Hitlerjunge Quex

It's always refered to as a propaganda movie, and yes, technically it is. But the word propaganda didn't always have this automatic, negative connotation which it has today. Propaganda can educate, inspire, inform - or mislead. This film depicts the chaotic situation in Berlin during the interwar period pretty accurately. The division between patriotic and "international" leaning Germans, the communist agitators exploiting the miserable conditions of the working class to recruit new members, the red violence towards their nationalist adversaries. It's not a totally gloomy movie though and neither is it preachy in its politics. It's rather wholesome and nice to watch. And if you compare this film with the stuff that gets pumped out today, every contemporary movie should be called propaganda and certainly not in any positive sense.

This is an excellent movie. Although its propagandistic intentions are obvious, it can be enjoyed. After all, its not about the NSDAP ideology, it's mostly about bravery and self-sacrifice. Replace Hitlerjugend with American Boy Scouts and most people would agree, what a good and moral film it is.

Rob from England pointed out, that from today's point of view, the Communists in the film with their "beer, food and sex" would seem far more better deal today. Probably so. But that only shows, how the world has declined since the cultural revolution of the late 60-s. Values like moral purity, patriotism and courage must be held high by all. They are the essence of survival for any nation, whatever ideology they may have.

I also think German government should have considerably more trust in their citizens and should lift the ban off of films like this, so they could become available on DVD, and not only in P2P networks, as it is today.

I've just seen the film in a special showing at Tate Modern (London's modern-art gallery). The print was evidently made for educational purposes, in the 1950s one guesses, with explanatory intertitles written by a film academic in English. (These are actually quite amusing with their po-faced analysis, with some very silly diagrams, but do interrupt the action clumsily. However, the print has no English subtitles, so the crackly soundtrack with thick Berlin accents is tough to follow for non-German natives.) What struck this viewer was, briefly:

1. Utter bewilderment at its propaganda value; the Communists seem to modern eyes to have far the best deal, with beer, food and sex high on their agenda, yet the young Heini - and presumably the 12-year-olds in the audience - are won over totally by the promise of shiny shoes, cups of tea, boy scout uniforms, cold morning dips and strident community singing. Beats me. 2. No comedy or light relief in any way: no town drunk, sly spiv, amusing slapstick with planks, etc. Was 1930s Berlin really that humourless? 3. What a rabble the Nazi youth seemed - gawky and indisciplined, far from the ruthlessly efficient robots of our imagination. 4. The only two decent actors in the whole thing are the two Commie blokes. Heini's dad turns in a convincing performance as the drunken old bully who personifies the Red Menace. 5. Getting short trousers to fit evidently beyond scope of even the well-organised Hitlerjugend. Every pair two sizes too small. 6. Chilling role played by gas. As a film "it's pants", as modern 12-year-olds might say (possibly echoing point 5). But as a grim piece of political history it is indeed quiet fascinating - and mystifying, as well as enlightening.

The short unhappy life of Herbert Norkus, a young member of the Hitler Youth who was killed by Communist street thugs is the basis of this film, entitled in English, Our Flags Lead Us Forward. The martial song you hear vocally and instrumentally throughout the film was the official song of the Hitler Youth and the words were written by Baldur Von Schirath the organizer of the group. Note in the opening credits the producers at UFA give thanks to the members of the Hitler Youth Berlin chapter who appeared as extras in the film.

The film is only the Herbert Norkus story indirectly. A novel that was required reading for the Hitler Youth was the basis for the film and said novel was written K.A. Schenzinger. I'm sure it was quite the potboiler. Of course that allowed the Nazis to take quite a bit of poetic license with the truth and they never passed up an opportunity to do that.

Jurgen Ohlssen plays Heinie Volker who is being apprenticed to the trade of printer and he comes from parents who are Communist in their political sympathies. In the year of 1932 with Germany in the midst of the Depression many competing groups and ideologies were battling to rule the Reich. The neighborhood that the Volkers live in is a working class area that the Communists are dominant.

Heinrich George is Heinie's father who is on relief and is idle, way too idle. He beats on his wife and rags his son to join the Young Communist League. But the kid is attracted to those clean cut, fresh scrubbed teens in their uniforms with their marching songs. They all look quite middle class and he wants to be one of them. If you remember in The Young Lions, Marlon Brando's character discusses how Hitler has promised to do away with the class system so prevalent in Europe. Young Ohlssen is exhibit number one for Brando's contention.

The film is interesting on a number of levels. Other than Henie's long suffering mother played by Berta Drews the only female role of any consequence is that Rotraut Richter who plays Gerda, a teenage temptress who works as a Communist agent, luring the Hitler Youth away from their duty. There is a conspicuous lack of the female gender in the Hitler Youth at least at these gatherings. When the Nazi state was established the Hitler Youth did have a woman's auxiliary of sorts where the girls were taught to be good breeders and mothers to make and raise plenty of good Aryan youth for the Fatherland. Nazi Germany was one of the most patriarchal societies ever created on Earth.

Other Nazi targets most prominently Jews get not a mention in Our Flags Lead Us Forward. The film strictly concerned with the Communist menace. All the Communists in contrast to the Hitler Youth are these plug ugly proletarian types who smoke cheap cigars and get stinking drunk when they're not infecting our workers with Bolshevist ideas. The father Heinrich George is such a man although later in a good scene, George is talking to Ohlssen about how all he wants is the best for his son and society has to change in order for that to happen. A more complex character than you would think would appear in a film that is strictly labeled propaganda. But then again it's what makes it more affective.

The bleakness of Depression Era Berlin plays like one of our noir films and the kids are shown as the hope for Germany's future. As it turned out these kids who were the extras in the film probably 90% of them died during World War II. A truly lost generation.

Our Flags Lead Us Forward is a slick piece of propaganda designed to recruit the impressionable young German minds who did not want to think of themselves as a beaten country from World War I. Viewed with a critical eye about its purposes, it holds up very well for examination today.

Just as a good commercial can induce us to buy a car that we do not need or drink water instead of a sugared soda, «Hitlerjunge Quex» is an effective propaganda film that, once again, proves to me how effective were Nazi communications, public relations, press and propaganda. «Hitlerjunge Quex» fulfills its objective, by passionately putting forward a romantic vision of the Hitler youth against a bleak and humorless description of a group of violent and aggressive communists. While the nazis are described as prosperous and kind, communist have old proselytizing tactics and are hard hit by the economic Depression in Germany, around 1932, when the victory of the National Socialist Party was irrepressible.

The story moves us because the little protagonist Heini is not seduced by bribes, a public office, sexual blackmail or electoral promises: through his child's eyes he perceives and is moved by symbols, hymns and group singing, he is seduced by uniform and order, in the face of shady chaos at home and the customs of the friends of his father, an unemployed ruffian who, in the course of the plot, begins a process of re-evaluating his own life. Curiously, this process had continuity off screen: the leftist actor Heinrich George ended up convinced by the Führer's strong harangues and joined the ranks of the party.

At this point of history neither George nor anyone imagined the potential for malice and depravity of the Nazis: everything was hope for renewing the country... as it happens every time that the electoral process begins and the people go to polls that hide their real nature as slaughterhouses. A good film, an excellent reminder of the directions by which we can be seduced and taken by moving images.