page_title: War film
section_title: Made by Axis powers
hierarchical_section_title: War film / Second World War / Made by Axis powers
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. Besuch von Hitler und Goebbels bei der UFA Der Führer bei der Ufa. Der Führer und Reichskanzler stattete am 4. Januar in Begleitung des Reichspropagandaministers den Neubabelsberger Ateliers der Ufa einen Besuch ab und nahm dabei Gelegenheit, die Bauten des neuen Films "Barcarole" zu besichtigen. Generaldirektor Klitzsch führte den Reichskanzler und Minister Dr. Goebbels durch den Betrieb. Viel Interesse fand der soeben von der Ufa auf Anregung von Dr. Todt fertiggestellte Reichsautobahn-Film "Strasse ohne Hindernisse". UBz: den Führer und Dr. Goebbels während der Besichtigung der Ateliers, links Produktionsleiter Stapenhorst. Abgebildete Personen: Stapenhorst, Günther: Filmproduzent (GND 117212717) Hitler, Adolf: Reichskanzler, Deutschland Goebbels, Joseph: Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, Gauleiter Berlin, Deutschland
context_page_description: War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. Themes explored include combat, survival and escape, camaraderie between soldiers, sacrifice, the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and the moral and human issues raised by war. War films are often categorized by their milieu, such as the Korean War; the most popular subject is the Second World War. The stories told may be fiction, historical drama, or biographical. Critics have noted similarities between the Western and the war film.
  Nations such as China, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia have their own traditions of war film, centred on their own revolutionary wars but taking varied forms, from action and historical drama to wartime romance.
  Subgenres, not necessarily distinct, include anti-war, comedy, animated, propaganda, and documentary.
context_section_description: The Axis powers similarly made films during the Second World War, for propaganda and other purposes. In Germany, the army high command brought out Sieg im Westen ("Victory in the West", 1941). Other Nazi propaganda films had varied subjects, as with Kolberg (1945), which depicts stubborn Prussian resistance in the Siege of Kolberg (1807) to the invading French troops under Napoleon. The propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels chose the historical subject as suitable for the worsening situation facing Nazi Germany when it was filmed from October 1943 to August 1944. At over eight million marks, using thousands of soldiers as extras and 100 railway wagonloads of salt to simulate snow, it was the most costly German film made during the war. The actual siege ended with the surrender of the town; in the film, the French generals abandon the siege.
  For Japan, the war began with the undeclared war and invasion of China in 1937, which the Japanese authorities called "The China Incident". The government dispatched a "pen brigade" to write and film the action in China with "humanist values". Tomotaka Tasaka's Mud and Soldiers (1939) for instance, shot on location in China, Kōzaburō Yoshimura's Legend of Tank Commander Nishizumi, and Sato Takeshi's Chocolate and Soldiers (1938) show the common Japanese soldier as an individual and as a family man, and even enemy Chinese soldiers are presented as individuals, sometimes fighting bravely. Once war with the United States was declared, the Japanese conflict became known as the Pacific War. Japanese film critics worried that even with Western film techniques, their film output failed to represent native Japanese values. The historian John Dower found that Japanese wartime films had been largely forgotten, as "losers do not get reruns", yet they were so subtle and skilful that Frank Capra thought Chocolate and Soldiers unbeatable. Heroes were typically low-ranking officers, not samurai, calmly devoted to his men and his country. These films did not personalise the enemy and therefore lacked hatred, though Great Britain could figure as the "cultural enemy". For Japanese film-makers, war was not a cause but more like a natural disaster, and "what mattered was not whom one fought but how well". Asian enemies, especially the Chinese, were often portrayed as redeemable and even possible marriage partners. Japanese wartime films do not glorify war, but present the Japanese state as one great family and the Japanese people as an "innocent, suffering, self-sacrificing people". Dower comments that the perversity of this image "is obvious: it is devoid of any recognition that, at every level, the Japanese also victimized others."
caption: Hitler and Goebbels visiting Universum Film AG in 1935. The studio made propaganda films such as Triumph des Willens (1935) and Kolberg (1945).
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