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Overview
In Nazi Germany, the cult of celebrity was the embodiment of Hitler’s style of cultural governance. Hitler’s rise to power owed much to the creation of his own celebrity, and the country’s greatest stars, whether they were actors, writers, or musicians, could be one of only two things. If they were compliant, they were lauded and awarded status symbols for the regime; but if they resisted—or were simply Jewish—they were traitors to be interned and murdered. This fascinating analysis offers a shocking portrait of a Hitler shaped by aspirations to Hollywood-style fame, of the correlation between art and ambition, of films used as weapons, and of sexual predilections.
The Führer believed he was an artist, not a politician, and in his Germany, politics and culture became one. His celebrity was cultivated and nurtured by Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s supreme head of culture. Hitler and Goebbels enjoyed the company of beautiful female film stars, and Goebbels had his own “casting couch.” In Germany’s version of Hollywood, there were scandals, starlets, secret agents, premieres, and party politics. The Third Reich would launch filmmaker and actress Leni Riefenstahl to prominence by making her its own glorifying documentarian, most famously in The Triumph of the Will, the innovative propaganda film starring Hitler and widely considered to be one of the greatest movies ever made. It is no coincidence that Eva Braun, Hitler’s longtime partner and wife for the two days leading up to their joint suicide, was a photographer, and in fact shot most of the surviving photographs and film footage of her lover.
This book reveals previously unpublished information about the “Hitler film,” which Goebbels envisaged as “the greatest story ever told,” although it was ultimately trumped by the dictator’s own, real-life Wagnerian finale.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history—books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781634502757 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 11/24/2015 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 312 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
CELEBRITY, SEX AND DEATH
If Hitler had nothing better to do, and usually he didn't, he could be found at Berlin's Universum Film AG – better known as UFA, Germany's largest film studio at Babelsberg, which was just outside Berlin, near Potsdam – mingling with the stars. A film director at UFA, Alfred Zeisler, recalled that Hitler visited the studio very frequently. He loved to watch scenes being filmed, and he asked about new plots and new talent, and also about the technical aspects of film-making. Zeisler said that Hitler had a very good grasp of the film-making process and asked extremely intelligent questions about some of the technical problems involved. Hitler also enjoyed coming to the studios to have lunch or dinner in the restaurant of the Film Institute, where actors and actresses gathered.
It wasn't as though Hitler didn't have enough to occupy his mind in 1933, having, that year, become Germany's Führer, but he cared nothing for politics, or for governing Germany. He had ministers to do all that. Hitler was obsessed with celebrities. And he knew that of them all, he was the greatest celebrity.
The most important thing he could do every day was satisfy his starstruck craving by being among his favourite film stars, and if it so happened that he couldn't escape from the Reich Chancellery, he would get on the phone to the studio, as Zeisler recalled, to find out about films being made, and the actors in them, or just for general news about what was happening at the studios. Zeisler often wondered when Hitler had the time to devote himself to affairs of state because he spent so much time either at the studios, or on the telephone, or looking at films – there seemed little time left for anything else.
At the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat, his young mistress Eva Braun was left to her own devices while he was away working, or so he claimed, though he did very little real work as Chancellor of Germany. Eva was a good actress and might have actually been happy if Hitler had allowed her to actually be an actress, but he forbade her that pleasure. 'I heard she wanted to be in films. Hitler said no,' recalled German actor Curd Jürgens. 'He didn't want his girlfriend to be a film star, but he wanted to have film stars to be his girlfriends.'
Fringe benefits came with being the Führer. It was well known among the film community, where secrets were kept through fear, that he enjoyed the company of beautiful starlets. Hitler frequently called Alfred Zeisler at the UFA studio to ask for young starlets to keep him company in the Reich Chancellery. Zeisler duly sent them along, often in pairs, and was naturally very curious about what actually happened in the Reich Chancellery between Hitler and the pretty young women he sent, so one day in 1934 he asked two chorus girls he had procured for the Führer what had taken place the previous evening. They told him all that happened was that Hitler sat and bragged the whole evening, telling them how he was going to annex Austria and was going to build up the biggest army in the world and then reinforce the Rhineland. The girls said they thought Hitler 'extremely odd'. Zeisler concluded that Hitler's only intention was to impress the girls with his greatness and power.
Zeisler's claims that he provided Hitler with female stars for company are given some credence by Walter C. Langer, who in his famous psychological study of Hitler said Hitler often requested the studios to send over actresses whenever there was a party in the Chancellery. He seemed to get 'an extraordinary delight' in fascinating these girls about what he was going to do in the future, and he also reeled out 'the same old stories' of his past. He enjoyed impressing the girls with his power by ordering the studios to give the girls better film roles. Like a real movie mogul, he often promised them that he would personally see to it that they were given starring roles. Langer reported that men who, like him, have associations with 'women of this type' did not go beyond that point; i.e., to have sexual intercourse with them.
These encounters with stars and would-be stars, at the studio or in some secret room in the Reich Chancellery, would seem to indicate that Hitler veered erratically from being a starstruck fan to some kind of impotent despot who wanted to impress and scare little girls; he was certainly known to form attachments to much younger women than himself who were vulnerable and whom he could dominate.
It all came down to power. Just having lunch with the stars was more than him being a fan having fun – which was certainly part of it – but it was a demonstration of his power; Germany's biggest stars – and this also applied to musicians, writers and other artistes – for whom millions would kiss the ground they walked on all demonstrated their devotion to him, either through sincere admiration or out of fear, and their endorsement of him helped enormously to win the endorsement of the country long before John F. Kennedy was being elevated to the White House in 1961 by Frank Sinatra and his Rat Packers and other celebrities. Since then the world of politics has become a platform for celebrities, and the politicians themselves have become celebrities. In 1933, Hitler was doing all that. He had only to command celebrities to attend massive public events where he was the star attraction, or to functions where he could impress or bore them with one of his famous monologues about his latest plans, and they duly complied. That was a price they paid for the privilege of enjoying all the perks of Hitler's cult of celebrity.
The power he had over the young starlets is apparent. And probably not as harmless as it might have seemed to the two chorus girls who only had to endure Hitler's boastings. One famous actress endured much more, and paid the ultimate price.
In 1937 Germany was shocked by the news that actress and singer Renate Müller had died at the age of just thirty-one. Her body was found on the pavement outside a hotel on 7 October. She had fallen from the third-storey window of a hotel, and died instantly.
The blue-eyed beauty had starred in more than twenty German films, including Viktor und Viktoria in 1933, which was one of her biggest successes – and was remade in 1982 as Victor Victoria with Julie Andrews. Renate Müller was regarded by the National Socialists as an ideal Aryan woman and, in light of Marlene Dietrich's defection to Hollywood, was courted and promoted as one of Germany's leading film actresses.
She was already a star when Hitler came to power, and was pressured by Joseph Goebbels, who, as President of the Reichskulturkammer, which presided over the German film industry, to appear in some of his personally commissioned proNazi anti-Semitic films. She resisted, so he put her under surveillance by the Gestapo, who established she had a Jewish lover. She finally gave in to Goebbel's demands, and in 1937 she starred in the blatantly anti-Semitic Togger.
Her death was officially classified a suicide. The exact details of her death and the minutes leading up to it have become a matter of much conjecture. Several Gestapo officers were seen entering the hotel shortly before she died, and it was suggested either that she was murdered by Gestapo officers who threw her from a window, or that she panicked when she saw them arrive and jumped. Goebbels wanted the public to believe she had been emotionally unstable and had a drug addiction.
Theories for her possible murder include her lack of cooperation with Goebbels, her love affair with a Jew, and the regime's fear that she was going to turn traitor and leave Germany as Dietrich had done. What is certain is that there was a cover-up about her death. The absolute truth will never be known, and her death remains as much of a mystery in the annals of the German film world as Marilyn Monroe's has in Hollywood. Renate's sister Gabriele always maintained that her death was due to post-operative complications on her knee, but that never explained how her body came to be on the pavement.
Almost the moment Renate Müller's body was discovered, Goebbels realised he had a public relations disaster on his hands. The first story that went out over the radio was that the cause of her death was epilepsy and that she had fallen from a window of a hospital. At some point, this hospital became a hospital for the mentally sick, suggesting Müller was mentally ill, or had had a breakdown. Goebbels spread rumours that she had become addicted to morphine, and was an alcoholic. The true story, of the fall from the hotel window, was only revealed later.
Goebbels saw to it that her funeral at the Parkfriedhof Lichterfelde on 15 October was held in private, and her adoring public was barred. Her possessions were confiscated and sold even though her parents and her sister were alive. Some years later, according to unconfirmed reports, they were all buried in the same grave as Renate, suggesting the family were all silenced.
Without resorting to possible murder, terrorisation and extortion, Goebbels acted much in the same way as Hollywood mogul Adolph Zukor once did when one of his top directors at Famous Players, William Desmond Taylor, was found murdered in 1922. Zukor ordered a cover-up so that the police were unable to ever charge anyone because Zukor knew that the identity of the killer – which became an open secret in Hollywood – would reveal facts about Taylor's life which he wanted to keep from the public because of the shocking scandal it would cause. It seems likely that, for similar reasons, Joseph Goebbels, playing the part of the amateur movie mogul, did the same when Renate Müller died; she might have known some of Hitler's most deviant secrets.
The full truth about her last years and death has never been fully uncovered, and there has been much unconfirmed information and clearly designed misinformation, as was the case with Monroe. Müller might have had a breakdown in 1933 due to the stress of trying to keep her weight down, and illness might have interrupted filming in 1934 – it was said to be epilepsy – but despite reports that her career was sporadic from then on due to whatever illness she might have had, she actually starred in four films during 1935 and 1936, and her last film in 1937, Togger, commissioned by Joseph Goebbels.
Albert Zeisler knew of Müller's secret. On one occasion when Hitler called and asked Zeisler for the company of a pretty actress, possibly in 1935, or before, he sent Renate Müller. Quite why Zeisler chose her isn't clear but it is very likely that Hitler asked for her. Whether she went under duress or from sheer admiration for Hitler isn't obvious; according to Zeisler, she was prepared to have sexual relations with Hitler.
At the Reich Chancellery, Hitler took great delight in telling her that he had made a thorough study of medieval torture methods and was modernising them with the intention of introducing them to Germany. He described these methods to her – methods which were later adopted by the Gestapo – in such explicit detail that she was horrified to the point where she felt her 'flesh creep'. Renate did her best to seduce him without success; she told Zeisler that he seemed uninterested in sex. However, on another occasion, he seemed to become excited and she thought they would finally make love, but instead he jumped to his feet, raised his arm in the Nazi salute and bragged that he could hold his arm that way for an hour and a half without tiring, unlike Göring, who, Hitler said, could not hold out his arm even for twenty minutes.
She arrived one morning at the studio in a very depressed state and when Zeisler asked her what was troubling her she told him she had been with Hitler at the Reich Chancellery that night and she had been sure they were going to have sexual intercourse. They had got as far as undressing, but then Hitler fell to the floor and begged her to kick him. She resisted but he pleaded with her and condemned himself as unworthy and grovelled on the floor in an agonising manner. As disgusted as she was, she gave in and kicked him, which excited him. He begged for more and, masturbating, said it was better than he deserved and that he was not worthy to be in the same room as she. When he was satisfied, he suggested they got dressed, and he thanked her warmly for a pleasant evening.
This tale has been often regarded as pure fiction by some historians because Zeisler hated Hitler for making him leave Germany after he refused to make films that would promote Nazi ideology. While it certainly appears to be almost too sensational, presenting a clichéd image of a mad dictator who can only enjoy perverse sex, Hitler did struggle with a compulsion to completely degrade himself whenever he felt some kind of affection for a woman. Nazis Ernst Hanfstaengel, Otto Strasser and Herman Rauschning all reported that whenever Hitler was smitten with a girl, even in company, he tended to 'grovel at her feet in a most disgusting way'.
Like almost all the girls Hitler was attracted to, Renate Müller was blonde. Zeisler recalled 'another tall blonde called Loeffler' who became involved with Hitler, but after a while she ran off with a Jewish man and lived in Paris, which upset Hitler so much that for some time he did not even bother calling the studio to ask for girls.
For years, Hitler's sexuality has been a matter of debate and disagreement. Suggestions that Hitler was homosexual appear to be unfounded but may well have been based on what was observed as his feminine characteristics – his gait, his mannerisms and even his choice of art as a profession were once interpreted as feminine manifestations. With the possible exception of Heinrich Hoffmann, the Nazi Party's official photographer, and Hitler's personal adjutant, no one knew the nature of his sexual activities, causing much conjecture in party circles, with some believing that he was sexually 'normal' while others suggested that he was immune to sexual temptation. Others thought he was homosexual because many of the party's inner circle in the early days were known homosexuals. Rudolf Hess was known as 'Fraulein Anna'. For a long time Hitler ignored the fact that many in the SA leadership were homosexuals, including Ernst Röhm. Röhm was well aware that Hitler was attracted to the female form, and one time remarked in Hitler's presence, 'He is thinking about the peasant girls. When they stand in the fields and bend down at their work so that you can see their behinds, that's what he likes, especially when they've got big round ones. That's Hitler's sex life.'
Hitler preferred to look rather than touch, and he also enjoyed the pornography his official photographer Heinrich Hoffmann made available to him. Ernest Pope claimed Hitler frequently visited The Merry Widow, in which an American actress played the lead. 'I have seen Hitler nudge his Gauleiter and smirk when Dorothy does her famous backbending number in the spotlight.' Hitler watched through opera glasses and sometimes had command performances for his private benefit.
What is clear is that Hitler was unable to have a normal relationship with women. It seems almost too clichéd to suggest that the man who delighted in the sadistic torture of his enemies and had not an ounce of compassion for those he sent to their deaths was also a voyeur and a masochist in need of punishment from pretty girls.
If it is true what Zeisler claimed about Renate Müller being coerced into inflicting pain upon Hitler, it would appear to shed light on her death. What is also apparent is that she had been seeing Hitler for around two years because Zeisler, who had effectively pimped for Hitler by sending her to him, left Germany in 1935, two years before she died, although she might have ended her association with Hitler, or attempted to, during or before 1937. But whether she killed herself because she was literally driven insane by being forced to indulge in his S&M games, or because she had to be done away with to keep her from going public with revelations of her bizarre association with him – in Hitler's Germany super-injunctions were usually imposed with deadly force – her death can also be theoretically linked to Hitler because of the history of Hitler's women committing or attempting suicide, or even murder. But what was it about Hitler that did this to the women closest to him?
He was deranged – that is without question. To be drawn into close proximity with him in any kind of emotional or physical way must have caused people who were vulnerable or dependent upon him in some way to lose their sense of normality and even become severely unbalanced. He certainly was not sexually conventional, and, by inflicting sexual activities so extreme upon others as he appeared to do to Renate Müller – and must have done to others – he must have contributed to them being driven to the edge of their own limits of normality and sanity. There also remains the possibility that some of these women, knowing of his sexual deviances, were a threat to him, and murder can't be completely discounted, especially in the case of Renate Müller.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Film and Fame"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Michael Munn.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction vii
Chapter 1 Celebrity, Sex and Death 1
Chapter 2 In That Hour 10
Chapter 3 Impurity of the Blood 18
Chapter 4 His Greatest Role 26
Chapter 5 God's Gift 38
Chapter 6 Hider's Publicist 48
Chapter 7 The Holy Family of the Third Reich 58
Chapter 8 Merchandising Adolf 67
Chapter 9 Seven Chambers of Culture 77
Chapter 10 Exodus 94
Chapter 11 Sleeper Star 104
Chapter 12 The Will to Triumph 114
Chapter 13 Leading Ladies of the Third Reich 126
Chapter 14 The Singing Spy 137
Chapter 15 The Depths of Hell 146
Chapter 16 The Führer Versus the Phooey 164
Chapter 17 A Reflection of Hitler 175
Chapter 18 Killing Hider 182
Chapter 19 Time Is Broken 195
Chapter 20 The Price 207
Chapter 21 The Fall 219
Chapter 22 The Final Cut 235
Notes 246
Bibliography 272
Index 282