Here Is Germany (1945) User Reviews

Clearly Propaganda, BUT...

[miller-steve · 5/10 · 28 July 2018]

SO obviously propaganda that I wonder WHAT was wrong with the USA of 1945 to find this appealing. The history is okay, but they fail to mention that in the seven months between the Armistice of 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies invaded Germany, thus violating the Armistice. THIS made Germany furious and lust for revenge. What I found fascinating with this was a new twist to the question of "How did Hitler rise to power?" This documentary alludes to it being the industrial powers who wanted their riches to grow and they needed a (poster child) for the people to rally around. They also needed to overthrow the democracy that had arisen around the end of WWI. They saw Hitler as the man to help them get back on their feet. ... I've never heard this angle before, but it makes more sense to me than Any of the propaganda pitches I'd grown up with. The fact that Hitler grew more powerful than the Rich & Powerful may have wanted isn't & doesn't need to be told. Frankly, my personal suspicion is that THEY remained in power After the end of the second world war.

German History 101 - intriguing

[suchenwi · 8/10 · 11 June 2010]

I am surprised that I am the first to comment on this... very gripping film, which seems to be very little documented - not even the director is recorded at IMDb. (I had a feeling it was Frank Capra, but Wikipedia doesn't list this in his filmography.) "Here is Germany" is an American propaganda, or shall we say instructional film which discusses the question why Germans, otherwise having quite some humanist and cultural traditions, could have been so beastly in WWII. To answer that, it reaches quite far back to late 18th century and contrasts revolutionary US and France, as well as Great Britain with its Magna Carta, to the late-feudalistic puzzle of mostly small states in Germany. Focus on Prussia and its mostly victorious wars, then the German-French war of 1870/71, then WWI, then WWII, and drawing continuity lines in the process.

The target audience would have been Allied soldiers preparing for the occupation of Germany, and it indeed gives a profound history lesson. Being a German myself, I was aware of most of the facts presented, but the mostly plausible context in which they were put amazed me and gave me good food for thought, especially the sabotaging of the short-lived Weimar republic 1918-33.

Hitler would've loved this sort of hypocrisy

[drystyx · 2/10 · 29 June 2011]

1945, and the Allies won the war. There really was no need to justify it. Even then, most people in Allied countries were patriotic.

So a propaganda film served little purpose. Here, Capra tries to demonetize every German instead of the Nazis in charge. Farmers and workers in Germany had no choice, and they couldn't help anyone but themselves, or they would starve. Yet Capra in one minute will say the common German was brutal and purposely aggressive, yet in the next minute admit the common German was being used.

He stresses the importance of bullying the common German. That would have made room for another Hitler to use these common Germans again. Capra is full of too many lies to forgive here. He simply doesn't place the blame where it belongs. And in doing so, he makes these common Germans susceptible to the very patriotism and liberty he claims they didn't want, and then claims they did. His hypocrisy is overwhelming.

If enough common Germans in 1945 were to see this and have it translated to them, they would have turned into the very sort of freedom fighting guerrillas that armies are terrorized by. Not only poor content, but poor propaganda.

Deutschland über alles

[nickenchuggets · 8/10 · 22 July 2021]

After world war 2, most people in europe, america, and every other continent were eager to get back to the way their lives used to be before all the violence. One man, Frank Capra, couldn't seem to accept the war was over. He had spent many exhausting months trying to put this film together, and by the time it was ready, the fighting had already ended and it was basically rendered pointless. Capra also produced another feature length film (Know Your Enemy: Japan) which focuses on the war in the pacific, and educated GI's about japan's culture, people, history, and ruthless military government. The film was released August 9, 1945, the same day japan was hit by a second atomic bomb, and so that film never achieved its purpose either. It's a shame these films weren't released earlier, because they would have provided valuable information to US soldiers regarding the motives of their enemies. Going back to Here Is Germany again, the film was originally supposed to be a companion to the japanese one, and basically has the same layout. It begins by showing a bunch of germans going about their daily business, the narrator telling us how "these people look alright", and do much the same work as people in the US (mailmen, clerks, musicians, traffic cops, etc.) It then shows horrific footage of death camps and piles of corpses, telling the viewer that germans have demonstrated throughout their history that they're incredibly violent and barbaric people. The film says this has been proven time and time again in german history, because germanic tribes caused the roman empire to collapse, a german (Martin Luther) is responsible for creating Protestantism in defiance of the Catholic church, and how Karl Marx (another german) laid the foundations for communism. The narration explains how germany has been creating war and destruction for a long time, because over 20 years before, soldiers in world war 1 were fighting the "Huns", the ww2 generation were fighting the nazis, and in the 1800s, they were called the Prussians. Huns, Prussians, and nazis. Three names for three different variations of germans. Later on, we are shown how ruthless german statesmen and military leaders such as Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm believed in german racial superiority, and how their race was better than everybody else on earth. The film attempts to say how nazis believed in racial supremacy because it is something deeply ingrained in german tradition, going all the way back to the 1700s. We then see how germany faced hard times after being beaten in the first world war, since they took all the blame. Still, America gave billions of dollars to support the new Weimar Republic, and it didn't occur to most people this money would be used by germans to build up their military for another war. By the time Hitler makes his presence known, he is merely carrying on the german tradition of being part of a "master race" and killing everyone who doesn't believe the way you do. It explains how Hitler was wildly popular among average german citizens because he promised a way out of the Depression, as well as building the Autobahn. In the film's final minutes, we are given words of caution by the narrator. He says how even though Hitler is dead and his Reich is no more, the world still needs to be careful regarding germans as a people. Their long-standing tradition of lust for conquest, war, and violence is something of an instinct for them, and if the world doesn't supervise them, another german will rise up and take over the world. We see how after world war 1, german factories and industry were left standing. By 1945, most of them were in ruins. After world war 1, the german general staff continued to function. After ww2, the entire german officers corps was dissolved so they couldn't plan another war. The entire country was going to be babysat this time because they could not be trusted, so the victorious countries wanted to remain in germany, even after it was cut in half. For 10 years, for 20, if necessary forever. The swastika may be gone, but until germans prove to the world they are truly sorry, they're still potential enemies. The narrator also states how ruthless discipline is how the average german got his soul, and Hitler's speeches have been burned into their heads from the moment they joined the army. That way, the world war 2 german can now be brainwashed like his father from world war 1, and his prussian father before him. The film ends with something similar to that. In all, Here is Germany is without a doubt propaganda. That doesn't mean it's bad, but Capra himself didn't want to be caught using the same techniques the nazis used, and he's guilty of the same thing. I liked how the film goes over how germany became so ridiculously powerful following world war 1, even though the country was plagued by ruinous inflation and degeneracy. It shows how resilient the public was. One of my favorite segments is when it shows how the Treaty of Versailles, which was supposed to prevent germany from starting another catastrophic war, was not enforced whatsoever. The treaty states that the german general staff is to be dissolved, the country is not allowed to have more than 100 thousand soldiers, it is to have no submarines, no air force, and the Rhineland is not to be occupied by german troops. The film elaborates on why these restrictions could have prevented another war, had they been enforced, but they weren't. Without a general staff, germany couldn't have planned world war 2. Without an air force, germany could not have attacked england. With no submarines, germany couldn't have disrupted american and british shipping in the atlantic. With an army of only 100 thousand men, they could not have attacked russia, and from a demilitarized Rhineland, they could not have attacked France. Hitler essentially spit in the face of everyone who thought a piece of paper was going to stop his country from waging war. It may be propaganda, but this film is required viewing for those who wish to understand why germany being aggressive in the second world war is not news.

The Germany We Chose To See!

[Sylviastel · 8/10 · 23 April 2011]

Frank Capra put together this compelling documentary about Germany as a country from it's history, culture, and ethnicity. According to the film, Germany is a country of hard-working and prosperous people who love their country, their leader, and the world. But we know better now after 66 years, Germany's leaders in the Third Reich had a diabolical plan to exterminate millions of people and propagandize the notion of superior race. You have to take the documentary's time period. 1945 was the end of World War II. The concentration camps were omitted probably only because the world had already so much to understand about this country called Germany under Hitler's reign. I can only believe that Capra would have included the concentration camps if possible. By 1945, the world was recovering and the news of the holocaust would surely shock the world again if they hadn't known the details of monstrosity and inhumanity at the hands of the German Nazis themselves. It's still worth watching to see how a country of millions can be fooled by a madman and his minions.

Post-Facto Condemnation.

[rmax304823 · 7 October 2011]

The Germans are an industrious, musical, law-abiding, tidy people -- says the narrator in this 1945 documentary by Frank Capra -- so how could they have turned into such monsters? Hitler would have said the Nazi adventures of World War II were an expression of German blood, but the writer tells us the ultimate cause was "tradition" or, as anthropologists would say, culture, not nature. Mention is made of famous German-Americans who escaped the trap of German culture: Admiral Nimitz, Wendell Wilkie, Henry J. Kaiser, and others.

Then we get an oversimple but still illuminating history of German militarism over the course of a hundred years or so. Americans don't really know much about international history, not even our politicians. We see footage of actors in costume during the period of Frederick the Great and Bismark, and documentary footage of Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler. We hear quotes taken from the writing and speeches of various German leaders, including all the above and von Clausewitz. It's kind of amusing. The quotes themselves are so barbaric that they must have been selected for their outrageousness and were surely taken out of context. Give me a Bible or a copy of Deepak Chopra and I'll select quotes that make each of them seem like tracts promoting Social Darwinism.

That initial presentation of the Germans as industrious, tidy, and so forth, establishes an eerie echo of Stephen Ambrose's description of a typical American GI's conception of the foreigners he fought with or through. The Arabs were filthy and disgusting liars. The Italians were phony and pushy. The French were dirty and couldn't be trusted. The British were stolid with no sense of humor. But the Germans were great! They knew how to take orders, they worked hard, they didn't cheat you, and they used toilet paper.

There is some particularly brutal footage of the victims of Nazi genocides and executions. Not just the pile of mannequin-like naked bodies we've become used to, but close ups of rotting corpses in Belgium, Italy, and Malmedy. There are a couple of live executions too. I'm not sure everyone would want to watch them.

So how does the film identify the heavies in the story? Well, Hitler and his goons, obviously. But the narrator comes very close to describing a military/industrial complex as well. This was about fifteen years before a retiring President Eisenhower warned us of the same tendency in the United States. And it gets positively spooky when the narrator describes the steps Hitler took in gaining absolute power -- destruction of unions, intolerance of dissent, a monopoly of the media, the silencing of scientists unless they agreed with the prevailing ideology, the paranoid notion that Germany was surrounded by hateful enemies, the persecution of communists and minorities. At times it sound positively frightening.

But it turns comic when the future of Germany is outlined. No more self rule until they learn their democratic lesson. This time there was no "truce," just "unconditional surrender." Their industry is destroyed. They are a beaten people and must admit it. (Nothing about turning the country into a traditional agrarian state, but almost.) The leaders are now the Allied military. We'll show them. And we DID. I think it was called the Wirtschaftswunder. In fifteen years everyone was driving Volkswagens with Blaupunkt radios.

Today, of course, they're the strongest economy in Europe, which isn't saying much, given the state of the global economy in general.

Excellent archive footage

[robinakaaly · 8/10 · 16 June 2011]

Apparently intended as an instructional film for American forces of occupation, this film was never in fact used as such. It starts with a view of a peaceful, cultured, civilised and industrious society, but then rapidly switches to the atrocities committed by Germany during the Nazi period, using some of the most graphic images I've seen. In particular, several atrocities committed in Italy, France and Belgium are identified, and there is footage from the concentration camps which are mentioned but not dwelt upon: given the footage shown, there was no need for the commentary to say more. As an explanation of how Germany came to this, the film looks back over several hundred years of German history, accentuating its expansionist and aggressive tendencies. There is also comparison with the democracies of America, Britain and France to show how great powers could be civilised. To illustrate its thesis, it uses footage from films about Frederick the Great, Bismarck, the Kaiser and others: much of this was of a high quality, though sadly none of it is identified. Having set its stall, so to speak, the film analyses the period from the end of the Great War to the Rise of Nazi-ism. It points out the canard that Germans felt their army was not beaten in 1918, but stabbed in the back by democrats who then signed the oppressive Treaty of Versailles. The reaction to the Treaty then allowed the industrialists, militarists, landowners and bureaucrats to return to power, using the demagogic power of the uneducated Hitler. At this point the logic wavers somewhat, since Hitler had had a plan of his own since the early twenties. Having shown how Hitler wielded power (in the suppression of democratic institutions - and with a gruesome clip of a fallbein), re-armed and then lost the war, the film end with a peroration about not letting this happen again, and how Germans must be reformed before being let back into the comity of nations. Being 1945 when we were still just about friends with the Soviet Union, there is little mention of the known atrocities being committed by Stalin, or his equally repugnant and repressive techniques against any opposition or call for democracy. The film's analysis is open to criticism, but its general tone matches that of A J P Taylor in his Course of German History written in 1944: ie modern Germany was the result of 1,000 years of barbarism. Interestingly, much of the music played is by Mendelssohn, who being Jewish, was not actually played in Nazi Germany.

Capra Does Propaganda

[dougdoepke · 10 December 2013]

The first few minutes are shockingly repellent, yet necessary viewing. The mountains of corpses in various stages of desiccation and decomposition are, as they say, mute testament to the horrors of war. In this case, they are apparent atrocities committed in the name of the Third Reich. But why not a single mention anywhere of the Nazi's chief victims, the Jews. It might have also been instructive to include gore from the fire-bombing of Dresden or the A-bombing of Nagasaki. But then this is a propaganda film through and through, and I would think an embarrassment to the prestigious names attached to it.

The chief propaganda technique is to decontextualize Germany's history, such that its militarist tradition—the movie's chief culprit—looks like it occurred in an historical vacuum. That way such WWII allies as France, Great Britain, and Russia cum Soviet Union, are not implicated in the rise of that tradition. Yet, each of these allies went through their own periods of militaristic expansion in pursuit of empire, as did the US in its steady westward expansion. Can we really blame one wolf for holding its own among the rest of the pack. Contrary to the film, pacifying a militaristic Germany really requires pacifying the entire pack, much as the EU has helped to do.

No need to go on with the selective vision of the filmmakers. After all, the production never really saw the light of day, and a good thing for post-war Europe.

These comments are not intended as a rationale for Hitler's very real murderous regime. They are intended to insist on an historical context for the rise of German militarism that goes beyond the film's state figureheads and pre-selected terms of the Versailles Treaty. At the same time, it's apparent that Capra and co. are no more above creating state propaganda than are artists from more notorious regimes. Too bad.

Compelling

[parsifalssister · 11 October 2010]

Now 65 years old, this documentary (by Frank Capra) is a combination of history and propaganda--where the line ends or begins is beyond my limited knowledge. However, it was fascinating to watch and piece together where Germany was in 1945 and where it is today.

Particularly educational were some of the words used by 3 generations of German leadership all favoring strong nationalism and expansionism whilst extolling German superiority.

Two weaknesses or strengths, depending on the viewers' point of view, is no mention of the atrocities of World War II and no comparisons between Germany and other expansionist countries (including the USA).

I recommend it as a piece of the past, but not to be taken on faith as either accurate or prize worthy as it paints Germany in too harsh a light.

Good Documentary from Capra

[Michael_Elliott · 17 August 2018]

Here Is Germany (1945)

*** (out of 4)

Anthony Veiller narrates this entry into Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" series. This film takes a look at Germany and tries to explain how they became what they did. We start off with a "cute" scene of the narrator explaining the great things about Germany but the tone quickly changes when we see the horrors from WWII including hundreds of dead bodies as well as the furnaces where so many were killed.

HERE IS GERMANY is one of the better films in the series as there's actually very little propaganda and instead it shows the horrors of the war. This series was good for the most part but there's no question that some of the comments were meant to produce anger or fear. There's nothing here that goes for fear but instead it shows what horrors Germany was actually committing in case there was someone watching who might not have realized why America was at war.

There's some great discussions about WWI as well as the then current situation and how going into the future America was going to be in charge of Germany, their school books and making sure that the events that happened would never happen again.