Our forthcoming book in 2025......

Estimated publication date:  May 2025 (tbc). The book will be exclusively available from International Historic Films in Chicago, Illinois, USA when it is in print. We will not be selling it via this website until early September 2025. The RRP of the book is not as yet set, but is most likely to be in the range of US$27.95 to $29.95.

A description of the book's contents:

During its twelve years, the Third Reich created more than a thousand feature films. Dr Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment,  was a true believer that the motion picture was a key weapon to engage the German public in supporting National Socialism. He personally devoted hours almost every day or night to reading film scripts, screening films before they were approved for cinemas, and overseeing the massive film industry. By February 1942, public audiences in Germany reached 1.067 billion attendees, overshadowing Hollywood to become the world’s largest film industry.

Post–war historians from the USA and UK acknowledged that German propaganda was “the war that Hitler won,” with Nazi propaganda films being significantly more sophisticated and better produced than those of their enemies. Germany’s excellent actors, high production standards, major studios, skilled composers and technicians created numerous top films, such as Jud Süss and Ohm Krüger.

This is the first book devoted to surveying films that were approved and announced in film studios’ annual preview catalogs but were never made: Nazi ideological films, military and war films, German colony films, “German Genius” biopics, anti–British and/or pro-Irish films, anti-Soviet films, and anti-Semitic films. Even a pro-American film was made before Pearl Harbor brought the U.S.A. into WWII. 

The collection includes thirty-nine never–produced propaganda films and all available information, accompanied by chapters detailing Third Reich filmmaking during peacetime and wartime. Extensive research into documents, internal reports, and letters exchanged with Dr Goebbels, the Propaganda Ministry, the Head of German Film (Reichsfilmintendant), and the Reich Film Chamber, as well as minutes from board meetings at the renowned Ufa film studio, has been conducted to gather insights about these projects, which have been translated into English. A selection of fifty four images, 42 of which are in color, along with graphics and proposed film posters, revive these unknown and forgotten stories.

The book has 148 pages, and shall be printed on the same paper stock as our four Karl Ritter books ---on non-bleed-through paper, approx. 6 x 9 inches format, glossy coated covers, in a Perfect binding.

TABLE OF CONTENTS