Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1945
Your Job in Germany
Buy Your Job in Germany now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
{{Infobox film
| name = Your Job in Germany
| image =
| caption =
| director =
| producer =
| writer =
| narrator =
| starring =
| music =
| cinematography =
| editing =
| distributor =
| released =
| runtime = 12 minutes 49 seconds
| country = United States
| language = English
| budget =
| gross =
}}
'Your Job In Germany' is a short film made for the United States War Department in 1945 just before Victory in Europe Day (VE). It was shown to US soldiers about to go on occupation duty in Germany. The film was made by the military film unit commanded by Frank Capra and was written by Theodor Geisel, better known by his pen name Dr. Seuss.
Content
The film was produced by the US Army Signal Corps. It was criticized by one commentator as a "bitter and angry anti-German propaganda film" that characterized the post-war German mind as "diseased".Robert Niemi, "History in the media: film and television history in the media", p.84
The film urged against fraternization with the German people, who are portrayed as thoroughly untrustworthy. It reminds its viewers of Germany's history of aggression, under "Fuehrer Number 1" Otto von Bismarck, "Fuehrer Number 2" Kaiser Wilhelm II and "Fuehrer Number 3" Adolf Hitler. It argues that the German youth are especially dangerous because they had spent their entire lives under the Nazi regime.
The policy of non-fraternisationwhere US soldiers were forbidden to speak even to small childrenwas first announced to the soldiers in the film:
The basic theme that the German people could not be trusted derived from the peace policy that emerged from the Second Quebec Conference.
The movie was first screened to the top US generals, including Dwight D. Eisenhower. George Patton reportedly walked out of the screening he attended, saying "Bullshit!".
'Hitler Lives?'
Jack Warner, head of Warner Brothers, subsequently secured the rights to the movie and turned it into a short documentary entitled 'Hitler Lives?'. It was released commercially on December 29, 1945 and won the 1946 Academy Award (Oscar) for Documentary Short Subject.Todd Peterson, "Theodor Seuss Geisel: author and illustrator", p.47.
In popular culture
Numerous sentences from the film's narration are incorporated verbatim as lyrics in the single "Don't Argue" by Cabaret Voltaire from their album 'Code'.
See also
*'Our Job in Japan', a companion film to 'Your Job In Germany' also written by Geisel.
*'Here Is Germany'
*'Death Mills'
*List of Allied propaganda films of World War II
*Sonderweg
References
Buy Your Job in Germany now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1945