ALLTAGSLEBEN UNTER DER DIKTATUR:  1933-1945

What was it like to live in WWII Germany from 1933 to the bitter end in 1945?  This DVD should give you more than an idea.  While knowing German would be a help, it is hardly necessary to watch this film:  there is no narration and your journey through the Land of the Dictator is via pop music of the time, as well as film clips, cartoons, home movies and newsreel footage from the 1930s and 40s.  The regime's obsession with good health and fitness is explored as is the fascination for new technology and the vilification of the Jews.  Zeppelins float in the sky, the trains are on time and soldiers march off to war, soon to (hopefully) be once more at home with their sweethearts.  A less than jovial undercurrent runs through the whole film, though, as an entire society marches in lock-step to its certain, horrific destruction while trying to take all the world down with it.  What emerges from it all is a portrait of how the same tools of popular cuture in the US or other free countries can also be used to promote fascism, stressing the unity of the group rather than the worth of the individual.  What is even more startling is how the fads and obsessions of the Germans in the 30s and 40s resembled those of the US in the 50s!  A truly worthwhile film, both as a cautionary historical document and as a fascinating study of the seductive power of the media to indoctrinate.

NOTE:  This film contains many previously unshown films taken from German archives, including a lot of color film.  However, some of the material, especially the films from the Warsaw Ghetto, the deportations of the Jews and the liberated concentration camps are very moving and might be disturbing to sensitive viewers.

IN GERMAN, but contains no narrative except within the individual clips.

76 minutes long.

FILM QUALITY:  DVD-R HAS EXCELLENT QUALITY.