UC Santa Barbara

"Naziganda on American Screens: The Exhibition and Reception of Third Reich films in the United States, 1933-1945" explores the distribution, exhibition, and reception of films produced in Nazi Germany throughout the United States in the years between Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and America’s entry into the war on the side of the Allies in late 1941. The metropolitan areas of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles serve as case studies for the local German-language moviegoing culture, the use of films by American Nazi groups, approaches to their exhibition by local censorship boards, their reception in the American press and film trade journals, and forms of resistance to their screening. This work considers the historical, social, and political contexts in which the screening of Nazi films on American screens was possible, including movements like the American Firsters and rising domestic antisemitism. Based on extensive primary source research, it becomes clear that Nazi propaganda films were overall not seen as a significant threat or moral issue by most American film critics, while Jewish-American publications and Jewish-led organizations were vocal in their protest against these films. At the same time, the political climate and powerful authorities, including mayors and police departments as well as regional newspapers especially in Los Angeles and Chicago, appeared favorable towards Nazis and their propaganda. New York’s Mayor La Guardia, on the other hand, was among the most outspoken opponents of Nazism and participated in the Jewish-led boycottmovement. Yet even he did not attempt to ban Nazi propaganda outright. This dissertation is the first work to combine a variety of English- and German-speaking primary sources, including German-American newspapers, FBI files, and internal documents of the German film production company UFA, to provide an in-depth study of both theatrical and non- theatrical exhibition and reception contexts for Third Reich films in the United States.