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Monday, October 16, 2017
All's Fair In War And Film Part III
The colonial activities in Africa and the Boer War would prove a fruitful source of anti-British propaganda. 1941's Ohm Kurger though one of the more impressive productions, would offer a wickedly coarse caricature of Queen Victoria and ludicrously credit the British with the invention of the concentration camp. Other films that were slanted the same way included Titanic (1943), where the ship hit the iceberg as a result of the sins of Jewish-English plutocracy, and two films by Goebbels' brother-in-law Max W. Kimmich, portraying British brutalities in Ireland during the Irish struggle of independence in the first World War ; The Fox of Glenarvon (Der Fuchs von Glenarvon, 1940) and Mein Leben fur Irland (My Life For Ireland,1941).
Several other films were simply for escapism with the odd hint of propaganda. Goebbels spent much money developing Agfacolor so that German audiences would not lose out on color films while the rest of the universe was enjoying early Technicolor movies. To commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Ufa, Goebbels planned the highly elaborate fantasy film Munchhausen (1943), studied Disney's feature cartoons and Korda's The Thief of Bagdad and produced something almost comparable. But his monumental undertaking was Kolberg, it began in 1943 and was completed near the end of 1944. Geared to the declining course of the war, the film shrewdly portrayed the citizens of Kolberg who were besieged during the Napoleonic wars and heroically holding out against amazing odds. By the time the film was ready for release in early 1945, it had no value as propaganda for Germany was close to defeat.