally, to be held at Nuremberg in September 1933, should be made into a film, and he personally asked actress-turned-director Leni Riefenstahl to make it.

Leni Riefenstahl, just thirty-one years old, had been a dancer from the age of sixteen, but after injuring her knee in 1924, she became fascinated with a film called
Die Weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü
(
The White Hell of Pitz Palu
). It was set in the mountains, a curious genre of movie which was big business in the 1920s, featuring daring men conquering the peaks and with pretty heroines thrown in for good measure. She travelled to the Alps in search of the film’s director, Arnold Fanck, and found the mountain-climbing, skiing stars of the film up in the Dolomites.

Fanck quickly took to her and cast her in a number of his famous mountain films, always as an athletic and adventurous young woman. In the process she became an accomplished mountaineer as well as a popular star with the German public in a number of silent movies. One of her biggest fans was Hitler.
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She did her own stunts, and nothing was faked when they filmed on location high in the ice. Even the avalanches were real. ‘Leni Riefenstahl had to work hard for her success. It took courage,’ said Guzzi Lantschner, the cameraman on those pictures. ‘But she accepted it and enjoyed doing it. She never grumbled that it was too difficult.’
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After losing the lead role in
The Blue Angel
to Marlene Dietrich in
1930
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she starred in Fanck’s
SOS Eisberg
(
SOS Iceberg
), and repeated the role in English for the American version, directed by Tay Garnett.

While accompanying Fanck to the 1928 Winter Olympic Games in St Moritz, she became interested in the art of filming and photographing athletes.
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She learned camera and filter techniques, and how to expose, develop and edit film. She was mostly self-taught, and when offered the chance to co-direct, with Béla Balázs, the romantic and mystical
Das Blaue Licht
(
The Blue Light
) in 1932, she jumped at the opportunity. She also starred in the film, which won a Silver Medal at the Venice Film Festival; her performance as a peasant girl who protects a glowing mountain grotto appealed to Hitler, who believed she epitomised the perfect German female.

Men were drawn to her, for her good looks and playful personality, but she was fiercely independent in a man’s world. Said actor Bobby Freitag, ‘She was capable, if need be, of running rings around men.’
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Men competed for her affections. She seemed to favour cameramen and fell in love with cinematographer Hans Schneeberger (who also acted in a few films), but when he left her, her world collapsed, and she made up her mind that from then on she wanted no romantic ties.

During the making of
Das Blaue Licht
she read
Mein Kampf
and said she was so immediately impressed that she ‘became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the first page’. Although hugely successful,
Das Blaue Licht
was not well received overseas, and Riefenstahl blamed Jewish critics for its failure.
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When the film was released in 1938, the names of Béla Balázs and Harry Sokal, who wrote the screenplay with Balázs, were removed from the credits because both were Jews.

In 1932 she heard Hitler speak at a rally and was mesmerised, recalling in her memoir ‘an almost apocalyptic vision’ which ‘touched the sky and shook the earth’. She wrote to Hitler, who responded by inviting her to meet with him; he was delighted that a star of her magnitude, and one he was clearly a fan of, should be an admirer of his. What may have struck a chord with Hitler was that having been rejected by the world of art and culture, here was an artist who
not only didn’t reject him but sought him out. This moment, when celebrity met celebrity, was to have lasting repercussions.

Although it had been Hitler’s goal to take control of German cinema, he knew that of greater cultural significance was German theatre, which, like the film industry, had suffered.

The end of the monarchies in 1918 altered the theatrical scene, and court theatres became state institutions.
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Without the royal support, funding now relied on box office takings and subsidies from regional bodies. Theatres in large states like Prussia adapted successfully, but provincial theatres struggled against the rising popularity of cinema as well as the financial instability of the Weimar Republic. By the end of the republic, many theatres were threatened with closure or were being forcibly merged with companies from neighbouring cities. Talk of the imminent disappearance of theatre as an art form was widespread.

German theatre was, ironically, saved by the
Machtergreifung
, but it was barely a peaceful salvation, nor a welcome rescue, but an aggressive takeover. Theatres were among the first Nazi targets during the
Machtergreifung
, and several municipal or state
playhouses
were stormed by SA detachments, while others were taken over by Nazi activists who had been operating for some time inside individual theatre companies. Within a few weeks, the swastika flag was flying over German theatres.

Because the theatre had possessed high political significance in the Weimar Republic with productions that explored controversial issues, it was the first part of German culture to undergo Nazification. The free-spirited artists and their Modernist approach were driven out by use of brutality and threats. Hitler would broach no controversy and he hated everything that was Modernist. Theatre, films and music were all to Hitler’s taste – often staid and old-fashioned. Culture was snuffed out. As the Third Reich expanded, people were forced out of their positions in the theatre, and some literally had to flee. Some were driven to suicide. Some died in the camps. Within the party there were a substantial number of dedicated theatregoers who hailed a bright new dawn,
but there were also some cultured Germans outside of the party who rejoiced at the purge of the theatres in 1933.
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Goebbels appointed Rainer Schlösser
Reichsdramaturg
(Reich playwright), head of the new theatre administration and chief censor of plays and opera. Schlösser was the son of a professor of literature and had been director of the prestigious Goethe and Schiller Archive. Born in Weimar, which was considered the official headquarters of the country’s Shakespeareans – his brother became a noted Shakespeare scholar – he had been a literary critic and cultural-political editor of the
National Observer
, and, as a National Socialist, his work and talents had been noted by Goebbels.

He took part in the reconstruction of German cultural life under Hitler as
Reichsdramaturg
and also as Undersecretary at the Reich Ministry for Public Entertainment and Propaganda, and became the first Vice President of the National Writers Union in 1934. After he complained of the high proportion of Jewish composers and librettists in Germany, he carried out Goebbels’s instruction for a ‘cleansing’.

By 1942 he had graduated to Secretary of the Department of Culture and was engaged in implementing measures to transform German cultural life until, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, he joined the remnants of an SS Panzer unit which was attacked and destroyed. Schlösser was lost, presumed killed. Few in the world of theatre mourned for him.

After the Nazification of theatre, it was the turn of the literary world to be consumed. On 10 May 1933, a fire was lit in every university town. Students hurled the works of banned authors into the flames. Some 20,000 books, judged by Goebbels to be poisonous to the German mind, were destroyed, throwing ‘the demons of the past to the flames’ as Goebbels put it. Just to read one of the books burned that night would result in immediate arrest.
Im Westen nichts Neues
(
All Quiet on the Western Front
) was among the thousands of books burned, Goebbels having declared that its author, Erich Maria Remarque, was descended from French Jews, although there was no evidence that was true. Goebbels also
claimed, falsely, that Remarque had not done active service during the Great War. Also burned were books by Albert Einstein, who developed the theory of relativity and is widely regarded as the father of modern physics. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics ‘for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect’. He was visiting the United States when Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, and chose not to return home. Goebbels proclaimed, ‘Jewish intellectualism is dead.’
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Leni Riefenstahl later claimed not to have known about the book burnings because she was away for six months making
SOS
Eisberg
.
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Some historians doubt this because her memories are often at odds with documented facts; she often made mistakes with dates in her memoir, for instance claiming not to have known about the 1938 pogrom that would become known as
Kristallnacht
because she was filming
SOS Eisberg
, when in fact she had been in America promoting
Triumph of the Will
. Perhaps she was abroad making
SOS Eisberg
at the time of the book burnings, in England, Switzerland or Greenland, but she was certainly back in Berlin on the afternoon of 16 May when Goebbels revealed to her his idea to make a ‘Hitler film’, which he believed she was enthusiastic about. That evening she accompanied Goebbels and Magda to see
Madame Butterfly
.
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The ‘Hitler film’ was something Goebbels was clearly passionate about, and it was a project that simmered for many years.