Movies and TV shows from the Greater German Reich

So, what kind of movies and TV shows could we see from a Nazi Germany that has won World War II? Would it be North Korea-style propaganda or something else entirely?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
So, what kind of movies and TV shows could we see from a Nazi Germany that has won World War II? Would it be North Korea-style propaganda or something else entirely?
There would probably be a lot of glorious war epics as well as some films about the importance of work, family, and country.
 

Greenville

Banned
I imagine many documentaries about how successful the settlement of the new eastern lands is going. The Reich encourages those living in cities to escape to its rural areas and find opportunity there even with promises of support and jobs from the government. No mention of the active partisan groups, malnutrition, disease, and elements which kill many who venture there. We might also visit a Jewish Relocation Camp as well at work preparing their own area of the new Reich for themselves.
 
I actually once wrote a little snipet which was supposed to be a part of larger timeline about media and pop-culture in an axis victory scenario.

Here is it:

The Following article is about media in the EMVG (Europäische Markt- und Völker Gemeinschaft) or better known as Axis Europe.


Media in post war Germany and the colonies of the Reich was heavily state controlled, however from time to time directors and writers managed to hide some opinions and messages the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda wouldn’t support.

One of those pieces of art is the 1953 film “The Adventures of Old Shatterhand” starring Helmut Lange, which at the time wasn’t a big hit at the domestic marked due to the ongoing Mediterranean Crisis and the end phase of the economic changes following the Speer Reformen, it did well on the European market and inspired Horst Wendlandt and Preben Philipsen to make their 1963 alltime classic “Der Schatz im Silbersee” which spawned the famous “Winnetou “ series.



While Film, TV and Radio was heavily controlled in Germany during the time, the Film industry flourished in the late fifties and sixties. Not only in the Reich but in the entire EMVG (Europäische Markt- und Völker Gemeinschaft) the Film industry prospered. Notable classics are the Italian neorealism movies “In nome della legge“ (1948) , “Riso Amora” (1949) and Roberto Rossellinis epic final of his war movie trilogy, “Europa unterm Hakenkreuz” (1948) which was very popular in Germany and and the Balkan EMVG members.

In France, which was the big oddball in the EMVG with its semi-democratic system, Film was de jure regulated but depended heavily on the current government and the sensibilities of the Germans. During the war and in the immediate postwar years movie, radio and newspapers were heavily censored in order to not enrage the German occupation forces and to protect the governing elites. Nonetheless even there film media flourished. Typical for the time were Comedies’, Romances and rare war epics of young heroic French volunteers fighting on the eastern front or French sailors combating vile British naval men.

A famous example for the latter is the 1949 French epic “Commandant Teste”, which is about the fierce resistance of the French Navy against British attacks during Operation Catapult.

Of course, it would be outrageous to talk about French Film of the 20th century without mentioning Romy Schneider.

Being one of Germanys most famous Film stars when she decided to immigrate to France it was a huge PR coup for the then reining Salan government, which forced the German government to paint it as a wonderful example of friendship between the European people.
Having arrived in France Schneider started working on films that made her famous around the world and sold out cinemas from Chile to Korea.


But developments in film were always accompanied by developments in sound and music.


Music in the EMVG varied heavily from country to country.

The cultural development in the field of popular music couldn’t have been more different from nation to nation in the EMVG. On the one side we have Italy and France, that developed similar to the West and on the other side we have Germany, its eastern European allies and puppets and the Nordic countries.


We will skip the development of France here and focus more on the development of music in Italy.
Here change didn’t come from below, the people, but from the top, the elites.
Of course the broad population wanted something new too, but it would not have come if it hadn’t been for the Duce and his friends, family and allies who themselves were fascinated with new approaches. A successful musician of the highs of cold war who can not be overlooked when talking about Italy is Romano Mussolini. Romano being a Jazz musician who from time to time even communicated with his British colleagues helped introduce Europe to rock music. While some catholic elements in the Fascist party opposed such developments and only wanted to see their classical approach, they were a minority in comparison to the fascist avant-garde that formed around Romano Mussolini, Lelio Luttazi, Renato Sellani and Giorgio Gaslini.

The developments in Italy stood in sharp contrast to Germany.

Germany is the nation that underwent the most changes in their approach to popular music.

In the late 40s, Swing and Jazz were banned in Germany due to being “Negermusik”, ironically some of the strongest enforcers of this ban, like the GeStaPo chief of Hamburg Carl Kauffmann, had a private collection of American Jazz records.
Even Goebbels had a private Jazz band that operated under the authority of the RMVP.
While Jazz was banned inside Germany, outside of it, in the occupied countries under military administration and the allied axis nations Jazz was broadcasted over radio because it was highly popular with the young soldiers.


An entirely different child was the music in the new administrative districts alias the occupied territories of southern Wallonia and Poland.

From an article of the “Zeitschrift für Musik, July 1941”
“Because the Flemish Music of the early 20th century was heavily influenced by the German Romantik, especially by Wagner and Strauß, the forced introduction of the international Parisian style after the World war caused much irritation amongst the Flemish population.
The advocate of an healthy Germanic-Flemish art were heavily hindered and sabotaged in their doings and the only publishers who still wanted to work with them were mostly German.
It was the beginning of a period where the importance of high art was cheapened and musicians started to imitate Ravel and Strawinsky. At the same time the Jews started to meddle in the arts in order to get their piece of the cake, while an intellectual clique in Brussels did everything in their might to hinder the rightful Flemish cause. […] The German invasion ended this period of onesited cultural oppression. The empty niche that was created by the removal of *Volksfremder Elmente* was soon filled with music inspired by Berlin.”

The biggest benefactor of the new Germanic direction, was “Het Muziekfonds”, a Flemish union of orchestra musicians in Brussels. Together with Flemish Radio stations they developed a monopoly for broadcasting and producing music in what was once known as Belgium.

With the growing realization of an “groß-germanischen Blut- und Schicksalsgemeinschaft” (Great-germanic community of Blood and Destiny), Flemish and Walloon musicians started to see the German music as the only natural and powerful music and a source of power for the soul of the people.

In Poland on the other hand the bohemian school had great influences. Polka was the most widely heared music, but unique creations from componists like Max Posselt or Hubert Wolf regularly hit the charts.

The western areas of Poland and bohemia it self usually followed the normal german trends with rare exceptions, which were most of the time due to the fact that the Czech people got uppity from time to time because they knew that they had not to be afraid of extermination like certain other Slavic people.

The probably weirdest musical phenomenon of the 20th century was the so called “Ossi-Mucke”.

With the neue Ost-Politik in the 60s and 70s the plans for the full extermination and enslavement of the Russians ended and the administrative region of Ukraine, also known as “Freistaat und Reichsverwaltungsgebiet Ukraine” became an independent country (As independent as a east European country in the sphere of the Reich could be). While still a puppet of the Reich it could now issue its own currency and operate its own armed forces and issue certain laws that didn’t need approval from Berlin.

The Ukrainian people had mostly been spared the horrors of extermanitat the Russian people experienced because they were considered a Germanic like people with Germanic roots.

This was mostly due to Banderas political maneuvering and sympathies by various German officers and an relatively high percentage of Ukrainians in the Waffen-SS, Ukraine was administrated by the Reich as a “Reichsverwaltungsgebiet” (administrative district of the Reich), and was governed by a “Reichsverwalter” (Governor of the Reich, comparable to a Gauleiter but with more rights) until 1962.

The first Reichsverwalter after the end of the war was Generalmajor der SS Walter Schimana who wanted to prove to his superiors in Berlin that he was a talented administrator and could cleanse Ukraine of all Jewish, Polish and Russian influences in order to “refine the Ukrainian region and people to be worthy the seat on the table of Europe”.



More on the History of Ukraine in the Chapter concerning the development of eastern Europe.

The classical arts and the literature of the young Ukrainian focused a lot on the Gothic heritage of the Ukrainian people and Ukraines struggle against the Judeo-Bolshevistic and other eastern hordes. Especially in the Ukrainian army and their predecessor the Ukrainian Waffen-SS divisons a fierce combination of western battle songs with nationalistic lyrics and historical Ukrainian folksongs emerged. Examples are: “Марш до бою!“ (March to battle!) and modified versions of Ми сміло в бій підем (We’ll go in battle for Ukraine).





The Russians on the other hand felt the cruel whip of the Reich.
The original plan for the Reichskomissariate was quickly scraped after the end of the 2nd world war, because the people responsible for carrying it out realized they were not feasible and would harm the economy and the future colonists.
Instead a new plan was drawn up, inspired by the American policy towards the natives, Russians were confined to reservations. It was a recycled version of the Madagascar-plan only taking place in the fast areas between Moscow and the Urals.
The success of this plan was remarkable and even the leadership of the NSDAP and the SS was surprised by its success. At the end of 1973 there were only 2,5 million Russians left west of Moscow.


The suffering of the Russian people fueled their music and created marching songs they sung while marching towards the extermination camps or towards their reservations in the area around Perm and the Urals. Those marching songs were in their sadness comparable to the blues of the afro-American slaves in the south. Those songs inspired young German soldiers but also Baltic, Ukrainian and other SS volunteers to adopt those melodies and the style to make their own songs from them.

This led to some of the now most famous SS and Wehrmacht songs like “Unterwegs /Soldaten, Marsch!” and “Moskauer Jungs”.


Especially in the administrative district of Muscovy which today is known for its World famous music festivals in the ruins of Moscow and around the red lakes a generation of musicians and artists was born in the post-war years.


The ruins of cities like Moscow or Stalingrad and the wide wilderness of Russia inspired countless young painters who saw the area during their service in the Military or went there as settlers. This gave birth to the German art style known as “Neue Romantik”.

It united the use of wide and wild landscapes and ruins with modern architecture and objects.

Famous paintings of this period and style are “Moskauer Winter”, “Die purpurnen Flüsse” and “Die vergessenen Felder von Pleskau”.

This stood in sharp contrast with developments in France.
The French art scene surviving mainly untouched by the Second World War carried their traditions of progress in to the cold war. Abstract interpretations of the German Totenburg at Sedan,, sparked outrage across Germany and increased media interest for the French art scene in the western world.

The Italian art scene on the contrary, like their northern neighbors, focused more on classical elements, with the intention to mimic the greatness and style of the Roman era and the Renaissance.

Notable exceptions and change occurred in the late 50s with a group of artists who were also Fascist party members spearheaded by the sons of the Duce, Romano and Vittorio, even integrating of elements pioneered by the Spanish artist Picasso who, at the time was still seen as a deranged subject.

In the 70s Italian art tended to be closer to western standards than to EMVG standards.

Today media and art across the EMVG is starting to heavily copy the likes of Hollywood and London, but Hollywood and London themselves are adjusting to the new influences and the exchange brought by the cultural opening of the EMVG. Where this leads to only the future may know.




An article by Prof. Robert Altman and Sir George Henry Martin, published in the New York Times, November 1987; Excerpt from the Book "Europes destiny, Europes doom."
 
Broadcasting would be centralized and state-owned, along the lines of the UK but with no ITV, just DR (Deutsche Rundfunk, German Broadcasting) 1 and DR 2 early on. DR 1 would feature news and more serious programs; DR 2 would be entertainment.

One program that would definitely exist would be Wunschkonzert (Request Concert), developed out of the wartime "Request Concert for the Wehrmacht" program. Viewers would send in donations and requests to hear a certain song. The show often had famous guests and there were segments where needy but suitably deserving people (like mothers of twins) were given gifts of useful items. (There are no surviving recordings of the OTL program, as far as I know.)

Der schwarze Kanal (The Black Channel, also "The Sewer") was an East German program in OTL that was directed towards people who watched West German news. IATL, provided the BBC still exists under a free press, Der schwarze Kanal would set matters straight for people who followed foreign news by explaining the plutocratic bias and presenting the "truth" behind the story.

A likely program: Biografie eines Ritterkreuzträger, Biography of a Knight's Cross Holder. KC holders had celebrity-like status.

Detective and spy dramas would be popular, as in OTL. Some shows would be fictional, others would focus on real cases from the SD and Gestapo archives, and still others would focus on unsolved cases and fugitives.

There would be comedies, sitcoms and the like, and probably soap operas. I don't think comedy would be politicized; no sitcoms set in Poland or Ukraine.

Game shows include a major quiz show. The participants would always be suitably deserving. You'd see contestants appearing with their Iron Cross or Cross of the German Mother.

In the early morning, agricultural news and advice would be followed by educational programs. Some of the content would be intended for the East, such as Ich kann Deutsch sprechen!, teaching rudimentary and perhaps simplified German.

Overall, television would be about mass appeal and subtle, entertaining propaganda.

As for film, I think it would have carried on much as it had from 1933 on. Only a small portion of Nazi-era films were propaganda; Goebbels wanted films to be primarily for entertainment. A similar proportion of post-war films, excluding films about the war, would be propaganda -- perhaps one a year or so, in addition to the yearly Nazi party rally film. The propaganda films would tell anti-American/English/Russian/Jewish stories as dramas; propaganda documentaries might be produced, but those just don't have the effect on the masses that Goebbels wants.
 
"Maibeere, B.R.D."

Follows the idyllic life of a small, ethnically homogeneous town, overseen by police captain Anders Greifmann, and his bumbling assistant Bjorn Fyff.
 
"Maibeere, B.R.D."

Follows the idyllic life of a small, ethnically homogeneous town, overseen by police captain Anders Greifmann, and his bumbling assistant Bjorn Fyff.

Ah, the sequel to "Das Anders Greifmann Programm", also set in Maibeere. The spinoff "Marine-Infanteriemann Pühle" was the first-ever comedy about the Wehrmacht.

The 50s also saw "Lass es dem Biber!", featuring the adventures of the youngest of six children in a sitcom that portrayed the ideal version of a German family. Only the wise Vater calls him "Theodore."
 
Our boys, a sit com about the life and adventures of a group of boys in the Hitler youth, with dark political and racial undertones that are visible to any Foreigner watching the show.
 
Making this up on the fly here:

While it was America who had perfected the art of the cartoon on the big screen, it was Nazi Germany who perfected it on the small screen. With the TV industry in its infancy, the Nazi leadership wanted something that had a strong amount of source material, while also being ideologically sympathetic and entertaining enough to obscure the former point. Eventually, they settled on Herge's Tintin, which was a popular fixture in comics, which was felt to be a perfect area to adapt into a cartoon, even if early German television was in Black and White. Hegre was uneasy about his work being used for something so self-serving by the Nazi occupiers, but ultimately had no choice; he was given a relatively small fee, and he handed over the rights to Tintin for the German state to make a cartoon series.

The Nazis were quite surprised at how easy it was to insert their own ideological messages inside the stories. The first three stories involved the injustices of the Soviet Union, an unflattering portrayal of the native Congolese and a crime story in the underbelly of America. Of course, it wasn't enough for it to be left as that: the Nazis saw fit to twist the cartoons just a little further in their direction, with the villains becoming notably more Semitic, and the societies at large being shown as decadent, especially in her Cold War enemy, America. While at heart propaganda, that isn't to deny the strong artistic streak that ran through the product, which involved some of the finest animators in Europe at the time. By the time a colour Tintin original movie came out ('Tintin and the Crimson Hammer') in 1959, it was the highest grossing film in Europe by a great deal. Merchandise sold all over Europe, leading Italian Dictator Italo Balbo to joke that Tintin was the common language of the continent.

It would run an astonishing 600 episodes until the source material dried up, and political madness in Germany meant cartoons were the last thing on anyone's mind.

--

Leni Riefenstahl had not made a feature length film for almost a decade when Hitler commissioned her to 'make a work of film so without comparison in the course of human history that none will ever surpass it'. Propaganda realities forced her to promote a pan-European message against the British and Americans, which significantly narrowed her options. Finally, after having the assurance of all the monetary resources she needed, she finally settled on her story: a recreation of Attila the Hun's defeat at the hands of the Roman/Barbarian armies ... with slight alterations. It would be called 'The Barbarian'.

Filmed in astonishing technicolour, the film opens with a ten minute sequence of a Roman town first being established and then razed to the ground by invading Huns (some of the sexual violence in the scene produced muted complaints by the Catholic Church). We are introduced to Attila's character (with a very Stalinesque moustache) looking at a map of Europe and saying that within a year, he'll be washing his feet in the Atlantic. The movie cuts to Rome, where the decaying Empire (the Italians were unhappy with the portrayal) is locked in corruption by Capitalist merchants who care more about money than their own country. Eventually, proud Romans decide that their Civilisation is worth defending to the death. They go out and enlist the Visigoths (portrayed as the bravest) and Franks (portrayed as the most uncertain, before finally finding their place), who are initially suspicious of the Romans, but after seeing the destruction of their lands, the rape of their women and the slaughter of their children (censorship laws were almost completely ignored, as per Hitler's orders), they decide to team up. After initial setbacks, the Battle of the Catalaunian plains occurs, resulting in the heroic sacrifice of the Visigoth King, Theodoric, who saves Aetius, the Roman Commander. Attila's army gets obliterated, with Attila badly wounded and swearing revenge. The film ends with the crooked merchants in Rome (representative of America and Britain, getting tossed aside by the trio of the Visigoth, Frank and Roman leaders). The three declare that the threat of the Hun remains, and as such, all of Europe would have to be ready for when the next invasion comes.

While absurdly inaccurate, it was not only the most expensive film made in Europe during the Cold War, it was by far the most successful. The levels of violence and sex were simply not what most film-goers were used to seeing, especially not with such luscious colour, or Riefenstahl's direction. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra had been specifically called to conduct the work, and in a show of courtesy, the Italians were allowed to conduct for scenes simply involving the Romans. Of course, behind the glamour (it would spark the 'Leni', the Ocuupied European version of the Oscar, of which the film was the initial ceremonial winner) there were horrible tales. Many of the Hun troops were indeed Soviet POWs and Slave Labour who leapt at the chance to have food and basic accommodation (although any scenes involving sexual violence were always done with German actors, as race law remained strict). Riefenstahl recalls she was even friendly with some of the Slavs on the set. While she protests her innocence that she didn't know that the Slavs in question who portrayed the soldiers would all be dead in two years, few believe she was entirely ignorant of what was going on.

--

Mussolini was embarrassed by the poor performance of Italy during the cinematic festival; for a man who once called cinema his greatest weapon, Italy certainly didn't preach it. For the first few years, the Leni was passed freely between France and Germany (emphasis on the latter) until Goebbels was overhead joking at the festival that perhaps it should just be between those two countries instead. Incensed, Mussolini decided to construct a film that there would be no way the predominantly Nazi board would turn down; it would be Italy's shame.

'Titus' (1951) tells the story of the Jewish rebellion of A.D. 70, told in as Anti-Semitic a fashion as was ever seen. The only reference to the persecution of Christians is by Jews, where a Christian boy is chased and caught, before being ritually sacrificed by the Rabbis inside the Temple Mount. The Jews while under occupation are portrayed as ravenous, ungrateful liars, with Roman soldiers exhausted in having to deal with them. Finally, the Jews strike out for control, slaughtering the unsuspecting Romans. Having stirred the anger of Titus, the Roman army march on the city of Jerusalem, culminating in an almighty siege and clash, where the Jewish city is obliterated. While his subordinates are happy that the "headquarters of devils" has been vanquished, Titus warns that they would scatter, trying to subvert nations for their own agenda from the inside. On that warning, the film ends.

It achieved what it wanted; it won the the Leni that year, a year when almost all European Jews were already dead. It has gone down in history alongside Birth of a Nation for an example of a splendid film from a technical level obscured by reprehensible morality.
 
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I wonder how accurate Hugh Trevor Roper was when he wrote

"The hundred million self-confident German masters were to be brutally installed in Europe, and secured in power by a monopoly of technical civilisation and the slave-labour of a dwindling native population of neglected, diseased, illiterate cretins, in order that they might have leisure to buzz along infinite Autobahnen, admire the Strength-Through-Joy Hostel, the Party headquarters, the Military Museum and the Planetarium which their Fuhrer would have built in Linz (his new Hitleropolis), trot round local picture-galleries, and listen over their cream buns to endless recordings of The Merry Widow. This was to be the German Millennium, from which even the imagination was to have no means of escape"
 

King Thomas

Banned
Crimewatch Europa

This show reenacts various crimes much like OTL Crimewatch UK, with a phone number to dial to tell the Kripo and/or the Gestapo the needed information. Some of the crimes would be considered crimes under any regime, whilst others are racially tinged or things like hiding of Jewish people.

Sister Sister

A Nazi version of the US show Sister Sister ( with Ayran actresses)

 
I imagine many documentaries about how successful the settlement of the new eastern lands is going. The Reich encourages those living in cities to escape to its rural areas
In the UK there's a property programme, about a couple/family who want move from the traffic congested noisy city, to a more rural idyll 0 it's called 'Escape to the Country'. A similar format could be easily applied - viewing some alternative available properties.
 
So, what kind of movies and TV shows could we see from a Nazi Germany that has won World War II? Would it be North Korea-style propaganda or something else entirely?
Hitler liked westerns, so I suspect some films about German homesteaders in not yet pacified regions of Russia fending off hordes of native slavs would be all the rage. Perhaps a comedy mocking corporate bureaucracy to motivate Germans to settle the newly conquered Russian countryside. Also, a children's show akin to East Germany's "Little Sandman" but Nazi rather than Communist.

Italy has also always had a fairly strong film industry, and I suspect its products will be Germany's primary cultural import. I imagine there would be extensive co-operation between the two countries' national cinemas to produce a series of films on the Barbarian Wars.
 
The Honorary Aryan

What happens when Captain Kenkichi Shobo is stationed in Berlin as part of an exchange program between the Empire and the Reich?

East meets West and hilarity ensues

and (from the Twilight Zone in other timelines thread)

The opening in a Nazis victory world

Narrator: "There is a sixth dimension beyond that which is known to the Reich. It is a dimension of those from a subrace and as shameless to infinity. It is the low ground without light and only shadow, between Jewish science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the misuse of his knowledge. This is the dimension of miscegenation. It is an area which we call the Degenerate Zone."
 
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