Mein Kampf

The Terrifying Rise and Ruin of Hitler’s Third Reich

Director / Writer Erwin Leiser 1959

Big Sky Video

R4 DVD

Beyond Home Entertainment

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

Erwin Leiser was a young Jewish schoolboy who left Germany as the Nazi attitude towards his people hardened. He lived in Sweden during the war, and elected to stay there for most of the rest of his life. From this vantage point he was able to observe the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. He was features editor at a Stockholm newspaper during the 1950s. In the late 50s he turned to documentaries, and this film was his first, produced in 1959. It is widely regarded as one of the best documentaries about Germany’s National Socialist era. It uses footage from documentaries, propaganda and newsreels of the period.

The film’s title was chosen carefully. Leiser selected it as a continuation of Hitler’s book, showing the consequences on Germany and the world of National Socialism. Fortunately he also began with Germany during and after World War One, and this background goes a long way to explaining how the German people let Hitler get away with so much for so long. For all his later crimes, Hitler brought pride and relative prosperity back to a country humiliated by war. Leiser had access to the Allies’ captured film and propaganda archives, so was able to cut and edit them into a comprehensive documentary that shows both the political and domestic parts of the story.

It is to Leiser’s credit that he presents the film as an academic piece, resisting the temptation to preach. This makes it far more watchable, and the lessons are more easily absorbed without having to be pounded in with propaganda. The propaganda is there, but it is to illustrate part of the story.

Even the Holocaust is dealt with carefully, and without the sensationalism and passion so prevalent whenever the subject is brought up. This segment is kept relatively short, enough to show it as part of the history of the war but not enough to overpower the rest of the story.

By contrast, the extra documentary included on the DVD, “Adolf Hitler”, is a compilation from British, German and U.S. propaganda films and has all the worst of propaganda features. The British part appears to have been made just before the War started. It takes a mocking view of the Hitler phenomenon, using parts of German propaganda clips (some are the same clips seen in Mein Kampf) overdubbed with their own sneering commentary. While the original German clips were designed to lift the morale of the German people, the British commentary suggests that they seriously underestimated Hitler’s importance. This supercilious attitude cost them dearly within a few years.

The U.S. part is a brief, fairly factual account of the life of Hitler and his impact on Germany. There are some “reenactments” for dramatic emphasis, but they don’t do much for the film. There is much of Hitler’s private film footage., but thankfully few interviews. The film completely ignores the politics of the period, however. Where Leiser takes time to develop Hitler’s rise to power and the reasons for it, the U.S. documentary tries to fit too much history into too short a film.

The DVD is rounded out by a useful picture gallery and some extra trailers. The quality overall is about what you would expect from the 1950s. I would like to have seen a digitally cleaned-up version, but this may have lost some of the “period” look. Overall it’s an excellent package. Leiser’s documentary is the best visual explanation of the Nazi period I have seen, and the extra features are useful and interesting. Big Sky Video are to be commended for rereleasing this valuable documentary.

Mein Kampf is primarily in English with some German footage with clear subtitles