THE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE has often been compared to a dream. As we sit in the dark and allow uncontrollable images, sounds, and sensations to waft over us, we submit ourselves to someone else’s dream, someone else’s vision of reality. Working perhaps best on the emotional, noncognitive level, film can transport us in an oneiric state to a simpler world where we need not, indeed cannot, participate physically in the events taking place before our eyes. Bystanders yielding to a communal fantasy, the audience safely maneuvers the dangers and pleasures of the cinema, assured of returning to the light of day unscathed. Akin to the national obsession with ecstatic subordination, the cinematic experience in the Third Reich offered the masses submission through entertainment. The National Socialist regime considered film’s power to persuade and placate crucial to its cause and went to extraordinary lengths in an attempt to control celluloid dreams.

Between 1933 and 1945, the German motion picture industry produced over a thousand entertainment films and a vibrant cinema culture, captivating audiences with penetrating images, compelling stories, and a glamorous star cult. Although the National Socialist government considered film a vital indoctrination tool and instituted measures to regulate all aspects of filmmaking, it also recognized that the most effective propaganda hides its intentions and appeals to the emotions. Feature films that catered to the needs of a mass audience and were promoted as ideology-free consumer products could function as political vehicles by teaching behavioral modes, nourishing the demand for a private realm, and granting subversive desire a measured release. Nazi entertainment films sought to influence viewers via the conventions of classical cinema: emotional involvement, identification with characters and stars, and well-worn genres. The Nazi regime did not merely terrorize its citizens into submission, it also used seduction and offered people many of the things they wanted: stability, a traditional value system, a sense of belonging, and the belief in a better standard of living. Much of Nazi cinema’s popularity rested upon its ability to express positive social fantasies and promote the enchantment of reality, creating a place so delightful that one wanted to share in the dream at any price.