Hitler's Children exists now only as a historical curio an example of wartime propaganda at its most blatant. There are a few points of interest: Edward Dmytryk directed it, and Roy Webb wrote the score, while a number of not-too-small stars showed up to perform their patriotic duty: Tim Holt and Bonita Granville claim top billing, assisted in a large cast by Otto Kruger, H. B. Warner, Kent Smith and Hans Conried.
The movie opens with a tableau of a nighttime Nazi rally that might be a Ku Klux Klan meeting or one of Wieland Wagner's postwar Wagner productions at Bayreuth. It tells the story of Granville, an American of German extraction who is, basically, kidnapped by the Reich. Troubled by her mistreatment, childhood sweetheart Holt, now a Nazi officer, ultimately if too late sees the error of his ways.
Propaganda, of whatever stripe, adopts totalitarian rules, or lack thereof. We're asked simultaneously to accept contradictory propositions: that an evil clique illegitimately holds the power of the state and imposes Nazism on a terrorized populace, but that the populace fervently believes in Nazi values and supports Hitler's government at great personal sacrifice. When Hitler's Children was released, The United States was already at war with Germany. The question remains, at whom was this propaganda directed, and what did it hope to accomplish?
NOTE: Owing presumably to wartime passions, Hitler's Children became one of RKO's biggest money-makers up to that time (far outdoing, for instance, Citizen Kane).
The movie opens with a tableau of a nighttime Nazi rally that might be a Ku Klux Klan meeting or one of Wieland Wagner's postwar Wagner productions at Bayreuth. It tells the story of Granville, an American of German extraction who is, basically, kidnapped by the Reich. Troubled by her mistreatment, childhood sweetheart Holt, now a Nazi officer, ultimately if too late sees the error of his ways.
Propaganda, of whatever stripe, adopts totalitarian rules, or lack thereof. We're asked simultaneously to accept contradictory propositions: that an evil clique illegitimately holds the power of the state and imposes Nazism on a terrorized populace, but that the populace fervently believes in Nazi values and supports Hitler's government at great personal sacrifice. When Hitler's Children was released, The United States was already at war with Germany. The question remains, at whom was this propaganda directed, and what did it hope to accomplish?
NOTE: Owing presumably to wartime passions, Hitler's Children became one of RKO's biggest money-makers up to that time (far outdoing, for instance, Citizen Kane).