{"id":31478,"date":"2015-05-28T04:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T08:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31478"},"modified":"2018-01-15T18:44:08","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T23:44:08","slug":"the-day-fritz-lang-met-nazi-propaganda-minister-joseph-goebbels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/05\/28\/the-day-fritz-lang-met-nazi-propaganda-minister-joseph-goebbels\/","title":{"rendered":"The day Fritz Lang met Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A fascinating little bit of German history (by way of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.openculture.com\/2015\/04\/fritz-lang-tells-the-riveting-story-of-the-day-he-met-joseph-goebbels.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Open Culture<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wk22GME79S0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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 \u201cin Nazi Germany, at least the trains ran on time,\u201d 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 \u2014 and in that, they did have a truly formidable apparatus.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the dubious credit there goes to Hitler\u2019s close associate Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda and an anti-semite even by Nazi standards. \u201cPower based on guns may be a good thing,\u201d he said in a 1934 Nuremberg Party Convention speech. \u201cIt is, however, better and more gratifying to win the heart of a people and keep it.\u201d He understood the power of film in pursuit of this end, providing not only essential assistance for productions like Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s <em>Triumph of the Will<\/em>, but also attempting to recruit no less a leading light of German cinema than Fritz Lang, director of three <em>Doctor Mabuse<\/em> pictures, the proto-noir <em>M<\/em>, and the expressionist epic <em>Metropolis<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Goebbels loved <em>Metropolis<\/em>, but had rather less appreciation for <em>The Testament of Dr. Mabuse<\/em>, 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\u2019s employment in artistic service of the Nazi cause.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fascinating little bit of German history (by way of Open Culture: 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 \u201cin Nazi Germany, at least the trains ran on time,\u201d but even that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1118,7,28],"tags":[1041,122,269],"class_list":["post-31478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-germany","category-history","category-media","tag-holocaust","tag-movies","tag-propaganda"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8bI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31479,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31478\/revisions\/31479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}