Rediscovered: The First American Anti-Nazi Film, Banned by U.S. Censors and Forgotten for 80 Years

On March 5, 1933, Ger­many held its last demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions until the end of WWII, and the Nation­al Social­ists gained a plu­ral­i­ty in the Reich­stag, with 43.9% of the vote and 288 seats. This event paved the way for the Enabling Act lat­er that month, which effec­tive­ly empow­ered Hitler as dic­ta­tor. It would seem in hind­sight that this turn—with all its atten­dant vio­lence, coer­cion, and hys­ter­i­cal nation­al­ist rhetoric—might have alarmed the West­ern pow­ers. And yet the oppo­site was true.

At least one news­man was alarmed, how­ev­er. And on the day of the 1933 elec­tions, he gained a brief audi­ence with the future Fuhrer. That man was Cor­nelius “Neil” Van­der­bilt IV, great-great-grand­son of the rail­road tycoon. Fed up with the malaise of his priv­i­leged peers, Van­der­bilt had moved to jour­nal­ism from his posi­tion as a dri­ver dur­ing the First World War. His name gave him access to Mus­soli­ni, Stal­in, and Hitler, whose impend­ing Reich became the sub­ject of Van­der­bilt’s doc­u­men­tary film, called Hitler’s Reign of Ter­ror, released on April 30, 1934, a short por­tion of which you can see above.

The New York­er obtained the clip from Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Thomas Doher­ty, who redis­cov­ered the film in a Bel­gian archive while research­ing a recent book. Vanderbilt’s doc­u­men­tary might well be the first Amer­i­can anti-Nazi film, but its con­tem­po­rary recep­tion speaks vol­umes about how crit­i­cism of the new Nazi regime was sup­pressed in the mid-thir­ties; the film was cen­sored across the U.S., denied a license, and banned.

What Van­der­bilt saw first-hand and chron­i­cled in his film is mild in com­par­i­son to what was to come. Nev­er­the­less, his take was pre­scient. He describes his anx­ious but par­tial­ly suc­cess­ful endeav­or to smug­gle footage across the Ger­man bor­der, pref­ac­ing the sto­ry by say­ing “there isn’t mon­ey enough in Hol­ly­wood to get me to go through it again.” (The scene above is a reen­act­ment, as is, quite obvi­ous­ly, the scene of Van­der­bilt’s meet­ing with Hitler.) Asked about his impres­sions of Hitler, Van­der­bilt has this to say:

Unques­tion­ably he is a man of real abil­i­ty, of force. But the way I sized him up after inter­view­ing him is that he is a strange com­bi­na­tion of Huey Long, Bil­ly Sun­day, and Al Capone…. I had nev­er heard a man so able to sway peo­ple.… In the hour and a half that Hitler talked to that packed audi­ence that night, he was as effec­tive as a bark­er in a sideshow trav­el­ing with a cir­cus.

Van­der­bilt says above that the ris­ing Nazi tide, “demand­ed revenge” and would not rest until they had it, to which his inter­view­er responds, “It all seems a ghast­ly, incred­i­ble night­mare.” Van­der­bilt’s vision seemed like a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic fever dream to his crit­ics as well.

Read the full sto­ry of the film over at The New Yorker’s Cul­ture Desk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style: The Ear­ly Pro­pa­gan­da Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness