Overview

A presence in Third Reich cinema, Adolf Hitler also personally financed, ordered, and censored films and newsreels and engaged in complex relationships with their stars and directors. Here, Bill Niven offers a powerful argument for reconsidering Hitler's fascination with film as a means to further the Nazi agenda. In this first English-language work to fully explore Hitler's influence on and relationship with film in Nazi Germany, the author calls on a broad array of archival sources. Arguing that Hitler was as central to the Nazi film industry as Goebbels, Niven also explores Hitler's representation in Third Reich cinema, personally and through films focusing on historical figures with whom he was associated, and how Hitler's vision for the medium went far beyond straight propaganda. He aimed to raise documentary film to a powerful art form rivaling architecture in its ability to reach the masses.

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9781665235396

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Reviews

Bill Niven's book is important for social and cultural historians as well as biographers of Hitler. It expertly shows how an authoritarian ruler can influence an entire people through carefully administered doses of select propaganda.-- Michael H. Kater, author of The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich

Author Information

Bill Niven is professor of contemporary German history at Nottingham Trent University and the author of many works on twentieth-century German history, including Facing the Nazi Past and The Buchenwald Child. He lives in Edwalton, U.K. Julian Elfer is an award-winning, classically trained British actor with extensive stage experience. He studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and the British Academy at Oxford University, where he studied with the likes of Derek Jacobi, Fiona Shaw, and Alan Rickman. Elfer currently resides and acts in New York City.

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