Dismantling the Dream Factory: The Film Industry in Berubbled Germany

Abstract

In this essay I will tell the story of the German film industry in the postwar years, 1945-1948. The Allies immediately took control of the Nazi's partner in propaganda and Hollywood's only rival. The German film industry was transformed, within a matter of weeks, from an industrial superpower to a cottage industry. The film industry deserved strong condemnation for its collaboration with the Nazis. The Allies' reasons for taking control of the industry and all of filmmaking in Germany are clear. Nevertheless, in so doing, not only did they wipe out one of the Nazi party's most valuable weapons, they also truncated postwar filmmakers' ability to make a different kind of film. The German industry was rendered irrelevant in the years of the occupation to such an extent that it has never recovered. Hollywood thereby lost its most viable competitor. Germans lost a voice that may have given creative force to an honest reckoning with the horrible past in which both industry and audience were, to varying extents, culpable. Until the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich effective at midnight on 8 May 1945, Germany had one of the strongest, most productive film industries in the world. A cartel of studios, producers, distributors, and cinemas left the theaters free of competition and with an audience positively disposed to domestic films. Not only was the film industry implicated in the National Socialist capture and maintenance of power, it also benefited from the war effort. German films had unprecedented access to the cinema market all over Europe. The films filling the schedules of movie theaters throughout the continent were not the propaganda pieces we have come to associate with the regime. Rather, the industry produced a heavy fare of popular entertainment films, similar in look and feel to the Hollywood products of the era. In fact, the German film industry of the late 1930s and early 40s enjoyed a success paralleled only by its American counterparts. And their monopolistic business practices were not radically different from those of the Hollywood studios during the same era. The Allies did not wait until the zero hour for their cultural