Hitler's Children (1943)

Inhalt - Synopsis

Karl und Anna lernen sich als Jugendliche kennen. Sie wachsen gemeinsam in Nazideutschland auf: er als Deutscher, der in Amerika geboren wurde, sie als Amerikanerin, die in Deutschland geboren wurde. Während Anna in einer amerikanischen Schule zu freiheitlichem Denken erzogen wird, wächst Karl zu einem strammen Nazi heran, der bereit ist, für Hitler zu sterben. Jahre später ist er ein mustergültiger Gestapo-Offizier, der für nichts mehr Gefühle hat außer für Anna. Sie wird in ein Lebensborn-Lager gesteckt, jedoch für ungeeignet gehalten, dem Führer Kinder zu schenken, und soll sterilisiert werden. Als sie nach einem Fluchtversuch öffentlich ausgepeitscht werden soll, greift Karl ein. Beide werden verhaftet, und vor Gericht steht Karl zu seiner Liebe zu Anna und hält ein flammendes Plädoyer gegen die Nazis. Beide werden erschossen.

Karl and Anna meet as teenagers. They grow up together in Nazi Germany: he as a German, who was born in America, she as an American, who was born in Germany. Anna is raised as a liberal thinker in an American school, while Karl grows up to be a fanatic Nazi, who is ready to die for Hitler. Years later, Karl is a staunch Gestapo-Officer, who has no feelings left – except the feelings he has for Anna. She is put into a Lebensborn-Camp, but is regarded to be unfit to bear children for the Führer, so she is supposed to be sterilized. After an escape attempt she is going to be whipped publicly, but Karl intervenes. Both are then arrested. In front of the court Karl stands by his love for Anna and holds a flaming speech against the Nazis. Both are then shot.

Regie: Irvin Reis, Edward Dmytryk [Fertigstellung]. Regie-Assistenz: Sam Ruman. Buch: Emmet Lavery; nach dem Roman »Education for Death: The Making of a Nazi« (1941) von Gregor Ziemer. Kamera: Russell Metty. Artd Direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Carroll Clark. Set Decoration: Darrell Silvera, Harley Miller. Kostüme: Renié. Schnitt: Joseph Noriega. Ton: Roy Meadows. Musik: Roy Webb. Musical Direction: C. Bakaleinikoff [= Konstantin Bakaleinikoff]. Special Effects: Vernon Walker. Beratung: Father Louis Pick, Eugen Sharin.

Darsteller: Tim Holt (Karl Bruner), Bonita Granville (Anna Müller), Kent Smith (Professor Nichols), Otto Kruger (Colonel Henkel), H. B. Warner  (The bishop), Lloyd Corrigan (Franz Erhardt), Erford Gage (Dr. Schmidt), Hans Conried (Dr. Graf), Gavin Muir (Lieutenant and Commandant), Nancy Gates (Brenda), Frank Eldredge (Gestapo man), Nicholas Vehr (Gestapo man), Richard Martin (Gestapo man), Bill Burrud (Murph), Jimmy Zaner (Irwin), Goetz Van Eyck [= Peter van Eyck](German arresting officer), John Arthur Stockton (Gestapo officer), John Merton (Gestapo officer), Max Lucke (Plane dispatcher), Anne Loos (N.S.V. worker), Bessie Wade (German mother), Harry McKim (Boy), Orley Lindgren (Boy), Billy Brow (Boy), Chris Wren (Boy), Egon Brecher (Mr. Muller), Elsa Janssen (Mrs. Muller), William Forrest (American vice consul), Rita Corday (Young matron), Ariel Heath (Young matron), Roland Varno (Lieutenant), Crane Whitley (Whipping sergeant), Edward Van Sloan (Chief trial judge), Frank O’Connor (Tribunal judge), Douglas Evans (German radio announcer), Carla Boehm (Magda), Bruce Cameron (Storm trooper), Betty Roadman (First matron), Katherine Wilson (Chief matron), Joey Ray (Person in labor camp), Jimmie Zahner (Prof. Nichols' Student), Ann Summers, Mary Stuart, Frances Brown, Harry Duff, Louise Franklin, Mame Henderson, Genevieve Kendall, Yvonne Crossley, Sprecher: Kent Smith.

Produktion: RKO Radio Pictures Inc., Los Angeles; für: Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp. (RKO), New York. Produzent: Edward A. Golden. Associated Producer: Robert A. Golden. Drehzeit: September – Oktober 1942. Länge: 83 min, 7052 ft = 2149 m. Format: 35mm, s/w, 1:1.33, RCA Sound System. Zensur: 22.1.1943, (c) LP11908. Preview: 18.12.1942, New York; Trade Show: 28.12.1942; Uraufführung: 14.1.1943, Cincinnati; Kinostart: 24.2.1943, New York.

Kopie (16mm): Kinemathek Hamburg

Zeitgenössische Kritiken:

The grim and terrifying aspects of the Nazi perversion of German youth – the evils of mass dehumanization by which a blind and brutal war machine was built – have been but narrowly suggested and vaguely realized in RKO's Hitler's Children, which came to the Paramount yesterday. Rather this fictionalized version of Gregor Ziemer's factual »Education for Death« is an obvious, conventional melodrama set against a background of pre-war Germany, affecting in one or two details because of the sheer brutality displayed, but old-stuff to those who read the papers and unreflective of the deeper drama involved.
For the script which Emmet Lavery dreamed up after reading Ziemer's book provides but a superficial survey of some of the more familiar methods of enslaving Nazi youth and resolves the whole moral conflict in a pat and unconvincing boy-girl plot. The boy – or, rather, the young man, for there are no actual children in the film – is an American-born, German-bred Nazi who is hot with the Fuehrer's mad ideals, and the girl is a German-born American in whose breast brightly burns freedom's flame. But they love with a passionate devotion (at least, that's what the picture implies), even though he is marked for Nazi greatness and she is doomed to be sterilized. In the end, however, her unflinching resistance to persuasion and threats opens his eyes to Nazi horrors and he dies shouting »the truth« to German youth.
Not only does the plot creak with contrivance but the film, in the telling of its tale, is so rigidly theatrical that it squanders its meagre effects. Edward Dmytryk, who directed, has set the whole thing in an oratorical style and has given it the quality of a philippic rather than a credible story from life. Bonita Granville performs through the picture in a state of defiant outrage as the girl for whom the threat of sterilization is rather luridly described. Tim Holt plays the youthful Nazi in dead-pan bewilderment, and Kent Smith shows a melancholy temper as the slightly involved narrator of the tale. H. B. Warner displays a solemn dignity in one brief scene as an anti-Nazi Bishop, and Otto Kruger bares his teeth quite cunningly in the role of a Nazi colonel.
By and large, Hitler's Children muffs completely a fine opportunity to show the fearful significance of the degradation into which German youth has been drawn. Belatedly and not so effectively, it covers pretty much the same ground as was covered three years ago by such films as The Mortal Storm and Pastor Hall. But now the interest has shifted more to effect than to cause, and the pertinent question today is how the »children« drugged with Hitler's myths will react to defeat and disillusion and the plans for a future peaceful world.
- Bosley Crowther: Hitler's Children
New York Times, 25.2.1943


This scaring indictment of Hitler’s regimentation of German youth can hardly fail to impress the masses of the cinema-going public. (...)
The narration graphically illustrates the more notorious evils of the Nazi youth movement, and in its more dramatic moments touches on the bestialities of the entire Nazi doctrine. Thus in addition to showing the repression of all youthful individuality, the revealing by-play shows how some German women are »medically treated« to ensure racial purity, how even the Church is invaded in the course of divine service, and how women delinquents can be tortured in the presence of their stoic sisterhood. Such scenes are their own vivid commentary on Nazi educational theories, and the theme is punched home by the arresting portraiture and scathing dialogue which carries a message for all who concern themselves with the fundamentals of international hatreds and the wars which these inevitably create.
(...) The picture has been spaciously produced, not least as to its spectacular scenes of youth celebrations and of strutting Nazis attending the Nazi rallies.
- C. A. W.: Hitler's Children
The Cinema, 21.4.1944