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. …

[2ndDivisionVet]

Duh!

[clearcarbon]

"specific Jews in the movie business made decisions to work with Nazi leaders,"

...in exchange for the implied promise that they'd be eaten last.

[Norm Lenhart]

Trying to compose a shocked face.......

Trying.......

Trying........

Nope. No shocked face.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Hollyweird has always loved leftist “ism” politics. Fascism, Communism, Totalitarianism. Everything but pro-Freedom.

[laplata]

Nazi influence in Hollywood made no difference.

[nathanbedford]

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.

[60Gunner]

Ya don’t say...

[Olog-hai]

No difference in what?

[RedHeeler]

What would “it” illuminate? Just wondering, nathanbedford.

[laplata]

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

The Bunds were more influential but they disappeared after Pearl Harbor.

[boop]

It's been said before, but someone, (I forget who) spilled the beans that the greatest power that Communists had in Hollywood wasn't making PRO-_Commie movies, but in PREVENTING ANTI-Commie movies from being made.

Frankly I find the idea that Hollywood ever made pro-Nazi movies laughable. Even in the '40s they were making fun of Hitler.

Like Chaplin's The Great Dictator. 1940.

By the 50's they were making very non-subtle anti-McCarthy movies.

Hell, even Woody Allen was making them in the 60s/70s (The Front).

And even in the 2000s. Goodnight and Good Luck.

I might have been one of about 10 people who found the Edward R. Murrow character unsympathetic. Despite all the awards it won.

He says: "Everyone KNOWS where I stand on communism".

Uh, NO Edward I DON'T. I still don't.

Yeah you hated McCarthy, but that doesn't mean you're some anti-Commie.

[Fiji Hill]

It's interesting that Hollywood's relationship with the Nazis has recently come under scrutiny by historians. Just a few weeks ago, Hollywood and Hitler 1933-1939 by Thomas Patrick Doherty (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013) hit the bookstores.

[TigerClaws]

There’s a film in the works on the Nazi/IBM collaboration as well.

[Fiji Hill]

It's been said before, but someone, (I forget who) spilled the beans that the greatest power that Communists had in Hollywood wasn't making PRO-_Commie movies, but in PREVENTING ANTI-Commie movies from being made

Some great anti-commie books that would probably have been Hollywood blockbusters had they been made:

• Witness by Whittaker Chambers (New York: Random House, 1952)

• Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (New York: Macmillan, 1941)

• Out of the Night by John Valtin (New York: Alliance, 1941)

• I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official (New York: Scribner's, 1946)

• In Stalin's Secret Service by Walter Krivitsky (New York: Harper, 1939)

[llevrok]

well documented involvement of not only Nazi’s but communists with Hollywood during WW2 in the book, “The Dangerous Otto Katz: The Many Lives of a Soviet Spy “

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9142314-the-dangerous-otto-katz

[UnwashedPeasant]

ism!

[llevrok]

Not to forget Joseph Kennedy Sr’s involvement with the Nazi’s pre-war.

[boop]

"Not to forget Joseph Kennedy Sr’s involvement with the Nazi’s pre-war."

Yes, I made this point on another board. Nobody believed it. Then that story recently came out about JFK "admiring" Hitler. Now that I find hard to believe, because JFK fought the Nazis in WWII.

His dad wasn't so picky though, on who he did business with.

With liberals, as long as it involves enriching oneself even with anti-Americans, or criminals, all is forgiven.

And forgotten.

Ref: George Soros.

I think the only reason he hasn't been strung up is that he pays handsomely for good press.

[laplata]

FDR brought Joe Kennedy, Sr. home from Britain because as US Ambassador to the UK, he showed sympathy for the Nazis.

JFK didn’t fight the Nazis. He was in the Pacific. But didn’t JFK have an affair in England with a German girl before he went into the US Navy?