Buy war bonds. Plant victory gardens. Cut sugar consumption. That sorta thing.
Not so, kemo sabe: appears that other countries needed the same figurative shot in the arm to make sure that their boys over there were fighting the good fight. From England to Scotland, to Spain to Portugal to Russia to Germany - everyone and every country had 'em.
Oh yeah, Germany too. Especially at that time in World War II when faith in the Fatherland was flagging. They had a... well... maybe some history in world history is necessary:
Before 1942, Nazi Germany was gaining strength and power throughout Europe by the time the Wehrmacht troops were defeated in The Battle of Stalingrad, the First Battle of El Alamein and the Allied bombings of such major German cities as Hamburg, Cologne and Dresden. Many more German troops were either killed, retreated or surrendered as a result of further battles in Tunisia, Anzio and Cassino, with more defeats yet to come.
It was around this time that Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister for the Third Reich and close associate to Adolf Hitler himself, realized that as the supervisor of all media coming and and out of Germany, he had the most important position in the Reich: by creating a movie that would speak to the gung-ho mentality of your average Aryan, he could rally support for every Nazi effort and bring in the home team for a full-out rock-out-with-your-swastika-out victory for the Reichland.
So then it came to be that The Master Race needed a Master Movie - not just one to provide a quick pick-me-up but that would be powerful and enduring enough to last the length of this "Thousand-Year Reich". Understandable: if you're going to go to all the trouble of Beer Hall Putsch and establish some guy with a weird mustache in a big position of power, might as well show that - by golly - history proves that you have every right to!
That Holocaust thing and the concentration camps? ...uh yeah, we can get to that later on....
Therefore, Kolberg was commissioned to show Germany's ancestral fighting for the right to bear (extended left) arms, as every red-and-black-blooded Nazi should do today, circa-1940s!
It's all for the good of the war effort, though, so what's a few Deustchmarks between herrs?
Now, let's get to das plotzen: after the period of the Napoleonic Wars known as the War of Liberation, King Frederick William III of Prussia (Claus Clausen) and Count August von Gneisenau (Horst Caspar) discuss the past siege of Kolberg and how it taught the importance of citizen armies. Years earlier, Kolberg was unaffected by war and its town's people and leaders, including Bürgermeister Nettelbeck (Heinrich George), discuss Napoleon and what his victories mean in terms of their survival as a people. Nettelbeck fights against repeated cowardice and laziness of the townsfolk and the garrison commander, as he endeavors to defend his city against the approaching French by creating a citizen militia, surrender not considred an option. The remainder of the population, heartened by Nettlebeck's example and that of local girl Maria (Kristina Söderbaum), refuse to capitulate and resist the French army, suffering repeated attacks on a daily basis until such time that they are able to organize themselves to defend their land to the last of the townsfolk standing.
Okay, so Goebbles had a script chock full of propaganda, so who could he get to direct such a thing? Why, no less than Veit Harlan, the director who gave Nazis everywhere their favorite film Jud Süß (aka: Jew Süss), a big hit with Anti-Semites all over, giving Harlan the ever-popular title of "Hitler's favorite director". Now there's a big point for the ol' resume.
So Harlan worked from a script based on a book by Alfred Braun with uncredited writing by no less than Goebbels himself, and gave a tale of an heroic stand against the onset of a heartless band of oppressors - in this case, helpless Germans against heavily-armed Russians, and how the small town of Kolberg stood strong to the last, battling attack after attack.
I guess it should be noted that this is loaded to the gills with uplifting speeches (courtesy Goebbels) and as if to prove America has no monopoly on mawkish sentiment, tearful faces, flashing eyes, flared nostrils, Mary Pickford-esque body language to spare and a whole slew of emotionally-charged dialogues that, even if you cannot speak the language, can still only be considered as declarations of love for country, land, boirthright and defending it all with your dying breath.
Thuis is all backed up by one of the most bombastic, loud, overbearuing, brass-heavy musical scores thuis side of John Philip Sousa, as orchestrated by Norbert Schultze - most famous for that tender German love ballad "Lili Marleen". Guess this is what a German movioe gets when it can't find a Rhineland version of John Williams.
It all grates on the ears, between line reads and music scores,by the time we realize the actors in question have no intent on down-playing.
Kristina Söderbaum, herself the wife of director Harlan and also lead actress in Jud Süß, plays the tender flower virginal virtue to the hilt so broadly and to so deadening an effect - as if you thought doing both at once was impossible - that even when she's manning the water pumps to extinguish fires set on her town's thatched roofs there is little difference as to what she does or how she does it. She's only a caricature in a film filled with them.
Heinrich George can have the same said of himself ten times over, seeing as how he is a huge, loud man with an unruly 'stache and fiery temper. He can say any line he wants however he wants to say it... who's going to see him as anything more than a cartoon?
And that's one of the biggest problems Kolberg has: this was such a do-or-die project for Nazi Germany (as long as Harlan did as Goebbels told him, Harlan wouldn't die) that it seems we are witnessing the final at-bat of a losing team whose prospects get worse and worse with every game. This is compounded by everything we see onscreen being a swing and a miss.
Make no mistake, though: every resource at their disposal was used, and seeing that Goebbels was pretty much in the position to put EVERYTHING in this movie (including the Spüle), that it was for certain that Kolberg might as well have been sitting in a comfy chair while it had its slippers fetched.
What do I mean?
Nazi troops were removed from active duty along the Eastern front to act as extras - mainly soldiers - for several months worth of filming.
What troops were holding the line against the Russians were lower on ammunition than usual because factories were churning out many thousands of blank rounds for the movie extras' guns and rifles.
Many civilians went hungry due to railroad deliveries of food to towns being held up because up to 100 boxcars filled with salt were being routed to the Neustettin set to act as snow for Christmas scenes.
While homes and businesses throughout Germany remained bombed out and utterly destroyed, carpenters worked on enormous sets to replicate the Napoleonic-era town of Kolberg.
So... uhh, yeah; fortunately this was all for the good of the German war effort, or this kind of excess would be unforgivable.
The mawkish script was filmed, roles were overacted, there were battle scenes consisting of 187,000 troops of Nazi soldiers (that's 187,000 troops - not individual soldiers - TROOPS), and once all was seig heiled and done, the whole movie ended up costing 8,500,000 marks; that's equivalent to a little over 5,500,000 U.S. Dollars or so. At the time, this was - ÜBERRASCHUNG! - the most expensive film ever made in Germany at the time. And why shouldn't it be? For Kolberg had a huge scope to encompass, was all in color (because this was basically a Nordic Gone With The Wind, you know) and featured more Nazis than there were stars in the heavens.
There was just one problem, of many, that kept this film from being the big money maker that it could have been. Not only was this something that only a true German could or would appreciate, there was also the slight inconvenience that, with nearly every single building in occupied Germany bombed into rubble and Allied forces occupying 85% of the Fatherland, where - exactly - were they planning on debuting Kolberg?
And to whom? Any intelligent German was in the safety of their bunker instead of out in the open where there were bombs and bullets flying all over. Who in their right mind would brave all that violence just to catch a movie? You can bet if we were under heavy gunfire here in The States during WW2 and there was supposed to be a premiere of Yankee Doodle Dandy or something like that, John Q. Public and his fam would resist the urge to be patriotic.
In fact, it took a parachuting behind-the-lines to a still-standing movie theater in the French city of La Rochelle to get the debut reel of Kolberg to a debut showing. All for the German soldiers and officers therein, if no one else.
Now, as far as a movie goes, this is just no more or less than your average propoganda flick, with a heapin' helpin' of Nazi sentiment and overbearing thrown in. Did it break even? I'm gonna guess no, even though the final tally is a close-guarded secret, probably one that Goebbels took to the bunker with him at the end.
In fact, everybody who worked on this film suffered. Söderbaum had several nervous breakdowns before dying. Harlan suffered many heart attacks until succumbing to cancer. George died in a Russian prisoner of war camp. Goebbels killed himself and his family a day after Hitler died. Not that all of their fates were due to Kolberg, but this flick certainly wasn't inducive to a long and happy life.
So, Kolberg is pretty to look at, has larger-than-life performances, but the only thing anyone who watches it will come away with is a clinical vision of what-it-takes-to-roust-a-people. Needless to say, it didn't do the job it was intended for, since Nazism fell around the same time Hitler did and - much like the swastika - Kolberg is something most people don't like to talk about.
But Dope, those who like to play fair are no doubt saying, isn't Kolberg one of those films that people are going to watch with prejudice anyway? After all, it was made by Nazis! How can anyone block that out and judge it on its own merits?
Okay, fair enough. Let me just look at Kolberg on face value merits alone. Good colors. Big crowds. Loud music. Fancy costumes. Sentiment out the hoohah. A few changes and this could be a Frank Capra joint. Sure. After all, he dealt with obvious dollops of glurge in several of his films. All Kolberg is, to be honest, is glurge with a side order of sauerkraut.
And just like that combination, Kolberg is guaranteed to give the innocent viewer a bad case of heartburn.
