The Cold War is a name given to the years following World War II up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. During that time, the United States and the Soviet Union had a tense standoff.

The two sides began an arms race, making as much advanced technology as possible to beat the other. When the threat of potential nuclear attack from the Soviet Union became a possibility, the Office of Civil Defense created a number of films aimed at educating the American people about the dangers of nuclear fallout.

Despite the fact that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, the aftereffects of the devastating damage caused by radiation were still a new phenomenon that needed to be studied. Many of these films are labeled as fearmongering, misleading propaganda, while others will argue that the government was simply trying to do the best they could with the information they had at the time.

10 Duck And Cover

This 1950s federally funded film was meant to be shown in elementary schools to educate children on how to protect themselves during an atomic bomb attack. It compares atomic bomb blasts to common disasters like house fires and radiation flashes to a bad sunburn.

The entire point of the movie is to encourage people to “duck and cover” if there is ever an atomic bomb explosion. It explains that if there is a warning that the bomb is coming, people should go to their homes and hide inside hallways, duck and cover against a wall, and keep away from doors or windows.

Obviously, with everything the public knows about atomic bombs today, ducking and covering is not enough to protect yourself from a radioactive blast. This film is a perfect example of how little people knew about the dangers of atomic power in the early 1950s.

For years, Duck and Cover was considered to be an example of the misguidance given to citizens from the government. However, in 2010, the United States government advised citizens yet again that if there was any attack from an enemy force, they should stay indoors

Critics of this advice have compared it to the uselessness of Duck and Cover. However, in modern times, aside from TV series like Doomsday Preppers, average US citizens are not preparing for nuclear fallout.

9 Fallout Shelter Life

This film shows what people can expect if they need to live in a community fallout shelter. During the Cold War, the Office of Civil Defense offered free supplies to buildings that were willing to provide their basements as community shelters. It is clear that this movie pushes the audience to want to build their own fallout shelters at home, which could be outfitted for months of survival rather than only two weeks.

The food that the government provided was part of their “emergency mass feeding” plan for these community shelters. They contained rations adding up to only 700 calories per day.

The daily meals were actually just biscuits and crackers that were infused with nutrients. There were also candies that were meant to be carbohydrate supplements. The red dye used in the candy is actually banned today because it was discovered to cause cancer.

The second half of this film gives terrible advice about what to do after canned goods are gone. They say that eating the rotting vegetables and moldy bread is okay as long as the rotting bits are cut out. In reality, poisonous mold spores contaminate the entire area surrounding it. The US Department of Agriculture now advises against eating any type of moldy food.

The film also tells people that eating livestock should be fine, too. In reality, we can see the aftereffects of livestock in Fukushima, Japan, after being exposed to radiation from the nuclear factory explosion in 2011.

By the end of this film, the group hears a radio announcement that they can safely leave their shelters two weeks later. This is also totally unrealistic as we learned from Fukushima, which still has harmfully high levels of radiation even years later.

8 Survival Under Atomic Attack

This movie was made by the Office of Civil Defense and featured the information in their 1950 booklet called Survival Under Atomic Attack. The goal of both the booklet and this film is to tell the American people, “You can survive atomic attack!”

The film downplays the seriousness of the effects that radiation had on the population of Hiroshima, Japan, after the nuclear bomb hit. Showing documentary clips of the recovery in Japan, the film explains that shadows forever cast on the pavement on the Yorozuya Bridge from the blast are proof that you can survive if you hide behind a cement object. In reality, it means the exact opposite because the shadows are permanently cast as a form of thermal radiance.

This movie discourages people from evacuating their cities and tells them to continue with their daily lives, especially continuing production in factories. It is clear that the government wanted people to keep working. Without factory workers, weapons would stop being produced and it would be unlikely that the US could bounce back from an attack.

The tips given in this film are general fire, safety, and emergency preparedness tips that apply to tornadoes and hurricanes, like keeping flashlights on hand and making sure your garbage can has a lid on it. The advice was ultimately useless for an atomic attack. It would only serve the government to keep citizens feeling safe so that society continues to function.

7 Town Of The Times

This film talks about the statistics of the average American town only having five finished fallout shelters built in the basements of private homes. Local politicians are hesitant to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars to build massive fallout shelters underneath public buildings like schools.

This movie goes through a scenario of what towns can do to create fallout shelters with their available public spaces and how life can continue in the event of an attack.

The government strongly preferred that individual families build their own fallout shelters rather than rely on state and local governments to spend taxpayer dollars on larger ones for the community. The government even offered lifetime guaranteed tax credits if families built fallout shelters in their basements that met the standards set by the government.

The last remaining up-to-code fallout shelter in New York City belongs to Francisco Lago, who now uses it as a storage area in the basement. Another woman named Edith Fetterman commented to The New York Times on her reasons for building a fallout shelter in Queens, New York, in the 1950s.

She is a Polish immigrant who survived the Holocaust as a young girl, but her parents and sister were killed. She grew up, got married, and had two kids. After knowing such evils existed from her childhood, the threat of nuclear war only made sense. Many Americans felt there was nothing to worry about, but building a personal fallout shelter was the logical thing to do for Edith.

6 Walt Builds A Family Fallout Shelter

This film was sponsored by the National Concrete Masonry Association, teaching a do-it-yourself method of building a fallout shelter in your basement. People are encouraged to build the shelter with the idea that it could double as a guest bedroom, a photography darkroom, or a playroom for children if a nuclear attack didn’t happen.

In 1959, the government circulated a booklet called The Family Fallout Shelter which gives blueprints on DIY shelters, ranging from very simple ones that would only cost $150 all the way to the more elaborate ones costing several thousand dollars.

By the end of this instructional film, Walt explains that it just makes sense to have a shelter in your basement in the age of nuclear threat. Author Melvin E. Matthews Jr. explains that while the fear of possible attacks was not irrational, much of this propaganda was funded by companies who would benefit from the sales of construction goods and the hiring of contractors to make these simple shelters, which they described as “just a swimming pool, only upside down.”

5 To Live Tomorrow

This film gives the appearance of a helpful public service announcement, although it is actually clever marketing to exploit society’s fears. At the beginning and end of this film, we see that it was sponsored by the Life Insurance Institute.

The plot of this short movie shows a man working as an insurance executive as he tries to come up with a way to let customers know how to be prepared for a nuclear attack. He keeps going to the conclusion that the key to survival is leadership. In panicked situations, people tend not to think clearly unless they are trained on what to do. The movie suggests that the viewer prepare to take action and become a leader.

One example they show is a grease fire in the kitchen of a family home. The children are frozen with fear until the mother instructs them to run and get the fireproof blanket from the other room. Meanwhile, she throws baking soda on the flames. As the leader, she delegates tasks to the children and they are able to put out the fire together.

Without explicitly saying it, this movie seems to be hinting at fathers that they have a responsibility to be prepared for absolutely anything as leaders of their households. One of those things would be the possibility of death during a nuclear attack, and they should probably think about purchasing life insurance.

4 Ten For Survival

In 1959, the Office of Civil Defense realized that jumping under tables and a two-week supply of crackers and candy wasn’t enough to protect the American people from atomic bombs. The government realized that they had made a huge mistake in all the films they were using to educate the public.

The TV series called Ten for Survival was an attempt to make up for the mistakes of the past and give correct information to the public. These episodes aired once a week for 13 weeks straight.

They also advertised an accompanying Family Fallout Shelter booklet. Multiple TV stations requested that they show Ten for Survival on their channels as well to make sure that all Americans had a chance to see it.

In an eerie interview in this episode, two ordinary citizens from Staten Island, New York, predicted that any attack on the United States would happen in New York City. In a survey by NBC, the vast majority of Americans agreed. They also agreed that it would be a surprise attack. Although it took many years, that prediction came true on September 11, 2001.

3 The Day Called X

This film demonstrates a scenario of what would happen if a nuclear bomb was dropped on Portland, Oregon. During the Cold War, Portland was designated as one of the potential target cities. In 1955, there was an evacuation drill of the entire city. So this was a documentary that included a narrator and some dramatized scenes. This aired on CBS, which means that most people in America would have seen it.

During the drill, the entire city had to evacuate. The community shelter for normal citizens could only hold 300 people and only had enough supplies to survive for a week. So they were encouraged to evacuate instead.

Meanwhile, the members of local government moved to a bomb shelter 10 kilometers (6 mi) away from Portland, tucked away in the mountains with their families. “Government must survive if its people are to survive,” they said.

Author Brian Johnson analyzes The Day Called X and mentions that the people are calm in this film because it is only a drill. Normal citizens really had no idea how much nuclear warheads had advanced since World War II.

He also says that the film talking about the importance of people carrying out their civic duties during an attack is laughably unrealistic and clearly just pro-government propaganda. The truth is that, even if they were given notice, the people of Portland were doomed.

The only thing this film accomplishes is to potentially keep society running long enough for the members of government to get to their bomb shelter. This was the only place that was actually equipped for people to survive.

2 Three Reactions To Life In A Fallout Shelter

Sponsored by the Department of Civil Defense, this film goes over the variety of psychological reactions people may have while living in the confinement of a fallout shelter. Actors play out several scenarios, ranging from anger and fighting among the men to hysterical denial from a woman to depression in a man who believes his family was killed by the blast.

By the end of the film, the only advice from the government is to be organized and keep busy in fallout shelters. It leaves an open-ended question for the audience, “What would YOU do to prevent issues like this?” If the film accomplished anything, it was to encourage people not to act like the troubled people in this movie and to become mentally prepared before a nuclear attack occurred.

The Department of Civil Defense left out some of the gorier details of their research. Documents of these studies were only recently declassified so that the public can read them.

The conclusion of the government study was that community shelters would likely be overcrowded in the event of a nuclear attack. The air would become toxic with atmospheric contaminants and disease. The psychological turmoil alone would be enough to cause civil unrest among the survivors. Essentially, the situation would devolve into chaos.

1 Atomic Attack

Sponsored by Motorola in 1954, this full-length movie is about a suburban housewife who learns that there was a hydrogen bomb dropped on New York City. She was living in nearby Westchester County, which is 80 kilometers (50 mi) from the city.

The housewife ends up hosting refugees, including her daughter’s high school science teacher. The teacher had quit his job working on atomic bombs because he is a pacifist.

The housewife and the teacher debate the issue, and the movie concludes that America will only respond to an attack by returning the attack on the enemy’s major cities as well. In this way, the movie serves as propaganda in favor of continuing the arms race against the Soviet Union.

This movie is credited as the original inspiration of much apocalyptic fiction that was created in the years following the 1950s. At first, this movie was spread to give people information on nuclear attacks in an entertaining way.

However, just three years after its release, the film was removed from circulation by the Federal Civil Defense Administration when they realized that it was teaching incorrect information. In the film, they claim that nuclear fallout debris was only spread through rainwater, and the characters are walking outside within days of the blast. In reality, radiation can travel through the air, and it lasts for far longer.

Shannon Quinn is a writer and entrepreneur from the Philadelphia area. You can also find her on Twitter.

The Allied and Axis powers made extensive use of propaganda during World War II. The major belligerents even set up dedicated offices to create propaganda to raise the morale of their citizens and troops. At the same time, it was meant to demoralize their enemies.

The US and UK named their propaganda arms the Office of War Information and the Ministry of Information, respectively, to conceal their real purposes. Their primary rival, Germany, was less subtle in its approach and called its propaganda arm the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. Cartoons formed a crucial part of this so-called public enlightenment.

In the United States, Walt Disney created several pro–Allied Forces and anti-Nazi cartoons for the Allies. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment oversaw the creation of propaganda cartoons for the Nazi regime.

10 Nimbus Libere
1944

Nimbus Libere is a short (2 minutes, 33 seconds) created by the Nazis for occupied France. It features Disney characters and was intended to mock the Allied aerial bombardment of occupied France.

It starts with Professor Nimbus (a popular cartoon character of the day) listening to the radio alongside his wife and daughter. Then a Jewish presenter with an elongated nose comes on air to inform listeners that the Allies are coming to liberate them.

Some Allied bombers soon appear in the skies. Three of them are piloted by famous American cartoon characters like Donald Duck, Popeye, and Mickey Mouse while their guns are manned by Goofy and Felix the Cat.

Behind each pilot is a bomb labeled “Made in USA.” Popeye also has a can of whiskey behind him and a map of France in front of him. The bombers drop their payload. But one bomb destroys Professor Nimbus’s house and kills him alongside his family.^[1]

Meanwhile, the radio continues broadcasting until the Angel of Death lands on the rubble and switches the radio off before laughing.

9 Il Dottor Churkill
1941

Il Dottor Churkill is an Italian cartoon starring wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as Doctor Churchill. It parodies the famous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story line. However, this time, Winston Churchill is a wicked half-human half-monster who drinks a chemical concoction to become the good Dr. Churchill.

Dr. Churchill lives in the Bank of England. There, he keeps a stash of gold that has been stolen from several nations that think he is their friend. He has a lab under the Bank of England where he mixes and drinks a chemical concoction of democracy, liberty, and fraternity that turns him into the friendly Dr. Churchill.^[2]

Thereafter, he visits his supposed friends to steal their gold. Dr. Churchill continues to steal gold until he is exposed by the Nazis and defeated by a coalition of Nazi and Italian airplanes that also destroy London.

8 Momotaro No Umiwashi (Momotaro’s Sea Eagles)
1942

Momotaro’s Sea Eagles is a Japanese short created in 1942 but released in 1943. It is based on the 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing and even contains live footage of the attack. The short features Japanese folklore character, Momotaro, who leads a group of Japanese animal soldiers, airplanes, and ships to attack Pearl Harbor, which they refer to as “Devil’s Island.”

On the side of the United States is Olive Oyl, Popeye’s girlfriend, and Bluto, Popeye’s antagonist, who is depicted as a drunk US Navy sailor. The cartoon was a collaboration between the Japanese Navy and the Japanese Ministry of Education.^[3]

7 Vom Baumlein, Das Andere Blatter Hat Gewollt
1940

The Nazis called the Jews a parasitic race that was destroying the lives of the hardworking German people. The Nazis even made one film titled Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), which is regarded as the most extreme of all anti-Jewish films produced during the war.

Vom Baumlein, das andere Blatter hat gewollt (Of the little tree which wished for different leaves) is a similar but animated short based on a poem by German poet Friedrich Ruckert. The short goes straight to the point of painting Jews as parasites. It is about a golden tree that is home to little birds. At least, until a Jew comes along and plucks all its leaves except one.^[4]

6 Evil Mickey Mouse Invades Japan
1934

Alternatively called Omochabako series dai san wa: Ehon senkya-hyakusanja-rokunen (Toybox Series 3: Picture Book 1936), Evil Mickey Mouse Invades Japan is a Japanese animated short featuring evil-looking flying mice attacking a group of children and a Felix the Cat look-alike. The flying mice resemble a cross between Mickey Mouse and a bat and are backed by a group of snakes and crocodiles.

Although the children escape the onslaught, the attackers chase after them until some samurais come to the kids’ rescue. The cartoon was created in 1934 but was postdated to 1936. The Japanese felt that postdating was necessary because they anticipated a war against the US in 1936, the year that a US and Japanese naval treaty was supposed to come to an end.^[5]

5 Momotaro: Umi No Shinpei (Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors)
1945

Momotaro: Umi no Shinpei (Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors) is a sequel to the Momotaro no Umiwashi (Momotaro’s Sea Eagles) that we mentioned earlier. This time, Momotaro leads his army of animals to free colonized animals living in several Southeast Asian islands.

When Momotaro’s army arrives at one island, they warn the animals about the Western colonists and inform the animals of the army’s mission to free them from their oppressors. Thereafter, Momotaro leads his army and the local animals on an attack against a British military outpost on the island.

The cartoon flopped upon release because most of the intended viewers (the children) had been evacuated from the Japanese cities due to heavy Allied bombings. The few still around worked in factories and were unable to watch the cartoon.

The cartoon was lost after the war until a copy was found in 1983. It was released on home video and has now been rereleased on Blu-ray as Momotaro, Sacred Sailors.^[6]

4 Armer Hansi (Poor Hansi)
1943

Armer Hansi is a short created by Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH, a German animation studio that was set up by Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda and National Enlightenment. This was done on the orders of Adolf Hitler, who wanted Germany to make cartoons that could rival Disney.

Armer Hansi is about a songbird called Hansi, which escapes its cage to meet an attractive bird of another species. Hansi faces a series of unpleasant situations outside his cage and is almost eaten by a flying kite and a cat.

He manages to find the attractive female but is chased away by her partner. However, Hansi later finds a female of his own species and joins her in her cage where they live happily ever after.^[7]

3 Der Storenfried (The Troublemaker)
1940

Der Storenfried is a German-made short (13 minutes) starring a troublesome fox that threatens the children of a rabbit. However, the rabbit is helped by a coalition of wasps and dogs (representing the German Air Force and Army) which engage the fox and chase it away from the village. The wasps and dogs attack in military formation, with the wasps diving and firing their stingers like the airplanes of the day.

The cartoon was intended to show how multitudes of weaker animals could work together to defeat a stronger adversary.^[8] The film was later adapted into a book, Reintje verwekt onrust, where the fox is depicted as the Soviet Union and the wasps are depicted as German airplanes.

2 Van Den Vos Reynaerde (Reynard The Fox)
1943

Reynard the Fox is based on Van den vos Reynaerde, Ruwaard Boudewijn en Jodocus (Reynard the Fox and the Jew Animal), an anti-Jew, pro-Nazi novel written by pro-Nazi Dutchman Robert van Genechten in 1937. In the novel, Reynard, a fox, kills a crash of rhinoceroses including one called Jodocus, whose name is derived from the Dutch word for “Jew.”

In the cartoon, a kingdom of animals is led by a donkey called Baldwin. Then some merchants, depicted as rhinoceroses with extra-large horns, come along and trick Baldwin until he puts them in charge of collecting the kingdom’s tax.

The rhinoceroses start promoting democracy as an alternative to the outdated aristocracy. Reynard observes the rhinoceroses and discovers that their mission is to overthrow King Baldwin. So Reynard leads the animals in a revolt against the rhinoceroses.^[9]

1 Der Schneemann (The Snowman)
1943

Der Schneemann (The Snowman) is about a snowman that comes to life after falling snowflakes make a heart-shaped pattern on his chest. The snowman goes on an adventure—skating, playing, and hiding his carrot nose from a hungry rabbit.

He soon finds a calendar and realizes that there are other seasons apart from winter. So the snowman decides to hide in an icebox (a precursor to today’s refrigerators) and survive until the summer.

Summer arrives, and the snowman leaves the icebox. As expected, he cannot survive the heat and bursts into a song titled “Da ist der Sommer meines Lebens” (“This is the Summer of my Life”) just before melting.

The rabbit, which the snowman had earlier denied his carrot nose, appears and observes a moment of silence for the snowman before making away with the carrot. Der Schneemann has very little depiction of the Nazis and has even been said to be free of propaganda. Some even claim that the cartoon is actually anti-Nazi.^[10]

+ Das Dumme Ganslein (The Silly Goose)
1944

Das dumme Ganslein is about a goose that leaves its farm and almost falls victim to a crafty fox that kills geese and captures other animals as slaves. It is the last of three shorts produced by German animator Hans Fischer, who is also known as Fischerkoesen.

The two other shorts are Weather-Beaten Melody (1942), which is about a wasp that plays an old record with its stinger, and The Snowman (1943), which we mentioned above.

Like Weather-Beaten Melody and The Snowman, The Silly Goose is believed by some to be an anti-Nazi short rather than a propaganda cartoon. This is because Weather-Beaten Melody contains forbidden jazz music, The Snowman looks up to better times, and the goose is defiant to authority.

Hans M. Fischerkoesen, Fischerkoesen’s son, claims that his father was neither pro- nor anti-Nazi.^[11]

Joseph Goebbels was the mastermind behind Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine, and has been hailed as the inventor of marketing strategies that are still in use today, in addition to creating the idea of ‘fake news.’

However, once the Second World War broke out in 1939, problems in Goebbels’ propaganda paradise soon surfaced. Under the constant threat of invasion, and frequent allied bombings, the German public were not as willing to simply absorb Nazi values and principles. The pressure of war led to blunders in propaganda, along with the ever more eccentric ideas of Goebbels failing to hit the spot with the German population.

Although Hitler’s National Socialist Party was successful in altering the ideology of an entire country, not all of the Third Reich’s propagandist pursuits went to plan.

Top 10 Things The Nazis Got Right

10 Hitler’s perfect Aryan baby

In 1935, Joseph Goebbels, launched a campaign in search of the ‘perfect Aryan baby.’

On the contrary to all Aryan values however, Goebbels selected a brunette, brown-eyed baby that opposed much of the Aryan propaganda at the time.

The baby’s face was soon appearing in printed propaganda of every kind across the country. But no one was more shocked to see a baby’s face appear amongst the usually militaristic propaganda of Nazi Germany, than the baby’s parents themselves; Jacob and Pauline Levinson. Particularly when they knew that their daughter was Jewish.

A rebel artist named Hans Ballin, had recently taken the Levinson’s daughter’s picture in his Berlin studio. Ballin hated the Nazi regime, and submitted this photo of Hessy Taft, in the hopes that it would undermine Goebbels’ entire competition.

Whilst Ballin did succeed in humiliating the Nazi regime, the artist’s decision put the Levinsons in a lot of danger, and they ended up having to flee Latvia.^[1]

9 Hitler’s Premier Example of a Full-Blooded Aryan Soldier

Werner Goldberg was a German who was of half Jewish ancestry, and appeared in posters across Nazi Germany as the ideal Wehrmacht Aryan soldier.

On December 1st 1938, Goldberg joined the German army and took part in the invasion of Poland in 1939. Shortly after the outbreak of war, Goldberg’s photograph appeared in the Berliner Tagesblatt Newspaper, with the caption “The Ideal German Soldier.” The photograph had been sold to the newspaper by the army’s photographer, and was later even used on recruitment posters.

Within less than a year, this ‘Ideal German Soldier’ would soon be banished from the army for which he had fought, after Hitler issued an order on April 8th, 1940, which stated that anyone with 1st degree Jewish ancestry must be expelled from the forces.

Not quite the ideal German soldier Goebbels had hoped for.^[2]

8 The Far Too Successful Degenerate Art Gallery

Before the Nazis came to power in 1939, Germany was the centre of Modern Art. Dadaism and the Bauhaus Movement were becoming renowned across the globe, and artists were looking to Germany for inspiration.

However, when the Nazis came to power, the liberty of the German art scene was destroyed. The party could sense the public’s anger towards these restrictions, and concluded that they were simply misled. An art exhibition, entitled, ‘Entartete Kunst’ or ‘Degenerate Art’ was arranged in Munich, in order to showcase why modern art was dangerous and shameful.

Over 650 pieces of art were taken from German galleries and arranged chaotically. Explanations on why the pieces of art did not support the Nazi regime were displayed alongside the works. At the same time, the Nazis opened an art gallery entitled the ‘Great German Art Exhibition,’ which showcased Aryan-approved art only, in a bid to prove the superiority of this art form.

This plan backfired however, and five times as many people visited the ‘Degenerate Art’ gallery. In fact, it was so popular that in one day over 36,000 visitors attended.^[3]

7 Radio Caledonia

Radio Caledonia’s sole aim was to turn the Scottish public against the British government, and was an arm of Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda machine.

Its broadcasts were written and hosted by Scottish fascist Donald Grant, who argued that a Hitler-Controlled Scotland was better than a Scotland ruled by an English Churchill.

Reception of Radio Caledonia in Britain was so poor however, that the station would frequently have lengthy periods of time off air. The Scots Independent actually openly denounced Radio Caledonia and regarded it as a risk, running a column which claimed that the radio station was not helpful to the cause of Scottish nationalism.

Radio Caledonia failed miserably, and ceased airing broadcasts in 1942.^[4]

6 Life Goes on

By 1944 most of the German population were prepared for an inevitable defeat, and a sense of hopelessness gripped the nation.

Even with the end of the war in sight, Goebbels still naively believed that propaganda would distract the German public. After watching, Mrs Miniver, which depicted Londoners banding together against the Blitz bombing, Goebbels decided that Germany needed its own uplifting film.

This film would come in the form of Life Goes On and Goebbels regarded it as his pride and joy; hiring the Third Reich’s leading cast and crew.

Filming began in January 1945, as Allied troops were quite literally driving onto German soil. In fact, by the time shooting of the film started, most of the Berlin buildings and landmarks in the film had already been destroyed by Allied bombings. Goebbels was determined to complete the movie, and even diverted vital materials from re-building efforts to the production instead!

Eventually, the director was forced to shoot his film on the run as the approaching Red Army would continually attack locations where the cast had been filming just hours before.

With only days left before German surrender, the production was finally suspended. The reels of film have never been found, with some rumours stating that they were hidden in the ruins of a cathedral. Historians have tried to track any remnants of the footage, however all that remains of Goebbels’ final piece of propaganda are storyboards and newsreel footage of the production.^[5]

Top 10 Plans Hitler Would Have Put In Motion If The Nazis Had Won

5 Jesse Owens- 1936 Berlin Olympics

The 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, were the first to be televised around the world. Hitler consequently seized this opportunity for worldwide Nazi notoriety and channelled funds towards constructing an enormous new stadium.

At the time, Jesse Owens, a black American athlete, was taking the athletics track by storm- matching the world record for the 100 yard dash whilst only still in High School! American decision makers were aware of Nazi Germany’s discriminatory policies against Jewish athletes and nearly boycotted the 1936 Olympic Games. However, the politicians were overruled by the American Olympic Committee and their attendance went ahead.

Owens in fact openly expressed his desire to attend the Olympic Games, regarding the politicians’ stance against Germany as one laced with hypocrisy. Growing up in a country which endorsed Jim Crow Laws and blatant discrimination- in the eyes of most black athletes, the politicians who were debating the boycott had no moral high ground to stand upon.

The games reached viewers in 41 countries, and much to Hitler’s dismay, it was a black American, Jesse Owens, who instantly became the star of the Summer Olympic Games. Winning four gold medals in track and field events; Owens became the first American to win 4 gold medals in a single Olympics.

Whilst Owens couldn’t single handily halt the rise of the Nazi regime, he did managed to undermine an entire nation’s ideology and steal the spotlight from one of history’s most fanatical leaders.^[6]

4 William Shakespeare

By the end of the 19th Century, William Shakespeare became known in Germany as “our Shakespeare”, and in no other country on Earth were his plays performed more often. Shakespeare was thus a central pillar of Germany’s culture which could not simply be pushed aside by Nazification.

For the Nazis, theatre did not solely function as a political weapon; with Goebbels himself noting that “a good mood is an instrument of war…and even a factor in determining the outcome of war.” In May 1934 therefore, Goebbels introduced the Unified Theatre Law Act, which meant all theatres were officially under his control.

Nonetheless, a dynamic version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet made its way onto the Berlin state theatre stage, and entirely undermined the principles of heroism that Goebbels wanted all main characters to follow. The production consequently contained subversive messages, and yet was proclaimed by Goebbels himself as ‘a summit of German theatre,’ and was even used as a piece of propaganda in a state visit to Vienna. The director Jurgen Fehling took this one step further and openly undermined the Nazi regime’s tyrannical dictatorship through a production of Richard III. The character of Richard of Gloucester was given a limp that directly mimicked Goebbels and the costumes replicated the same style as SA troops. Unfortunately for Goebbels, this was one of the most popular theatre productions throughout the Third Reich.

Shakespeare would not be squeezed and manipulated into such a tight fitting, propagandist straitjacket. Although endless Theatre Laws could dictate a theatre’s reparatory, the Nazis could never gain ultimate control of a population’s imagination.^[7]

3 The V-2

The V-2 rocket was the German army’s most advanced weapon of the Second World War. It was promoted widely as one of Hitler’s ‘revenge weapons,’ and paraded to the public as the weapon which would win Germany the war.

The V-2 was an enormous ballistic missile which carried a one ton warhead, it was rocketed to the edge of space before falling at supersonic speeds onto its unsuspecting target below. The weapon was used predominantly against London and Antwerp during the war, and there was no defence against it at the time.

Although the rocket’s development began before the war, it was not actually ready to be used until the Autumn of 1944- a time when arguably, Germany was already losing. Overall, the weapon inflicted very little damage in comparison to the huge sums of money that had been invested in its development. Only 3,000 V-2s were ever launched and it is believed that they killed a total of 9,000 people; a figure which was far lower than the number of slave workers who perished whilst building the missiles. Even more embarrassingly, the total quantity of explosives delivered by all of the V-2s ever launched, was far less than could be dropped by a single air raid from RAF Bomber Command.^[8]

2 Ark Royal

H.M.S Ark Royal was an aircraft carrier of the British Royal Navy that served during WW2, and was the first purpose built aircraft carrier.

Her reputation was enhanced when her crew successfully sunk the first German U-boat of the war, torpedoed the German Battleship Bismarck and successfully scuttled the German’s ‘Admiral Graf Spee’ – an embarrassing affair for the German Navy.

The Ark Royal soon became known as the ‘Lucky Ship’, narrowly avoiding two torpedoes which missed the ship’s stern by only a few 100 yards, surviving a U-boat attack and an attack from three Luftwaffe Dornier seaplanes.

The successful sinking of the Ark Royal was falsely reported on the German radio several times, with the British crew of the ship even choosing to listen in to the blatant propagandist lies as a form of entertainment. The sinking of the Ark Royal was so pivotal in Goebbels’ militaristic propaganda, that Lieutenant Adolf Francke who led the Luftwaffe attack on the ship and reported a successful sinking, was publicly decorated.

In reality, the bombing had broken nothing but the ship’s cutlery and Winston Churchill himself invited the US Naval Attache to view the Ark Royal in dock, in a bid to both reassure the Allied forces and embarrass the German Navy.^[9]

1 Axis Sally

Mildred Elizabeth Gillars, nicknamed ‘Axis Sally’, was an American broadcaster employed by the Nazis to broadcast propaganda on the German state radio.

In 1942, Gillars was cast in a radio show called ‘Home Sweet Home’, whose sole aim was to make US forces feel homesick. Gillars’ key tactic was to discuss the potential infidelity of soldiers’ wives and girlfriends back home. Gillars also broadcast a show called ‘Midge at the Mike’ which brought American Jazz interrupted by defeatist propaganda across the radio waves of Europe. Most disturbingly however, was her show titled ‘GI’s Letterbox’ in which she broadcast information on captured or wounded American soldiers in order to worry families in America.

Nonetheless, this propaganda did not have the effect that Goebbels had intended, and instead many accounts by US Troops found Axis Sally very entertaining- even gaining fans amongst the forces. How else were the troops going to be able to listen to hot jazz in the midst of war?^[10]

Top 10 Horrific Nazi Human Experiments