This is a book about the use of sound in Nazi propaganda. It is written by Carolyn Birdsall, an interdisciplinary researcher at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences from the one of the biggest schools in Europe, University of Amsterdam. The relevant part of this text is the chapter Cinema as a Gesamtkunstwerk. Here she demonstrates that Nazi cinema was predicated on a creative endeavor that traces its roots back to Wagner in the 19th century German operatic tradition. Herein lies the concept of the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, meaning the “total work of art” which combines music with visual art. The Nazis found in cinema the expression of this great ideal because, the medium combines the visuals of the moving image with the sound and music of the audio.
The knowledge contained in the chapter Cinema as a Gesamtkunstwerk is useful for helping your reader come to an understanding of why the Nazis valued cinema as a medium, as well as its relation to German culture and history. I didn't have enough time to use this source, but that's what I would have used it for.
This is a research guide/website that was put together by Randall Bytwerk, a communications studies professor from Calvin University. It contains a good resource of both Nazi and DDR propaganda.
This source is useful as a background resource. I personally found it useful for putting together information on the Nazi propaganda film Jud Suss (1940).
This is an article from the interdisciplinary Jewish studies journal Shofar. It was written by a Holocaust researcher by the name of Jennifer Hansen. Here she analyzes the technical and cinematic components of the film Der Ewige Jude, a Nazi documentary on the Jews. She observes that the cinematic techniques such as the dissolves and impositions are designed such that they would cause the viewer to interoperate the images differently from what the images actually represent.
This article is useful for giving very specific examples of cinematographic techniques in propaganda. I used it to demonstrate the alternative view's thinking on how Nazi propaganda was able to train party leaders to think a certain way.
This is an academic article from the German communications studies' scholar Stephan Lowry. It is an analysis of the Nazi propaganda film Die goldene Stadt, or "The Golden City" (1942).
This source is useful for understanding the subtleties of Nazi ideology in films because Die goldene Stadt was not very overtly propagandistic. Honestly, I didn't use it for anything related to Die goldene Stadt. I used it to prove that finding fascist propaganda in Nazi films is just as difficult as finding democracy propaganda in American films that were produced in the same time period.
Rentschler, Eric. “The Testament of Dr. Goebbels.” Film History, vol. 8, no. 3, 1996, pp. 316–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3815311. Accessed 27 May 2025.
This is a scholarly article from the publication Film History written by Eric Renschler who is a leading expert on German film and literature. This article articulates the fact that much of Nazi propaganda projected fantastical escapism upon the screen. The takeaway here is that most of the films produced in the Third Reich were not about politics, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were not ideological in nature.
This source is useful for understanding the creative style and structure to the films themselves. I used this source to demonstrate that propaganda in these films is not always apparent or obvious, when viewing them without a critical eye.
This is a book from Linda Schulte-Sasse, an expert on German cinema, who leads the cultural studies and German studies department at Macalester College, a private Liberal Arts school in Minnesota. The book dissects the contents of Nazi movies and demonstrates the psychological imperatives behind the ideology and propaganda presented in the films.
This is a good source for information on the meaning and symbolism of the stories and characters in the films themselves. I used this source to demonstrate the reasoning behind the antisemitism in the film Jud Suss (1940).
This is a scholar article from British academic Murry Smith, who teaches and publishes in philosophy and film theory at the University of Kent. He gives an account of how film is perceived and cognitively understood by the audience. The question addressed is whether fictional accounts presented in film are deceptions for the viewer, or if they are a suspension of the viewers disbelief. He makes the case for understanding film more as a suspension of disbelief, rather than deception.
This source was useful for understanding how audiences naturally perceive film. In understanding how audiences perceive film, we can better understand the effects of the medium.
This is a journal article by the historian and German studies scholar Scott Spector. The text analyzes various works of research into Nazi cinema and then attempts to demonstrate how the research is relevant to the field of history. He makes connections between the research and presents various theories about the motivations behind Nazi propaganda. For example, the underlying psychological reasons for why the Germans found their ideology in films interesting.
This is a useful overview of the interpretations that various scholars have had on the history of Nazi film because it synthesizes their findings, expressing the common ground knowledge of the subject. I used this source for two things: The first was to prove that Nazi propaganda was more about confirming public opinion than changing it. And the second was to demonstrate that the Nazis had a strange psychological need to demonize Jews in the Cinema as a form of German self-criticism.
This is an overview book on the history of propaganda films in the Third Reich. It was written by Susan Tegel, who is a British historian of the Second World War at the University of Hertfordshire. The book provides a good overview and background of the subject. Each chapter goes through the history of each major propaganda film released in the Third Reich.
This was useful for serving as a place to cite historical context from. Any time I needed to find information on the history behind a film or event, I was able to find it here.
This is a scholarly article written by the historian David Welch, who specializes in the history of 20th century propaganda. This article makes the case that the foundation of Nazi propaganda was the concept of “Volksgemeinschaft” or “the people’s community”, an ideological ideal of national collectivism.
In understanding Volksgemeinschaft, and why it was so important to German society, the reader is able to understand better why the Nazis found it important to promote an ideological perspective, to begin with.
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