1936 Berlin in Farbe
September 26, 2011 7:46 AM Subscribe

Color footage of 1936 Berlin, in what appears to be a promotional film for the city before the 1936 Olympics. (SLYT)
posted by naturalog (70 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite

Excellent find, thank you. Minor quibble: needs more Hitler.
posted by Meatbomb at 7:49 AM on September 26, 2011

Metafilter: Minor quibble: needs more Hitler.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:51 AM on September 26, 2011 [6 favorites]

Wow, fascinating, chilling, sad. Even while on the surface, there's all the hustle and bustle of a normal big city, under the surface, life was already going to hell in a hand-basket for Jewish people, and there are soldiers everywhere in the street scenes. The shit was already ratcheting up in a big way. Everyone there was living on borrowed time at that point.

It was a beautiful city.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:00 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Sigmund Freud appears to wander past the camera at 3:45.
posted by jedicus at 8:03 AM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

Mummy, there's a black spider on everything... why did these people like spiders so much?
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:06 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Awesome. I feel like a time-traveler from the future watching that with knowledge of what's about to happen.

4:30. The lyrics to that song are colored by the context: "Hooray and halle-lu-jah! You had it comin' to ya"
5:57. Pre-war Gedächtniskirche
7:32. Nazi bathing WTF
8:10. Goose-stepping looks ridiculous
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:09 AM on September 26, 2011

Also, bad-ass steam shovel (diesel, maybe?) at 6:29

Lots of public works, stimulating the economy.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:10 AM on September 26, 2011

At the beach, Germans seem to even synchronize their spashing. "Stay in time, people!"
posted by uraniumwilly at 8:15 AM on September 26, 2011

Film of Berlin immediately after the war. I am going to juxtapose these in my local history class tomorrow.
posted by LarryC at 8:15 AM on September 26, 2011 [8 favorites]

in what appears to be a promotional film for the city before the 1936 Olympics.

All those banners. Looks like there was a convention in town.

Yeah, things were so much better in 1936 Berlin.

This was less than 20 years after the end of WW1 and a little more than a decade since hyperinflation ruined the currency, yet 1936 Berlin looks prosperous. Hard to imagine how the Germans turned things around economically so quickly. The Nazis were clearly not in power long enough to claim it on their own (although one assumes they did.)
posted by three blind mice at 8:23 AM on September 26, 2011

[Bunch of comments removed, let's try this again without the bizarre comparative-obesity derail.]
posted by cortex at 8:27 AM on September 26, 2011

Newsreel: Bombing Berlin by Daylight.
posted by LarryC at 8:27 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh, ok. Here's that prewar aerial photo set of Berlin again.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 8:32 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Berlin was a beautiful city, and Berlin is currently a beautiful city. The ugly time was somewhere in the middle.

The awkward benefit of having your city leveled by bombs is that it leaves space for lots of cool, new architecture.
posted by sixohsix at 8:33 AM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

A bunch of reactions:

- I know it's advertising, but the apparent prosperity was surprising. Does anyone know if this is just a showpiece, or had Germany in 1936 gotten their economy in order?

- Man, did those Nazis really want to be the Roman Empire.

- It's impossible to ignore what's coming. I felt some pity for the happy people: "You have no idea how bad the next 10 years are going to be".

- Was the song they were dancing to "Goody Goody"? Such degenerate jazz!
posted by benito.strauss at 8:33 AM on September 26, 2011

Man, did those Nazis really want to be the Roman Empire.

Not just the Nazis. Statuary on Berlin's bridges, dating back to the time of Frederick the Great, shows heroic figures in Roman garb. And then there is the quadriga atop the Brandenburg Gate, and the "Holy Roman Empire". One almost gets the feeling that some Germans had a chip on their shoulder about not having been the great Roman Empire but the scruffy barbarians outside its borders and determined to do something about it retrospectively.
posted by acb at 8:38 AM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

The Haus des deutschen Fremdenverkehrs ("house of German tourism") was—like a lot of grandiose Third Reich architecture—never completed. Work was abandoned in 1942, and it was eventually torn down in 1964. Here it is partially completed. The site is now part of the state library of Berlin (House 2, I think).

Kind of jarring to hear the narrator describing, on the one hand, how great Berlin is, the most important city in Germany, etc, and then on the other hand casually tossing of lines like "the youth march for the Führer in faith in a better future" and describing the festive swastika flags lining the streets.
posted by jedicus at 8:42 AM on September 26, 2011 [4 favorites]

Film of Berlin immediately after the war

Looks just like Downtown Crossing.
posted by jsavimbi at 8:43 AM on September 26, 2011

The awkward benefit of having your city leveled by bombs is that it leaves space for lots of cool, new architecture.

Tell that to Dresden.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:43 AM on September 26, 2011

Or Baghdad.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 8:45 AM on September 26, 2011

Malbork town center sucks too, but that was more sustained shelling rather than bombing.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:49 AM on September 26, 2011

The awkward benefit of having your city leveled by bombs is that it leaves space for lots of cool, new architecture.

Or, in the case of Britain, huge, ugly circular roads cutting through the centre of cities, ensuring that no communities flourish in the areas again. Quite a few British cities (Coventry, Nottingham, &c.) suffer from "Luftwaffe-style urban planning".
posted by acb at 8:52 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Does anyone know if this is just a showpiece, or had Germany in 1936 gotten their economy in order?

Wikipedia sez:

Nazis came to power in the midst of the Great Depression. When the Nazis came to power the most pressing issue was an unemployment rate of close to 30%.[18] Before World War II, Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht, a former member of the German Democratic Party, as President of the Reichsbank in 1933 and Minister of Economics in 1934. [18]

At first, Schacht continued the economic policies introduced by the government of Kurt von Schleicher in 1932 to combat the effects of the Great Depression. These policies were mostly Keynesian, relying on large public works programs supported by deficit spending — such as the construction of the Autobahn network — to stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment. There was major reduction in unemployment over the following years, while price controls prevented the recurrence of inflation. The economic policies of the Third Reich were in the beginning the brainchildren of Schacht, who assumed office as president of the central bank under Hitler in 1933, and became finance minister in the following year. Schacht was one of the few finance ministers to take advantage of the freedom provided by the end of the gold standard to keep interest rates low and government budget deficits high, with massive public works funded by large budget deficits.[18] The consequence was an extremely rapid decline in unemployment—the most rapid decline in unemployment in any country during the Great Depression.[18] Eventually this Keynesian economic policy was supplemented by the boost to demand provided by rearmament and swelling military spending.

Meanwhile, the Nazis replaced the corrupt Weimar trade unions with what many Germans saw as the new and improved unions called the German Labour Front and banned strikes. They also directed Schacht to place more emphasis on military production and rearmament. A number of economists, starting with Michal Kalecki, have seen this as an example of military Keynesianism.
In June 1933, the "Reinhardt Program" for infrastructure development was introduced. It combined indirect incentives, such as tax reductions, with direct public investment in waterways, railroads and highways.[19] It was followed by similar initiatives resulting in great expansion of the German construction industry. Between 1933 and 1936, employment in construction rose from only 666,000 to over 2,000,000.[20]
posted by KokuRyu at 8:52 AM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

Ignore the Niall Ferguson blurb, but this is an excellent book on the Nazi's and rebuilding the post-Weimar economy.

The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze
posted by JPD at 8:53 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

AKA Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht. Not surprisingly he didn't use his first two given names much.
posted by JPD at 8:56 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

The world does appear to have mostly shed the 19th century - no horses, fast cars. The nazi uniforms remind me of early car racing outfits. The whole nazi look is very much technology driven, sleek and fast. Even the Hitler moustache is a trimmed back sleek uniform look, none of that wild 19th century character. This is mass production, uniform, speed. Welcome to the 20th century.
posted by stbalbach at 9:09 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

The world does appear to have mostly shed the 19th century - no horses, fast cars.

The interesting thing is, the German military still relied on horses to transport battlefield artillery and even supplies for the entire war.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:14 AM on September 26, 2011

LIES! There was no color in Germany pre-WWII. Color was invented by the freedom loving Americas and brought to Europe's shores as part of the postwar rebuilding effort.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:22 AM on September 26, 2011

Thanks for posting this. In a way it reminded me of North Korea, only with more people. It's so...tidy.
posted by orrnyereg at 9:25 AM on September 26, 2011

I felt some pity for the happy people: "You have no idea how bad the next 10 years are going to be".

Actually, not all of them may have been quite so happy. Sebastian Haffner describes Berlin during this period as living under a cloud of fear. If you weren't fully committed to the party, life was becoming increasingly uncomfortable in many ways. By this time, the Nazis had completely taken over government and civil society and militarized it. Even for Germans who were not political, there was a feeling of a noose incrementally tightening, starting in the early '30s. It looks very pretty in the films, but anyone who didn't salute the swastika as it passed by on parade would be beaten in the street by the SA.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:31 AM on September 26, 2011 [4 favorites]

It can't happen here.
posted by Trurl at 9:36 AM on September 26, 2011

Tiny good thing to come out of the bad in the 1936 Olympics: press photogs needed long fast lenses to make the German athletes look good. Zeiss came out with the 180mm f/2.8 and 300mm f/4 Sonnar "Olympic" lenses, which were the fastest and best around at the time. They're still quite spiffy if you can find a camera body that'll take 'em.
posted by scruss at 9:46 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

did you here that people - when you shoot long focal length you shoot with hitler.
posted by JPD at 9:49 AM on September 26, 2011 [4 favorites]

It can't happen here.

Of course not.
posted by Sailormom at 9:53 AM on September 26, 2011

> It can't happen here.

Hell, just drive around DC and you'll see all sorts of weird neo Roman and Greco architectural themes.

Oh, you mean the fascism and whatnot. There's gotta be some kind of hardwired aesthetic going on at any rate.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 10:03 AM on September 26, 2011

> It can't happen here.
Oh, you mean the fascism and whatnot...
I thought they meant drinking beer in funny glasses.
posted by mazola at 10:10 AM on September 26, 2011

Well, that has a strong sense of impending doom.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:12 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Mien Fuher! We have expensive colour film, we can photograph anything we want IN COLOUR!

This is great, Go out there and shoot some of those people in grey uniforms and grey business suits.

But mien Fuher....

OH! Get some shots of those grey cars I love so much!

But...

And those beautiful buildings! The grey ones! Yesssss glorious colour....
posted by joelf at 10:41 AM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

There was, of course, a Star Trek episode about the first thought that comes to mind as I watch this: "If only there were a way to energize a broke and demoralized nation to this degree without scapegoating."
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:11 AM on September 26, 2011

at about 4:26 was that jazz music I heard?
posted by robbyrobs at 11:35 AM on September 26, 2011

ok was that swing music I heard?
posted by robbyrobs at 11:38 AM on September 26, 2011

It can't happen here.

Not to feed the hyperbolist Godwinite trolls but... I dislike Bush, Perry, and the like, but I have yet to see any gangs of armed radicals shooting it out in the streets of our major cities or people taking cash out of the banks in wheelbarrows, so for all the disunion and rancor we have these days, it ain't Weimar.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 11:39 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Having recently visited there, I was surprised at how recognizable the Alexanderplatz train station was at 3:42 and that the U-Bahn signs (eg) have barely changed at all.
posted by finite at 11:39 AM on September 26, 2011

Hell, just drive around DC and you'll see all sorts of weird neo Roman and Greco architectural themes.

Drive around the United States and you'll see Greek Revivalism, etc, because in our nation's formulative years, there was a direct line being drawn between our republic and classical past, due to the Enlightenment. Arguably, some of this would also be translated to German Culture, but also, the Holy Roman Empire wasn't just Germans with a chip on their shoulder; it was a Germanic belief that they WERE the heirs to the Roman Empire (see Otto). An interesting clash was the Austrians (heart of the Holy Roman Empire in the Hapsburg Dynasty) and the Ottomans (who believed by their conquest of Constantinople that all that belonged to the Romans should fall to them). Indeed, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was rather irritated by the gaul of some German king calling himself Emperor of Rome when it was rightfully his title (and one which he used).

Not to be side tracked....and to go back toward topic, but Thomas Wolfe briefly writes in one of his novels about Berlin near the time of the Olympics, describing how a city that he had loved, full of happy and welcoming people, had been subjugated beneath the bootheel and was basically a place full of fear and grimness. The main character leaves, disenchanted, on a train and on the way to France watches the failed attempt of a Jewish family to escape the country.
posted by Atreides at 11:41 AM on September 26, 2011 [4 favorites]

Does anyone know if this is just a showpiece, or had Germany in 1936 gotten their economy in order?

I can't speak to 1936, but my grandfather was in Germany in 1938. I told him about Ukraine in 2000, and he said it sounded very familiar: Things like shortages or plain absence of ordinary goods, unofficial marketplaces where pensioners sell handiwork to stay alive, tiny fiefdoms of petty officials, theft of building materials for resale elsewhere.

He also mentioned that the bread flour was bulked out with sawdust.
posted by eritain at 12:05 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

It can't happen here.

Yes, the Fascists actually managed to create jobs.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:09 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yes, the Fascists actually managed to create jobs.

Yeah, building tanks and bombers and warships and concentration camps.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:15 PM on September 26, 2011

Arguably, some of this would also be translated to German Culture, but also, the Holy Roman Empire wasn't just Germans with a chip on their shoulder; it was a Germanic belief that they WERE the heirs to the Roman Empire (see Otto)

Did this line of thinking come to a dead stop after the war? Or are there current factions in German politics that still believe this? I mean, literally as heirs to the Roman empire, not just that Germany should be a glorious empire.
posted by Think_Long at 12:17 PM on September 26, 2011

it was a Germanic belief that they WERE the heirs to the Roman Empire

It's not just Germans!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:24 PM on September 26, 2011

Think_Long: no, and this thinking was not really prevalent in the 3rd reich either.

Classicistic architecture and some esthetic references to rome do not constitute a widely held belief that germany was the heir of rome.
Quadrigas can be found all over europe.
Nationalistic myth rather glorified a germanic heritage, kuje Hermann (Arminius), the warlord that did in the legions of Varus. This massive monument in the Teuteburger forest was built in 1841.

"The Holy Roman Empire was named after the Roman Empire and was considered its continuation. This is based in the medieval concept of translatio imperii and does not mean that the Empire's territory included the city of Rome, any more than did that of the Byzantine Empire, which also understood itself as the continuation of the Roman Empire (Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων).
The French Enlightenment writer Voltaire remarked sardonically that "this agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.""

After the fall of Byzanz Russia too had aspirations on the title, calling Moscow the 3rd rome.
posted by ts;dr at 12:54 PM on September 26, 2011

Is it true that in calling it "The Third Reich", Nazis were implying that the "Second Reich" was the Holy Roman Empire, and the "First Reich" was the Roman Empire?
posted by benito.strauss at 1:09 PM on September 26, 2011

> s it true that in calling it "The Third Reich", Nazis were implying that the "Second Reich" was the Holy Roman Empire, and the "First Reich" was the Roman Empire?

The designation "Third Reich" was coined in 1922 by the romantic-conservative, völkisch-nationalist writer-intellectual Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. In his publication Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich), Moeller envisioned the rise of an anti-liberal, anti-Marxist Germanic Empire in which all social class divisions would be reconciled in national unity under a charismatic "Führer" (leader). Moeller's "Third Reich" referred to two previous Germanic Empires: Charlemagne's medieval Frankish Empire and the German Empire under the Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty (1871-1918).

posted by Horselover Phattie at 1:13 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you're interested in more footage of Berlin that isn't propaganda, So war Berlin is a documentary made out of footage from the same time taken by normal people: tourists from Germany and other countries as well as Berliners themselves. The introduction says the film was pieced together from film that was gathering dust in attics and cellars, so it wasn't put together in the 1930s, but the footage is legitimately old.
posted by colfax at 1:16 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Watching the beach scenes, I wondered if everyone marched out at dawn, left their towels to keep their places, and went out to breakfast to return later. THIS PISSES EVERYONE OFF, GERMANS.

Also, I thought that blond guy was going to get up and punch the camera guy for filming his lady topless.
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 1:18 PM on September 26, 2011

Yeah, it has the feel of showcase Pyongyang, only with more people, cars and beer.

Spooky to think (as it is with all these bits of re-discovered footage) that with the exception of a few of the kids, these are all dead people now.
posted by marvin at 1:50 PM on September 26, 2011

> these are all dead people now.

Many of them within nine years of that film!
posted by Horselover Phattie at 1:51 PM on September 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm amazed everyone here is able to see through the propaganda already, because what I was thinking as I saw it was - now I get what people admired in 1936 - I've never understood that before.
Maybe you have to know how Europe (and America) looked back then to see how impressing this is. New architecture, cars everywhere, parkways, modern architecture, naked women, jazz; what's not to love? Military parades, boy scouts? Yeah whatever, and also: everyone had that. Check out sailormoms link.
North Korea? Not even close. Right now I'm thinking of Singapore or Dubai. Everything we like in the West, but clean and orderly. A lot of people I know like that. A few people like it enough to say in public democracy is overrated.
posted by mumimor at 2:19 PM on September 26, 2011

> I'm amazed everyone here is able to see through the propaganda already

I tried to check my historical knowledge as much as I could and watch the film fresh. I also was impressed and it seemed like a great place. The "sense of impending doom" alluded to is largely a product of mental overlay.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 2:22 PM on September 26, 2011

I think the elephant at 6:49 survived the war:

During the Second World War, the zoo area was completely destroyed and only 91 of 3,715 animals survived, including two lions, two hyenas, an Asian bull elephant, a hippo bull, ten hamadryas baboons, a chimpanzee, and a black stork, among a few others.
posted by imabanana at 2:33 PM on September 26, 2011

Apparently the Vegans have upgraded their technology and are now beaming Berlin 1936 footage to us in color. Has anyone figured out how to decode the plans for new improved Machine 2.0, hidden in this message?

posted by Herodios at 2:43 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

mumimor: "New architecture, cars everywhere, parkways, modern architecture, naked women, jazz; what's not to love?"

Point taken. In the meantime I offer Four Seasons in Pyongyang that includes brave new architecture, songs and colorful well-fed North Koreans (also indulging in carefree water sports).
posted by marvin at 2:50 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

You *don't* see impending doom in the groups of soldiers, the marching Hitler Youth, the snappy swastika flags everywhere? It reminds me of the Tomorrow Belongs To Me scene from Cabaret.
posted by ChuraChura at 3:57 PM on September 26, 2011

was rather irritated by the gaul of some German king calling himself Emperor of Rome

A Gaul calling himself Emperor of Rome would raise some suspicions, I imagine.
posted by acb at 4:01 PM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

After the fall of Byzanz Russia too had aspirations on the title, calling Moscow the 3rd rome.

And Edinburgh, meanwhile, was the Athens of the North.

Which is to say nothing of all the (relatively new, and often unspectacular) cities in the US named after places from Classical history (Troy, Athens, Syracuse, and so on).
posted by acb at 4:03 PM on September 26, 2011

You *don't* see impending doom in the groups of soldiers, the marching Hitler Youth, the snappy swastika flags everywhere?
Well, I do and I don't. Like everyone else, I've grown up being told about the horrors of the third reich and the holocaust and all that. Also, half my family on both sides are Jewish and many relatives were lost. So of course I do. But I have been curious all my life about how this could happen, and since I do not subscribe to the theory that in the old days everything was in black and white and most people were stupid, I have been looking for clues as to what seemed good about the nazis. In this short, I can recognize some things that also fascinate today.
Modernity is cool, and I see a lot of glamourous propaganda from totalitarian states, this could be a nice example, being admired by otherwise sensible people.
Half-naked women and great rhythms can distract a lot of people from political issues - I have a number of friends who often spend time in Cuba and never notice that everyone is surveilled and everything can be bought for 20 dollars. There is a lot of great architecture in Cuba, too. Recently I had a friendly argument with an old friend about Syria, in his view a wonderfully safe and cheap country, in mine a sort of orientalist East Germany (oh but mumimor, East Germany was nice too..)

Compared to the poverty-stricken world of 1936, I can easily see the fascination of Berlin as depicted here. Groups of soldiers, marching bands and patriotic chanting were the order of the day across Europe - it's only with 20/20 hindsight that scene in Cabaret is chilling. My grandmother just recently told me that she and her friends would wander about town singing German patriotic songs alternately with swing hits because it was fun and part of the culture of the day - and they were in the resistance. Just yesterday I saw a group of grannies reliving that sentiment, marching arm in arm, completely innocent.

When I worry about the hatred towards Muslims we see now in Europe, a lot of my friends are genuinely baffled. They have never ever met a Muslim, and argue that this small amount of racism is not significant, doesn't really hurt, and other problems are more important, which is why I should vote for this or that scare-mongering politician. If I imagined that the horrors of nazism were evident in 1936, I would trust my friends. But as I don't, I don't. (I also don't believe we are heading toward -39. Everything is different).
posted by mumimor at 4:41 PM on September 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

After the fall of Byzanz Russia too had aspirations on the title, calling Moscow the 3rd rome.

Funnily enough, the Ottomans who caused Byzanz to fall felt that they were they rightful owners of the title.

Mind you, Constantinople was pretty much a total dump by the time they got there.

And Edinburgh, meanwhile, was the Athens of the North.

Well, as of the nineteenth century, so maybe a little later.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:51 PM on September 26, 2011

Whoa, even paintings were in colour back then. That just blew my mind.
posted by rainy at 6:53 PM on September 26, 2011

Seriously, though - I kept thinking back to this. I know the rest of the world wasn't exactly THRILLED with the rise of the Nazis prior to the invasion of Poland, but if they were so openly militaristic and concerning, why did people actually participate in the 1936 Olympics?

Some people were alarmed; others though, hey, maybe the fascists are onto something. Perhaps more regimentation and discipline is just what a society needs.

Britain's popular middle-class tabloid the Daily Mail famously praised Hitler's stewardship of Germany and tried to groom British fascist Oswald Mosley as leadership material; meanwhile, Edward VII, who was briefly the king, didn't try very hard to hide his Nazi sympathies, and there were aristocrats, businessmen and ordinary people who thought that Nazi-like fascism could be a good thing for Britain. Mind you, before WW2, totalitarian utopian thinking hadn't yet been discredited, and kept popping up everywhere, from the popularity of the Soviet experiment on the Left to the urban visions of Le Corbusier.
posted by acb at 2:19 AM on September 27, 2011

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1936 Berlin in Farbe September 26, 2011 7:46 AM Subscribe

1936 Berlin in Farbe
September 26, 2011 7:46 AM Subscribe