Hitler Lives

As has been noted, this is unmitigated propaganda. As with all good propaganda, there are elements of truth sprinkled throughout.

Fact is, there is a part of the German character that (not unlike "patriotic" Americans) believes in racial or societal or cultural superiority.

Totally unaware of the irony, this film attributes to Germans many of the same threats to society that 1930s Nazi propaganda assigned to Jews, gypsies, and gays. This film was made a decade before Brown v. Board of Education, two decades before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, more than half a century before 9/11.

"Others" are to blame, you know. They always are.

Narrow minded and positively worthless, the short "Hitler Lives" is the kind of piece of filmmaking that shouldn't exist at all, and not even get an Oscar with such miserable remarks.

End of WWII, Germany defeated and it's all quiet on the front, right? Wrong, according to this documentary. The danger now is the countless Nazists hidden amidst the German people, painted here as evil people, everybody had the same goal. It's too easy to beat up someone who's down and this thing makes it perfectly by quoting that Germans are a line of people who always needs blood and conquer lands, from Bismarck to Hitler. Sure, their leader at the time said things about them being of a superior race but that didn't mean all Germans agreed with such statement and his politics.

Often sarcastic and extremely filled with some prejudice, this propaganda made by the American government isn't different than the one famously known in the world in "Triumph of the Will". Its purpose is to explain why U.S. forces had reasons to stay in Germany to make it a safer place and to impeach that new radical movements rise up to surface to cause more damage to the world, that's the idea the film promotes by stating that Germans never know how to be and stay peaceful ("War. Phoney peace. War. Phoney peace." says the narrator). One can argue that the film's message of alerting people about the possibilities of a Nazi threat born again is useful, relevant but the problem is that it does that by generalizing that all Germans were favorable, supported the regime and they're all evil.

Good and informative archive footage is intertwined with some poor segments with actors. Thankfully this is short, never getting near the epic, boring yet important Riefenstahl film and those long marches and speeches. Worths a view for the presentation, the images and the way they sell an idea. The picture as a whole it's ridiculous. 4/10

Hitler Lives (1945)

** (out of 4)

Stupid yet very strong propaganda film made by the War Department warning U.S. soldiers still in Germany not to trust their people even though the war is over. The documentary short tells us why German's are such evil people without holding back any punches. This type of thing certainly isn't going to sit well when viewed today but I suppose it did have a purpose in 1945 but even then this thing just goes way too far. The film preaches a lot of hatred while at the same time telling us that German people are wrong because they hate others. This film preaches that Americans are better yet it puts Germans down because they think they are better. This film preaches that German's hate other races and that American's "can love all races" yet I guess that didn't includes blacks considering how they were treated in our country in 1945. This film goes even further about shaking hands of German people because those same hands are the ones that killed women and children. We get some very graphic photos of various dead bodies being burned, buried or hung. There are some really ugly images here that many are going to turn their head away from but in the end it's all to throw fear at Americans. While this film is rather unpleasant to watch there's no doubt it's rather original as I can't recall too much preaching this much hatred.

An extraordinarily powerful and deeply moving condemnation of Nazism and the threat it still represented among the German population following WWII. Beautifully directed by Don Siegal and featuring a stunning script by Theordore Geisel, this short film delivers a profound message in our own time. It is a sharp warning indeed to our own republic as it endures leadership that is pure demagoguery, authoritarianism, and dishonesty. The Germans bought the Big Lie Hitler was selling and now, an incredible number of Americans are doing the same. This film is a must see and should be shown in every theater and on television nightly for the next few years.

That's Benjamin Franklin's response to people who asked him, as he left the Constitutional Convention, what sort of government we had. In the same way, this short subject at the end of 1945, answers the question about what's the state of the world: a peace, if you can keep it.

Of course this short focuses on Germany, warning its audience that Germany had been a threat before, and could be a threat again, if we weren't careful. There's a tendency for people to see the past repeating itself.

As Mark Twain noted, history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Two months after this short was released, Churchill made his "Iron curtain" speech and the Cold War was on.