Hitler and Film

The Führer's Hidden Passion

By: Bill Niven

Narrated by: Julian Elfer

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.

©2018 Bill Niven (P)2018 Tantor

Critic 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)

Interesting overview of film in the third Reich.

Enjoyed listening to how the film industry in Germany relates to the third Reich and how the Reich used the film industry. The sections on propaganda and Leni Riefenstahl had details I hadn't heard previously. Narration was good as well.