Die Kriegsberichter (1998)

Just one year after the Nazis seized power, radio and the press were switched to the same channel. The supreme control organ was the Ministry of Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. On February 10, 1933, he declared that a "good government" had to carry out "good propaganda," which was a prerequisite for a "spiritual mobilization. His most important weapon: newly founded propaganda companies. The Reichspropagandachef demands that the "slovenliness" in reporting should cease and has word reporters, cameramen and photographers trained in a specially founded Wehrmachtsschule in Potsdam. Goebbels' propaganda war was quickly as effective a weapon as the fighting troops of the infantry, navy or air force. In more than 6000 German cinemas, "Die Deutsche Wochenschau" provided a collage of constantly advancing troops in picture, sound and commentary from the beginning of the war. Whether in Poland, France or Norway: only one can win - the German soldier. Towards the end of the war, the weekly newsreel mainly delivered perseverance slogans. But even Goebbels swayed that the reality of the last days of the war was difficult to adjust. In one of the last issues, the weekly newsreel shows Hitler with his last posse in Berlin: children as cannon fodder. It does not show the wreckage of the Führer, who left behind 50 million dead and mountains of rubble and predicts that his end will also be the end of all Germans. Until the end, the following is true: reality is what you make of it. History will one day be formed from our pictures, boasted Goebbels at the beginning of the war. In the end, all that remained for the Germans was the hope of a miracle.