NFR Project: 'The March of Time -- Inside Nazi Germany' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘March of Time: Inside Nazi Germany’

Dir: Jack Glenn

Premiere: Jan. 18, 1938

16 min.

The March of Time originated as a radio program on WLW in Cincinnati in 1928. It became popular, and went to CBS in 1931. Conceived of as a weekly half-hour summary of world news, it was sponsored by Time magazine. In each half-hour, straight reporting would be mixed with dramatic reenactments. The show used actors who sounded uncannily like the world leaders that were quoted in the show, giving the audience a sense of authenticity and immediacy that was unmatched.

In 1935, a film version of The March of Time began to play in movie houses across the country, at the rate of about one a month. These were usually a compilation of reporting on different events, but this episode is different. This particular episode tackled only one subject -- marking the first time that the mainstream American media took a good, hard look at the goings-on in Nazi Germany.

The film is definitely peddling a viewpoint. It establishes Germany as a calm and happy land, then digs underneath the rhetoric to outline the Reich’s actions against religious freedom, against Jews, against union organizing, subordinating everyone and everything to the needs of the state.

The film’s narrator notes that there is “no apparent resentment against a government whose campaign and suppression and regimentation has shocked the world’s democracies,” going on to state that “Every known radical, every known liberal, is either in hiding, in prison, or dead.”

It sees the Nazis as abhorrent and is not unwilling to say so. “To the good Nazi, not even God is above Hitler.” It outlines how all media is controlled by state propagandists, and how all communications of its citizens are monitored to ensure purity of thought. All the resources of the state are placed at the disposal of Hitler and his minions, to glorify their hateful philosophy of racial superiority.

It speaks to the privations of the ordinary people of Germany, condemning them for trading freedom for security. The film is bolstered with images of the duped people, of Hitler, of Nazi-ism at work. The indoctrination of youth is particularly emphasized. A child is taught that “he is born to die for the Fatherland,” that he must “think and act as he is told.” The movie even makes the eerie prediction that Germany would soon invade other countries in order to absorb their resources and means of production. It even exposed the activities of American pro-Nazi groups, which were more prevalent than we would care to remember today.

Surprisingly, many in America weren’t ready for the message. Warner Brothers refused to show the film in its theaters, and the Chicago Board of Censors banned it as unfriendly to Germany. It was unusual for a news organization to advocate strongly against a sitting government, but by this time, the truth about the dangers of fascism was finally getting out and finding general acceptance. The March of Time is sounding a warning; one that would go unheeded until it was too late to stop a second World War.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Our Day.