The optimistic language of the new redeemers promised to inau-
gurate a new age, to establish a millennial Reich, to lead the way
to an exciting and meaningful future. The National Socialists were
skillful in coopting concepts to describe this improved future.

It was no mere coincidence that there were six million unem-
ployed in Germany as the Weimar republic was collapsing in
1932. Inevitably, the Depression and the radicalization of domes-
tic politics resulted in new elections that same year ( 31 July 1932),
elections in which the Nazis received 13.5 million votes and
emerged the clear winners, their votes having come not only from
the army of the socially disadvantaged but mostly from the con-
servatively minded middle class. Using social demagoguery to
trumpet his idea of a future "national community" (Volksgemein-
schaft) as a cure for Germany's ills, vowing to avenge the shame
of Versailles, and offering a formula for the restoration of order,
Hitler and his tightly organized party proceeded to build a mass
movement. The artful dialectics of Dr. Goebbels had entered the
homes of the electorate in 1932 through the loudspeakers of 4.25
million radios. Skilled in the uses of psychology, his voice crack-
ing, Goebbels instilled in the hearts and minds of the broad
masses the idea of the Führer as the new messiah. The spoken
word and songs substituted for a political program. As Wilhelm
Frick put it on 19 February 1933 in Dresden: "They say we don't
have a program; but the name Hitler is program enough." ² Pro-
paganda was the program of the NSDAP, and that is where it
focused its energies.

It was this "program" that dictated the ceaseless staging of
mass rallies and parades, the intoxication with flags, the pylons of
smoking torches, and the echo of martial music, with all its atten-
dant vulgar "ballyhoo." "The art of propaganda," Hitler sensed in
1924, "lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great
masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the
way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses." ³

Immediately after the Nazis came to power on 30 January
1933, the newly established Ministry for Popular Enlightenment
and Propaganda proceeded to take over the film industry. With
the creation of the Reich Film Chamber on 22 September 1933, the
NSDAP assumed complete control of the motion-picture indus-
try. The first year of production under the Nazis resulted in a kind
of film trilogy on the theme of martyrdom: SA-Mann Brand ( Storm
Trooper Brand, 1933), Hitlerjunge Quex (Hitler Youth Quex, 1933),
and Hans Westmar ( 1933). The purpose of these films was to raise

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