Does anyone know how the Nazis reacted to this? In December 1930, when "All Quiet on the Western Front" opened in Berlin, many Nazis, led by Josef Goebbels, shouted, attacked the audience, and released mice into the theater, basically then getting the movie banned. It wasn't until 2010 when the movie finally was shown uncut and with German subtitles.
http://peoplesworld.org/today-in-labor-history-germans-ponder-all-quie t-on-the-western-front/
The film was banned in Germany in 1933 when the Nazis came to power, because it (in the Nazis' opinion) showed a false reality and it would lower the people's will to fight. At least that is what the german wikipedia says.
shareI think that is probably accurate. Everything that I've read and seen shows that the Nazi Party has the same opinion that Adolf Hitler had, that victory in the war had been stolen from the army by politicians. Through Hitler the Nazis gained absolute power and were not open to any alternative viewpoints.
I'm about to watch it now on TCM. From the summary, it sounds a lot like All Quiet. I read All Quiet as a youngster and would recommend it to anyone.
shareFrom "senses of cinema" 2004, issue 32 - http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/cteq/westfront_1918/#3
Below is a direct quote from a portion of an article by Robert Keser, who teaches film at National-Louis University in Chicago, and is Associate Editor of Bright Lights Film Journal. His previous CTEQ Annotations include Edvard Munch, The Exile, Forbidden, Police, and Westfront 1918.
"At its premiere in Berlin on 23 May, 1930, the film’s unsparing realism reportedly caused “up to 20 people” to faint (1), while the Berlin correspondent for the New York Times dubbed it “the most vivid argument yet contrived against war. A book or a speech are cold, dead things beside it” (2). Such was its impact that the film faced a storm of protest, both from the right for its alleged defeatist view and from the left for its refusal to deal with the causes of the war. In less than three years, the Nazis would take power and immediately suppress Westfront 1918 and most of the 30 other films that dealt with the war. By 1995, however, it was chosen as one of five Pabst works among the 100 Most Significant German Films, a list collected from filmmakers, film historians, journalists, and editors, and published by the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek (3)."
Human Rights: Know Them, Demand Them, Defend Them