m the programme at the Cannes film festival.
Jutta Braun, a senior researcher at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, has uncovered evidence that these efforts were much more extensive than previously known, and lasted until well into the 1970s.
Sifting through the archives of the German Federal Press Office (BPA), Braun found officials had not only maintained a list of “anti-German propaganda” in war films but also used underhand means to try to get them pulled from cinemas and television schedules.
Its targets were numerous: not only Combat! and Night and Fog but also other popular American series such as The Rat Patrol, which told the story of American and British soldiers trying to sabotage Rommel’s Afrika Korps, and Jericho, which followed British, American and French spies behind enemy lines.
In 1965 the West German embassy in Washington, led by an ambassador who had previously headed the anti-American propaganda section in the Nazi German foreign ministry, went so far as to blame “the type of Jewish liberal who has great influence in the modern communications industry” for the tide of “hate-films” that had added murderous German soldiers to the pantheon of “bad guys”.
Amazing. And for decades everyone would have unquestioningly shared their horror that such a sentiment could be voiced. Not any more, though..
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