Naziganda in New York: On the Screening of Nazi Propaganda in Yorkville Movie Houses, 1933-1941

• In Event: Screen Borders: Transnational Studies of Television and Film

Abstract

In the years leading up to America’s entry into World War II, German films, though officially banned, frequently made it unto American screens. German-American enclaves such as New York’s Yorkville neighborhood played German propaganda in their theaters; some of the theatres were even owned by Jewish emigres. It appears that film critics and the public may have failed to recognize at the time that every film produced in Nazi Germany was intended by Joseph Goebbels to be a piece of easily digestible propaganda. While there is a danger in downplaying the impact of German films on German-American audiences of the period, my paper argues that the propagandistic impact of Nazi films lost their intensity in the specific case of Yorkville moviegoers, as the films were only one of many option of diversion for New York’s German speaking community.

Author

• Kajsa Philippa Niehusen, University of California, Santa Barbara