page_title: The Eternal Jew (film)
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The Eternal Jew (film) / Background
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. München, Ausstellung "Der ewige Jude" München.- Ausstellung "Der ewige Jude" im Deutschen Museum, 7. - 8.11.1937. Innenraum
context_page_description: The Eternal Jew is a 1940 antisemitic Nazi propaganda film, presented as a documentary. The film's initial German title was Der ewige Jude, the German term for the character of the "Wandering Jew" in medieval folklore. The film was directed by Fritz Hippler at the insistence of Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.
  With a screenplay credited to Eberhard Taubert and narrated by Harry Giese, the film consists of feature and documentary footage combined with materials filmed shortly after the Nazi occupation of Poland. At this time, Poland's Jewish population was about three million, roughly ten percent of the total population.
context_section_description: Hitler and Goebbels believed that film was a vital tool for molding public opinion. The Nazis first established a film department in 1930 and Goebbels had taken a personal interest in the use of film to promote the Nazi philosophy and agenda. Soon after the Nazi takeover, Goebbels insisted in speeches that the role of the German cinema was to serve as the "vanguard of the Nazi military".
  The Goebbels film appears to have been intended as a violently antisemitic version of the British film The Wandering Jew, which argued that Jews were victims of relentless persecution throughout history. Saul Friedländer suggests that Goebbels' intent was to counter three films: Jew Süss, The House of Rothschild, and The Wandering Jew. These three films, all released in 1933–34, showed that Jews were persecuted throughout history; the Goebbels films presented the opposite message.
  In 1937, a special wing of the Propaganda Ministry put on an art exhibition in Munich titled Der ewige Jude. It followed this up with the publication of a book of the same title, consisting of 265 photographs, each with a derogatory caption asserting the degeneracy of the Jewish race.
  In November 1938, Goebbels made a series of attacks against the Jews in the German media that were a factor which resulted in the pogrom known as Kristallnacht. Despite the emotional satisfaction afforded the Nazis by carrying out their antisemitism with direct violence, Kristallnacht was considered by Hitler to have been a political disaster both within Germany and internationally. Not only did the brutality indirectly caused by Goebbels evoke harsh criticism internationally, the mixed reaction in the German media showed a lack of broad-based support among Germans for antisemitism and violence.
  Hitler expressed his frustration and anger at the mixed response from the German media and insisted that, instead of openly calling for violence against the Jews as Goebbels had in instigating the pogrom, Nazi propaganda should "elucidate events of foreign policy" in such a way that the German people themselves would call for violence against the Jews.
  In response to Hitler's harsh reprimand, Goebbels launched a campaign to promote the antisemitic views of the Nazis to the German populace. He ordered each film studio to make an antisemitic film. In the case of The Eternal Jew, Goebbels conceived of a film that would communicate to the German people the same antisemitic message that had been the theme of the 1937 Munich exhibition. Hitler preferred films such as The Eternal Jew which presented the Nazi antisemitic agenda openly and directly; however Goebbels disliked the crudeness of such straightforward approaches, preferring the much more subtle approach of couching antisemitic messages in an engaging story with popular appeal. The film Jud Süß is an example of Goebbels' preferred approach.
caption: The interior of the exhibition The Eternal Jew (1937/1938)
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