"Die Deutsche
Wochenschau No. 747 and the Late World War II Nazi Aesthetic" by Roger Mancusi
Through the help of Dr. Streibel
and his colleague Jeanpaul Goergen, we have positively identified the Nazi
newsreel footage that I screened for class as being Die Deutsche Wochenschau No. 747.
The German Weekly Review (Die
Deutsche Wochenschau) news service, distributed by Tobis Films, used a
combination of field footage of military offenses, updates from the home front,
and interactive maps to display Nazi campaigns across the world to the
German people. The footage in my
selected piece, which passed censors on January 4, 1945, captures the Nazi
Ardennes Offensive, and as discussed in class it selectively portrays the Nazi
advances and neglects to show their eventual retreat and defeat in the Battle
of the Bulge (Hoffmann 233).
Beyond simply depicting or ignoring the battle’s
factual details and realities, the newsreel employs various cinematic maneuvers
to sell the political rhetoric Nazi authorities were brandishing during the
collapse of the Western Front. To give context, in
various speeches made in late 1944 and early 1945, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels began to
change their wartime rhetoric from reasons to fight to reasons to defend. When earlier they proclaimed German superiority as the reason to overcome their European neighbors, now they chose to describe the intensity with which Nazi forces were
meeting the Allied and Soviet advances (Barnouw 144). Despite reports of Nazi losses and surrenders abounding the Western and Eastern Fronts, the Nazi regime claimed victories and insisted that every enemy attack was being met head on with violent and bloodthirsty determination. Simultaneously, they stressed the importance of a unified home front to
support and believe in the forces that were fighting off the invaders.
Die Deutsche Wochenschau No. 747
encompasses both the stubborn rhetoric of the collapsing Nazi regime and the
cinematic qualities necessary to sell the ideal of the valiant and successful Nazi
soldier to the nervous German public.
As Die Deutsche Wochenschau No. 747 begins, as was custom for
newsreels, we are given a time and a place for the action we are about to see
unfold: The 16th of December, 1945 in the Ardennes Region of
Luxembourg and Belgium. Following these establishing shots, we are bombarded
(to borrow the term) with close ups of rockets streaking through the night sky
and Nazi artillery unleashing their shells on unsuspecting Allied forces. The narrator, Harry Giese, adds
the verbal commentary to these images to accurately portray the impact of the
initial Nazi attacks, and the dramatic soundtrack builds the tension while
German forces await the signal to advance.
1
Once the word is given, the soldiers advance
to surprise stunned American soldiers, and the camera follows the columns of
Nazis into the “enemy villages” while captured American POWs stream in the opposite
direction.
Within the next sequence’s display
of American wreckage, we see the camera and narrator’s ability, or at least
attempt, to subvert what they believe were Allied war claims. The camera closes in on the side of a
destroyed American tank with the phrase “AMERICA FIRST” painted on it, and the narrator claims: “America First? We’ll see about that!” [Image 1]. Whether or not the irony and humor of
“America First” being painted on a Sherman tank was wasted on the Germans is
unknown, but regardless, the newsreel takes this to be a claim of American
dominance and shows the viewer how Allied claims only
lead to dead Americans at the hands of the superior Nazi forces.
The German soldiers, as argued by the footage, were made to
look superior in all aspects of the battle, and according to the narrator, each Nazi maneuver caught the Allies off guard. The bodies and wreckage they leave in their wake attests to
that, and the cascade of images of German shells falling, German tanks advancing, and Allied forces crumbling only further those claims. 
As the second installment of the
newsreel (Part 2) begins, we are shown the Nazi’s superiority in the air to accompany their overpowering forces on the ground.
Before the action takes to the sky, the camera again works to undo
American wartime ideologies. In Image 2,
The American Dream, a long held national ethos was shown to be untrue as a Nazi
soldier tauntingly paints the expression on one of the many destroyed American guns. To back up the Nazi ideological claims of
superiority, the narrator comments derisively, “The American Dream. This says it
all!”. Clearly, according to this
newsreel, the Allied forces have no match for Nazi firepower and cunning, and
soon the Luftwaffe will take to the skies to continue the display of military
might. 
The Allied air forces, which we
know actually turned the tide on the Ardennes offensive, are here shown to be
cannon fodder for the Luftwaffe. Nazi fighter-planes take off and attack
before American bombers can even get off the ground, leaving them in a trail of
smoke. And once American bombers are in the
sky, we find them unprotected and they are easily shot down by the Nazi fighter
planes attacking from above. In the first series of what I believe are shots
added in postproduction, the spectator (read: the German citizen) is invited to
participate in the shooting down of sluggish American bombers. After showing the organization of German
planes flying in formation, the camera cuts to a close up of a fighter pilot
looking down [Image 3] to show his gun control
[Image 4] in a point of view shot. The
camera cuts to the propeller spurning the plane forward before cutting to
another POV shot: the plane unleashing fire and downing an American
plane. When American fighters come to
engage the Luftwaffe, they too are easily shot down in an eyeline match with the pilot [Image 5]. The audience is invited to not only enjoy in
this ritualistic and systematic destruction of American forces, but also to actively
feel like they are an engaged participant in the battle.
Hitler and Goebbels stressed the unity of the home front and battlefront was crucial to repel the invading Allied forces, and these
series of point of view shots shows the
German citizen why they should still believe in the war efforts. The newsreel fades to black and we are led to believe that the German's were victories on all accounts of the battle. 
In reality, German forces were being beaten back in such numbers that on January 7, 1945, only three days after Die Deutsche
Wochenschau No. 747 was sent to press, Hitler ordered for the complete evacuation of Nazi forces from the Ardennes Region into the German northwest. This newsreel, however, stresses and manipulates the initial Nazi forces' successes (mainly between mid to late December), but refuses to show the Nazi retreat from Christmas through the New Year. It upholds the virtues and ideals that the Nazi regime would have had the public believe and refuses to participate in the breakdown of their proud beliefs. The images and voice-over act to soothe the growing anxieties of the closing months of World War II in Germany, and the hyperbolic and nationalistic rhetoric that catapulted the nation, and the world, into war years ago is here alive and well. It is only when you dig beneath these twisted and propagandistic images that the true nature is revealed. The Ardennes Offensive would prove to be Hitler's last desperate attack to protect the nation he led to believe was universally superior to the rest of the world. After the Battle of the Bulge, having been overexposed, under-equipped, and truly defeated, the German forces continued their retreat into the heart of Germany, only to fall to the Allied and Russian forces some five months later.
Works Cited:
Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Hoffman, Hilmar. The Triumph of Propaganda: Film and National Socialism 1933-1945, Frankfurt: Berghahn Books, 1996.
Note:
1. Dr. Kathrin Bower explained that Harry Giese was the narrator in a personal correspondence.
1. Dr. Kathrin Bower explained that Harry Giese was the narrator in a personal correspondence.