The Eternal Jew
Germany, 1940; 68 mins.
Directed by Fritz Hippler

One of the distinctive qualities of the "totalitarian" regime of the Third Reich was how insecure its leaders felt in their relations with the German population, particularly when their policies obviously ran against what many Germans still thought of as common humanity. In 1940, then, as the regime cranked up the policy of uprooting Germany's and Austria's Jews in order to cram them into Eastern ghettos, many leading Nazis believed that they must make special efforts to educate the Germans about how hateful and dangerous the Jews really were -- how deserving of extreme measures and unworthy of pity. Goebbels opposed the idea of a special propaganda film that would display in harsh visual terms the "terrible truth" about the Jews, because he thought few people would see it; it would be less effective than an entertainment film with an anti-Semitic message (like the popular historical film Jew Süss, also released in 1940). But others had their way, and Goebbels's Reich Propaganda Ministry agreed to sponsor this film, assigning one of its people, Fritz Hippler, to assemble it.

Goebbels was right -- few people wanted to see this film, and it had little impact. It is nonetheless exemplary in its way. Not only in its voice-over (which is unfortunately in German without subtitles), but in its selection of disturbing images and its juxtapositions, the film must indeed suggest to an impressionable viewer that the Jews are an alien race with repulsive traits, which has somehow insinuated itself among ordinary people and systematically undermined and perverted healthy institutions and cultural beliefs -- acting as criminals and terrorists, socialists and communists, decadent artists and pornographers, and even proponents of the absurd theory of relativity!

This film lets you into the minds of the Nazi Jew-haters in a way mere reading cannot do. But be warned: Much of this "demonstration" is ugly, either visually or in its implications, and in some parts -- especially scenes of kosher slaughter -- it is stomach-turning.