The more World War II his­to­ry you read, the more you under­stand not just the evil of the Nazis, but their incom­pe­tence. Some­times you hear vari­a­tions on the obser­va­tion that “in Nazi Ger­many, at least the trains ran on time,” but even that has gone up for debate. It seems more and more that the Holo­caust-per­pe­trat­ing polit­i­cal par­ty got by pri­mar­i­ly on their way with pro­pa­gan­da — and in that, they did have a tru­ly for­mi­da­ble appa­ra­tus.

Much of the dubi­ous cred­it there goes to Hitler’s close asso­ciate Joseph Goebbels, Reich Min­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da and an anti-semi­te even by Nazi stan­dards. “Pow­er based on guns may be a good thing,” he said in a 1934 Nurem­berg Par­ty Con­ven­tion speech. “It is, how­ev­er, bet­ter and more grat­i­fy­ing to win the heart of a peo­ple and keep it.” He under­stood the pow­er of film in pur­suit of this end, pro­vid­ing not only essen­tial assis­tance for pro­duc­tions like Leni Riefen­stahl’s Tri­umph of the Will, but also attempt­ing to recruit no less a lead­ing light of Ger­man cin­e­ma than Fritz Lang, direc­tor of three Doc­tor Mabuse pic­tures, the pro­to-noir M, and the expres­sion­ist epic Metrop­o­lis.

Goebbels loved Metrop­o­lis, but had rather less appre­ci­a­tion for The Tes­ta­ment of Dr. Mabuse, going so far as to ban it for its sup­posed poten­tial to instill in its view­ers a dis­trust of their lead­ers. And so, on one fate­ful day in 1933 when Goebbels called Lang to his office, the film­mak­er won­dered if he might find a way to get the ban lift­ed. But Goebbels pre­ferred to talk, at great length, about anoth­er pro­pos­al: Lang’s employ­ment in artis­tic ser­vice of the Nazi cause.

“The Fuhrer and I have seen your films,” Lang quotes Goebbels as say­ing, “and the Fuhrer made clear that ‘this is the man who will give us the nation­al social­ist film.’ ” Feel­ing no choice but to thank Goebbels for the hon­or and osten­si­bly accept the offered (or per­haps insist­ed-upon) posi­tion as the head of state film pro­duc­tion, Lang went home and imme­di­ate­ly told his ser­vant to pre­pare lug­gage “for a one- or two-week trip to Paris,” leav­ing Ger­many that same evening, nev­er to return until the late 1950s. You can hear Lang tell this sto­ry in Ger­man in the clip at the top of the post, and again in Eng­lish, and in more detail, in the 1974 inter­view with William Fried­kin above.

But did it it real­ly hap­pen as he says? In his Film Quar­ter­ly arti­cle “Fritz Lang and Goebbels: Myth and Facts,” Gös­ta Wern­er casts doubt, not­ing that “even though it is high­ly prob­a­ble that Goebbels did offer Lang the post as head of the entire Ger­man film pro­duc­tion, there is not a word about it in Goebbel­s’s usu­al­ly metic­u­lous diary for the year 1933. Lang is not men­tioned there at all.” For Lang’s part, his pass­port’s “for­eign cur­ren­cy stamps from Berlin tes­ti­fy, as do the var­i­ous entry and exit stamps, that between the jour­neys abroad in the sum­mer of 1933 Lang returned to Berlin, which city he left final­ly only on 31 July 1933 — four months after his leg­endary meet­ing with Goebbels and sup­posed dra­mat­ic escape.”

But then, you expect a cer­tain amount of dra­ma from a sto­ry­teller of Lang’s cal­iber, onscreen as well as off. And despite hold­ing the views of, in Wern­er’s words, a “fierce nation­al­ist,” Lang clear­ly made the right choice in real­i­ty by not get­ting caught up in the offices of the Third Reich, when­ev­er and how­ev­er he made that choice. To this day, cinephiles respect and admire the pow­er of Lang’s film­mak­ing — a pow­er that we can only feel relieved did­n’t fall into the wrong hands.

via Bib­liok­lept/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Fritz Lang’s M: The Restored Ver­sion of the Clas­sic 1931 Film

Fritz Lang’s “Licen­tious, Pro­fane, Obscure” Noir Film, Scar­let Street (1945)

Titan­ic: The Nazis Cre­ate a Mega-Bud­get Pro­pa­gan­da Film About the Ill-Fat­ed Ship … and Then Banned It (1943)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

I grew up with a sim­plis­tic, mor­al­iz­ing offi­cial his­to­ry of the Civ­il Rights move­ment, one full of plat­i­tudes and false dichotomies: a san­i­tized ver­sion of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. stood as the mod­el of a “good” Civ­il Rights leader; Mal­colm X, the Black Pan­thers, and oth­er rad­i­cals were vil­i­fied as “bad” Civ­il Rights leaders—or Anti-Amer­i­can ter­ror­ists. We read “Let­ter From a Birm­ing­ham Jail,” but noth­ing from Angela Davis, Huey New­ton, Eldridge Cleaver, or Stoke­ly Carmichael. This is how most his­to­ries go, offi­cial nar­ra­tives being what they are. There are heroes and vil­lains, and lit­tle in-between. How­ev­er, there is much more ambi­gu­i­ty sur­round­ing events than most of us choose to accept. I came to see things much dif­fer­ent­ly regard­ing the Black Pan­ther Par­ty, though not in a way that makes me feel like trad­ing insults with strangers on the inter­net. I reserve the right to make up my own mind. You must also make up yours.

But one must be informed. Which is why projects like The Black Pan­thers: Van­guard of the Rev­o­lu­tion—whose Kick­starter cam­paign video you can see above—are so impor­tant. It weighs heav­i­ly to be writ­ing this now, as tragedies all too famil­iar to the fig­ures in the film still play out tonight and near­ly every night across the U.S. We owe it to our­selves to know the his­to­ries of the cur­rent strug­gle, both offi­cial and unof­fi­cial. I over­heard some­one say recent­ly that get­ting a gen­uine edu­ca­tion requires tak­ing “two sets of notes.” For those raised with a one-dimen­sion­al text­book his­to­ry of the Civ­il Rights move­ment, The Black Pan­thers: Van­guard of the Rev­o­lu­tion is like anoth­er set of notes, along with oth­er films like Goran Olsson’s The Black Pow­er Mix­tape: 1967–1975, Lee Lew-Lee’s All Pow­er to the Peo­ple! The Black Pan­ther Par­ty and Beyond, and Mario and Melvin Van Pee­bles’ fic­tion­al­ized his­to­ry Pan­ther.

These films pro­vide inter­est­ing and excel­lent intro­duc­tions to the sub­ject, but Stan­ley Nel­son’s doc­u­men­tary offers, as he puts it, “the first com­pre­hen­sive look at the rise and fall of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty.” Nel­son is an award-win­ning vet­er­an doc­u­men­tar­i­an whose films include Free­dom Rid­ers, Free­dom Sum­mer, Jon­estown: The Life and Death of People’s Tem­ple, and The Mur­der of Emmett Till. He began The Black Pan­thers sev­en years ago, and its cur­rent release, audi­ences have told him, “could not have come at a bet­ter time.” The film has already pre­miered for “a select audi­ence” at Sun­dance, New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, and L.A.‘s Pan African Film Fes­ti­val. With eight days to go, the Kick­starter to fund the doc’s mul­ti-city the­atri­cal release has almost reached its goal of $50,000. See their page to help them get all the way there.

Then con­sid­er read­ing, and re-read­ing, “Let­ter From a Birm­ing­ham Jail.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wattstax Doc­u­ments the “Black Wood­stock” Con­cert Held 7 Years After the Watts Riots (1973)

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Watch The March, the Mas­ter­ful, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored Doc­u­men­tary on The Great March on Wash­ing­ton

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