New Book Finds Ties Between Nazis and Hollywood

INN ^ | 7/1/2013, 4:45 AM | Elad Benari

[Olog-hai]

A soon-to-be released book claims that the Hollywood film industry had close ties to the Third Reich, the Yisrael Hayom daily reported on Sunday.

Hollywood’s major studios not only passively accepted Nazi censorship, but actively collaborated with Hitler’s propaganda machine to protect their interests in the German market, according to the book written by Harvard University doctoral student Ben Urwand. …

“Hollywood [in the 1930s] is not just collaborating with Nazi Germany; it’s also collaborating with Adolf Hitler, the person and human being,” Urwand, 35, was quoted as having said in an interview with The New York Times.

The fact that the Nazi regime intervened in the film industry during Hollywood’s golden age is known and even documented, but Urwand suggests another story, based on American and German archival material, that the relationship between Hollywood and the Third Reich was deep and long-lasting. This warm relationship continued until the beginning of the 1940s. …

[gattaca]

Robert Clary, the guy who played Frenchie in Hogan’s Heroes was in a concentration camp. I watched a documentary about Hollywood’s depiction of the Holocaust, and he was interviewed.

[2ndDivisionVet]

All the men who play the main German soldiers (Col. Klink, Gen. Burkholder, Major Hochstetter and Sergeant Schultz) in the show are Jewish.

[gattaca]

I didn’t know that.

[jmacusa]

I find this rather hard to believe since many German actors like Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre, directors like Fritz Lang and German writers , scientists left Germany when, and in some cases before, the Nazis took power. I couldn't imagine why they would help to glorify them in Hollywood of the late 30's and during the war.

[nathanbedford]

As you are no doubt aware many communists in the United States and in Great Britain engaged in propaganda covering the most egregious of Stalin's crimes in the 1920s and 30s. During most of these decades the American communists opposed Hitler but during the rather brief time of the Hitler/Stalin pact these same communist reversed field and supported Hitler's regime.

When The House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating the Hollywood communists the investigators were and still are decried as alarmists and anti-Jewish bigots. They are still being excoriated in academia as a right-wing, know nothing, persecutor's of innocent people of talent who were not communists. Sean Penn's father, for example, was a communist who went on the blacklist and had to make his living outside of Hollywood, still writing for the Broadway stage if I recall correctly.

The point is that these communists are held up as martyrs, men who were idealists and who were not in thrall to Stalin. The contrary in many cases is the reality.

The historical result of all this is that it is incredibly difficult today to make the case that anyone, (dare I say the name, Barack Obama?) is a communist. This has the effect of insulating much of the green movement and much of the leadership of the European Union from their communist biographies. I do not think it was an accident that Van Jones was removed from the Obama administration not because he was an acknowledged communist but because he was a "truther."

I believe that it would be illuminating to know if these same individuals cynically followed the Soviet line during the time of the pact because it would demonstrate that they were hardly high-minded idealists but down the line ideological, Soviet, communists.

[FreedomPoster]

You bring up the key point right there. The hardcore Communist Left in America were very Nazi friendly up until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Hitler had been allied with the Soviets for years, and had circumvented many parts of the Vesailles Treaty with Uncle Joe’s help. Their working together long predated Molotov Ribbentrop. The Communist Left in the US was getting their marching orders from Moscow, and that included being friendly to the Soviet’s allies, the Nazis.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

JFK didn’t fight the Nazis. He was in the Pacific

. . . but then, JFK wasn’t even the one Joe Sr. was grooming for POTUS.
That was Joe, Jr. - and he flew bombers against the Nazis.

And died doing it.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I read somewhere that most every actor playing a German in that show was Jewish. All of leading German roles.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

It would be illuminating to learn whether the likes of Sean Penn's father who collaborated with communists throughout his career in Hollywood also collaborated with the Nazis, at least during the period of the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact.

7 posted on July 1, 2013 1:38:59 AM EDT by nathanbedford

You bring up the key point right there. The hardcore Communist Left in America were very Nazi friendly up until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Hitler had been allied with the Soviets for years, and had circumvented many parts of the Vesailles Treaty with Uncle Joe’s help. Their working together long predated Molotov Ribbentrop. The Communist Left in the US was getting their marching orders from Moscow, and that included being friendly to the Soviet’s allies, the Nazis.

Ah, yes . . . there was the famous story of the Daily Worker rushing out its first edition after the German invasion of the USSR - lambasting the fascists on the front page, but not having taken time to redo the editorial page, which was pro-Nazi.

[Condor51]

Okaaay... I like the way that INN .. uh .. 'embellished' .. their version of this 'story' from the original small one that was released Friday to make it a tad juicier and 'believable'. Just a couple of points that 'might be' salient:

• The author of this book, Ben Urwand, is not a 'Scholar', not a Historian (and maybe not even as a history major). He's A Folk Musician!
• All reputable Historians and 'Scholars', who aren't exactly 'Nazi Friendly', have dismissed this guys writings and this book as .. without getting vulgar -- hogwash.

Now as to the studios doing business with pre war Germany, so what? They're a business, they broke no law and last I read they had movies theaters in Germany.

And whooppee, this Folk Musician 'author' is enrolled at Harvard, another so what. Look at the mope in the WH and the other Harvard mopes he hired as 'czars' and that lesbo 'just-us' Kagan - Harvard. Screw Harvard, screw these asshats, WWII ended in 1945 get a f__king life.

[Olog-hai]

Is this a defense of Hollyweird? Very liberal-like, what with shooting the messenger.

[capt B]

Leftist rewriting history. “Hollywood Party”- Billingley “How Communism seduced Hollywood.” Then there are all the Hollywood types who took the 5th, some testified, etc
Hollywood still can’t tell the truth about Stalin’s USSR and we still get anti Nazi movies

[Olog-hai]

How many anti-Nazi movies were produced in the 1930s?

[laplata]

That’s right.

[laplata]

All the men who play the main German soldiers (Col. Klink, Gen. Burkholder, Major Hochstetter and Sergeant Schultz) in the show are Jewish.
—

Werner Klemper (sp) who played Col. Klink was a hard core leftie in real life.

[Safetgiver]

Nazi influence in Hollywood made no difference....In what? Please explain.

[laplata]

I didn’t express that very well. They made no difference in influencing public opinion or government policy.

[ArrogantBustard]

Werner Klemperer agreed to play Klink if and only if he could portray Klink as an idiot and a poltroon.

[Safetgiver]

Werner Klemper (sp) who played Col. Klink was a hard core leftie in real life..... Yes. A Jew.

[laplata]

Yes. A Jew.

---

If he’d been alive, he would have voted for Obama.