Hitler's Hollywood

Blitzkrieg im Westen, which was offered by the Harvard Liberal Union to a jam-packed New Lecture Hall last night, is significant for the cleverly unpolished effect which camouflages its propaganda. It contains none of the gilt-edged-super-collossal-stupendous-gargantuan approach that Hollywood has geared the American public (and even the Harvard student) to lap up. It would have been much more comforting to the wide-eyed undergraduate if this film had been a faked plug for the Hitler machine. We could have laughed at the gum-drop exploits of some Nazi Robert Taylor. But the swift, systematic crushing power of the German war machine in action, recorded on a crudely-filmed, undeniably authentic reel, is no stuff for comedy. A firm impression of well-trained might sticks in the mind much longer than fantastic terrorism.

The danger is that undergraduates who were pumped by Blitzkrieg im Westen will carry away with them, not a calm realization of Germany's grip on the continent, but an abstract fear of Hitler and the forces that are at his command. It is successful propaganda only if it makes us want to turn and run. It boomerangs against Hitler if it makes us realize something of the undramatic, thorough, machine-against-machine character of modern warfare. Preparation against the blitzkrieg, not a paralysis-through-fear, is the lesson we must draw from this film.