Charlie Chaplin and the Nazis: The Long German Campaign Against the Artist

by Norbert Aping

Overview

Until recently, it was assumed that the Nazis agitated against Chaplin from 1931 to 1933, and then again from 1938, when his plan to make The Great Dictator became public. This book demonstrates that Nazi agitation against Chaplin was in fact a constant from 1926 through the Third Reich. When The Gold Rush was released in the Weimar Republic in 1926, the Nazis began to fight Chaplin, whom they alleged to be Jewish, and attempted to expose him as an intellectual property thief whose fame had faded. In early 1935, the film The Gold Rush was explicitly banned from German theaters.

In 1936, the NSDAP Main Archives opened its own file on Chaplin, and the same year, he became entangled in the machinery of Nazi press control. German diplomats were active on a variety of international levels to create a mood against The Great Dictator. The Nazis' dehumanizing attacks continued until 1944, when an opportunity to capitalize on the Joan Barry scandal arose. This book paints a complicated picture of how the Nazis battled Chaplin as one of their most reviled foreign artists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476687407
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	12/12/2023
Pages:	483
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.97(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

A retired district court judge and director from Buxtehude, Germany, Norbert Aping has published books on Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and slapstick television.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by Kevin Brownlow
Preface
Introduction
 1. Charlie Chaplin—a Jew?
 2. Chaplin Targeted: Shoulder Arms and The Gold Rush, 1921–26
 3. Who Needs Facts? Divorce, Shoulder Arms and Creativity—1927–31
 4. Chaplin in Berlin, City Lights—1931
 5. Nazi Disruptions of City Lights?—1931–32
 6. Südfilm AG and City Lights, 1931–32
 7. A Year of Change, 1933
 8. Modern Times Nazi Style, 1934–36
 9. “Jew” Chaplin “Steals Intellectual Property,” 1937
10. The ­Run-up to The Great Dictator, 1938–39
11. Preparations, 1939–40
12. The Great Dictator Takes to the Stage—1940–41
13. Bogeymen and The Great Dictator in Germany, 1941–45
14. The Gold Rush and Agitation to the Bitter End, 1942–44
Appendix 1: The ­25-Point Program of the NSDAP, February 24, 1920
Appendix 2: Three Articles
Appendix 3: NSDAP Main Archive (Hauptarchiv der NSDAP): Chaplin File
Appendix 4: Nazi Authors and Other Authors Who Wrote About Chaplin During the Third Reich
Appendix 5: Nazi Chaplin Slurs
Appendix 6: Reichsfilmarchiv Catalogue Card No. 15,242: The Great Dictator
Appendix 7: Signage in the Ghetto of The Great Dictator
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Aping’s research in German and U.S. archives, German censorship records, Chaplin’s FBI files, and the secondary literature on the Little Tramp character are exemplary and exhaustive, as is his discussion of cinema culture in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. ... An incredibly detailed and successful book about Charlie Chaplin that does not lose film fans.”—Library Journal

From the Publisher