Det stora filmkriget : Joseph Goebbels´ kamp mot Hollywood som inslag i nazismens raspolitik

Sammanfattning: The doctrinal difference between Nazism and Fascism in relation to anti-Semitism forms a theoretical basis for this thesis, in which a historical course of events is reconstructed in order to evaluate the influence of anti-Semitism on measures against Hollywood in the Third Reich. Since Hitler wanted to accomplish a spiritual revolution against "Jewish culture", one could presume that the Nazis would have prohibited the exhibition of American films in Germany in 1933. This was not the case, however, and out of consideration for the negative side effects on the German film economy Goebbels only gradually diminished the import of Hollywood productions.Based on the available information, it can be stated that in their film relations with Poland, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and France, the Nazis demanded that all Jewish moviemakers be excluded from films designed for export to Germany. At the same time, however, they also co-operated with "Jewish" film companies in Europe and the USA. In spite of a strong anti-Nazi mood among film employees, the Hollywood companies did not adopt any negative attitude towards Germany or any other foreign country, as the production of political films was considered to lead to certain economic failure. In the autumn of 1938, nevertheless, Warner Brothers took a sensational step by starting to make the film "Confessions of a Nazi Spy". Hitler himself indirectly referred to this motion picture in his speech to the German Parliament in January 1939 and threatened that if "Jewry would once more throw the World into war, it would lead to the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".In the summer of 1940, the government in Washington was mobilizing the American film industry into its own service, and the isolationists were accusing the film executives of doing whatever the leading interventionists wished. Nevertheless, these accusations of a secret collaboration between the American government and the film industry were never proved to be true. In principle, most of the Hollywood companies did not have anything against the film trade with Germany and the countries in its sphere of power, but in the spring of 1941, Goebbels started to organize a prohibition against Hollywood in Europe, in order to establish the greatest cultural and propagandistic "command pool" of all times. The wish to maintain strong war morale and other similar goals were not in any way final or controversial aims and, one must therefore conclude that the Nazi leaders had another primary goal. Only the assumption that it was the radical solution of "the racial question" explains the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazis against the American film world. Consequently, the theory about a great doctrinal difference between Nazism and Fascism concerning anti-Semitism holds true for the ideologies themselves, but not entirely for the film-related political practice in Germany in comparison with Italy in the 1930s and 1940s