SHORTLY AFTER GERMANY invaded Poland in September 1939, leading Nazi film journals began to question the role film would play in the hostilities. Would the muses be silenced by the din of battle or could the power of cinema to construct an alternate reality, capture objects, transform people into images, and reorganize time and space all be harnessed for the military struggle? Critics asserted that film could function as a powerful ideological weapon since it shared essential properties with the military: “Film has become a part of the armed forces. Like the latter it realizes the decisive characteristics of technology: speed, precision, thrusting force into the distance.”

Despite the Nazi’s fascination with war and cinema, they produced fewer than twenty feature films about the contemporary Second World War experience: the combat film gives expression to the myth of the hardened warrior as the quintessential Aryan male; the furlough film situates the soldier in the homeland where he enjoys an adventure of the heart; and finally, the home-front film explores the bond between the civilian populace and the front-line soldier in wartime love stories and family dramas.

The home-front film is especially noteworthy because it uses culture and entertainment to package war for sale to the German people. In this chapter I will examine the manner in which three home-front films cloak their ideological message in entertaining stories, enchanting audiences while mobilizing them psychologically for war. As propaganda vehicles promoting the idea of a nation united against the enemy, Nazi home-front films reflected developments on the battlefield and can be divided into three phases. The first phase corresponded to the Blitzkrieg victories (1939–1940), the second phase to the intensified struggle against the Allies (1941–1942), and the third phase to the repeated military defeats (1943–1945). Three films in particular, Wunschkonzert, Die große Liebe, and Die Degenhardts, best typify the official discourse on war prevailing in each period.

Filmed against the backdrop of the swift French defeat in 1940, Wunschkonzert (Request Concert) exemplifies the first phase because it presented a cheerful homeland adapting to the dictates of war while exuding optimism and confidence in victory. Through popular culture and light musical entertainment, the film attempted to appeal to the audience emotionally and win it over to the war effort.