Goebbels wanted to compete with Hollywood and make the German cinema the most important of Europe. He wanted a Nazi Hollywood. Then German studios copied American ways of working like the production and promotion of stars, the creation of popular film in the aim to attire a big audience.
However, the German industry struggled to raise an actress with the same fame as Marlene Dietrich and who could seduce an international audience. It is in this context that the cinematographic industry searched new stars around Europe to find a new muse able to compete with stars from the US.
The spark of the Second World War gave an opportunity to the regime to make German cinema number one in Europe. In countries at war, film production was reduced because of enlistment and fights. Moreover, when Nazis occupied a country or annexed a territory, they took control of film diffusion and took the market over with German films.
At the same time, the development of a colour film capable of competing with American Technicolor became a key objective for the Nazis. Goebbels knew that, following the advent of talking films, the next revolution in cinema was on the horizon. This came to pass in 1940 with the release of the first film shot in Agfacolor: Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten (Georg Jacoby).
Added to this was a total ban on the import, distribution, and screening of any American films in August 1940 (a ban extended to all European territories occupied by the Wehrmacht). With Hollywood competition thus ruled out, the German film industry was free to flood cinemas with its propaganda films — and, above all, its entertainment films — until the end of the war.
Photo 24 : City Archives of Thionville (83Fi22) – Movie Theater Scala in Thionville in 1936 during the promotion of Madame Butterfly (1932, Marion Gering). This pre-war photograph shows that American films were being screened in local cinemas. However, from July 1940 onwards, in Alsace and Moselle – which had been annexed and Germanised by the Nazi regime – no French, British or American films were screened there until the Liberation, even though neighbouring German towns such as Freiburg im Breisgau were showing Westerns in the autumn of 1940.
Photo 25 : Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum – Production still published by the U.F.A. studio for the Agfacolor film: Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten (1940, Georg Jacoby).
Photo 26 : National Archives of Netherlands – Lida Baarova (1914–2000), a Czech actress, was one of the foreign stars signed up by U.F.A. in Berlin from 1934 onwards. Although very popular, she became persona non grata in Germany following a two-year romance with Goebbels. The minister was known for his numerous affairs with film actresses. This affair nearly led to his divorce had it not been for the intervention of Hitler himself.