10 Most Fascinating Films Produced By Brutal Governments

As well as sweeping, glorious documentaries about the German people’s devotion to the Nazi party and the Fuhrer’s great strength, Nazi cinema also had another important ideological aim.

In addition to strengthening public perception of the party itself the Nazis hoped to use cinema to disseminate their racialist and anti-semitic ideology among the general population. Der Ewige Jude is probably the most notable, effective and disgusting example of this. Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) is a riff on the anti-semetic fable of The Wandering Jew which told of a Jew who mocked Christ on the cross and was damned to wander the earth forever.

The Eternal Jew makes extensive use of recordings of recently Nazi occupied Poland, especially of the Jewish ghettos that the Nazis would soon decimate. The film worked hard, through editing, images and narration, to depict Jewish people as parasites on European society, who lives in squalor and did not contribute to the public sphere.

It presented the so called “civilised” Jews of Germany as an illusion and portrayed poverty stricken Jews in Poland and the Jew’s true, feral form. The movie stands as one of the most abhorrent pieces of propaganda in human history and watching it today, in a society so used to knee-jerk repulsion at Nazi atrocities, is a sobering experience.