The image of the Jew under National Socialism: Anti-Semitic film propaganda, 1939–41

This thesis is concerned with anti-Semitic film propaganda during the Third Reich. In particular, I examine the contradictory representation of the Jews in four films produced between 1939 and 1941. I analyze the Jews as a racial and economic threat to the stability of the Volksgemeinschaft (national racial community). I am particularly concerned with differentiating between the Nazi image of the assimilated Western Jew and the stereotypical Ostjude (Eastern Jews). I take an interdisciplinary approach that not only considers the films' ideological and propagandistic content, but how the films were constructed in an effort to strengthen the anti-Semitism. Furthermore, employing interdisciplinary methodology allows me to examine how the National Socialists exploited the Jews as the scapegoat for all of Germany's ills. In doing so, the Nazis were able to establish a growing mentality of hate towards the Jewish population that ultimately led to the Holocaust.