Hitlerjunge Quex, (Hitler Youth Quex), is a 1933 German film directed by Hans Steinhoff, based on the similarly named 1932 novel Der Hitlerjunge Quex by Karl Aloys Schenzinger. It was released in the United States as Our Flag Leads Us Forward.
Heini Völker is a teenage boy, living in poverty with his mother and father. Heini's father, a veteran of the Great War, is an out-of-work supporter of the Communist Party. The organizer for the local communist chapter, a man named Stoppel, befriends Heini and invites him to an outing in the country, promising him swimming, camping and games. Heini accepts and duly turns up at the railway station the next day. The Hitler Youth are also there, taking the same train.
When the communists arrive at their own camp, there is only smoking, drinking, and dancing. Boys and girls play games like cards, unlike the games which Heini expected. Heini doesn't feel welcome, and wanders away. In another part of the forest, Heini comes across the Hitler Youth camping by a lake where they are holding a midsummer bonfire. Heini watches them from a distance, but is caught by them, and taken into the camp, but they recognise him as having travelled with the communists, and so they send him away as well. Heini sees them doing all the things that he hoped to participate in, i.e. camping and swimming. He is enamored by their singing. In the morning, Heini watches the Hitler Youth's morning activities, but Stoppel comes looking for him. He hides from Stoppel and instead catches a ride into town from a stranger. When Heini returns home, he tells his mother about the Hitler Youth, and sings one of their songs to her, but his father overhears it and beats him for it.
Heini wants to join the Hitler Youth and visits one of the Hitler Youth members' home, promising to come to the opening of their new club house. However, he arrives late, just as the communists are attacking the Hitler Youth members. Even though he had nothing to do with the attack, he is among those arrested by the police. The police arrest some of the Hitler Youth, but no communists. When the police let him go, he is recognised by the Hitler Youth members, who accuse him of colluding with the communists during the attack.
Stoppel is impressed by the fact that Heini didn't tell the police that the communists were the ones who started the ruckus. He confides in him that the communists plan to attack the Hitler Youth later that day, but Heini is distraught and threatens to tell the Hitler Youth about the attack. He attempts to warn Ulla by telephone, but Fritz dismisses the matter. Heini also informs the police, but they do not believe him either. In the end, Ulla seems to have convinced Fritz to do something, as the communists' weapons store is blown up.
Stoppel realises that Heini must have warned the Hitler Youth, and he goes to Heini's house and hints to his mother that he is going to kill him. However, later Stoppel has a change of heart and orders the communists not to retaliate against Heini. Heini's mother is so distraught that she decides to kill her son and herself by shutting the windows and leaving the gas on in their apartment at night. She is killed, but Heini survives.
Heini's father happens to meet Heini's Hitler Youth troop leader, Kass, when both men go to see Heini at the hospital. It is here that Heini's father reveals that he was injured in the war, and that that is the reason he could not work. Kass attempts to convince Heini's father to join the Nazis. Heini decides to move into a hostel run by the Hitler Youth, where he discovers to his dismay that not all members of Hitler Youth have such high moral values as he had thought. They call him Quex, originally as an insult, a shortening of “Quecksilber” (quicksilver).
The Hitler Youth leader takes care not to send Heini to the district where the communists live, but they find out where he is staying. Stoppel seeks Heini out on the street, and tries to convince him to return to the communists. Heini refuses, and Stoppel warns him not to return to the communist district. One day, one of the Hitler Youth is beaten up by the communists while putting up posters, and Heini convinces his leader to allow him to visit the communist district to hand out flyers. However, his fellow Hitler Youth Grundler has been taken in by the communist girl Gerda, and throws all the flyers in the river. Heini then offers to reprint all the posters during the night and puts up the posters before the morning. The communists hear about this and chase him and stab him. The Hitler Youth find him lying face-down dying.
Produced by Karl Ritter,[3] it was supported by the Nazi leadership and produced for 225,000–320,000 RM (equivalent to €1,042,986in 2021)–(equivalent to €1,483,357in 2021).[4][5] The latter also wrote the lyrics for the Hitler Youth marching song "Vorwärts! Vorwärts! schmettern die hellen Fanfaren", better known by its refrain, Unsere Fahne flattert uns voran,[6] using an existing melody by Hans-Otto Borgmann, who was also responsible for the music.[3] The director was Hans Steinhoff.[3] For the film, the subtitle Ein Film vom Opfergeist der deutschen Jugend ("A film about the sacrificial spirit of German youth") was added to the novel's title.[3] It was one of three films about Nazi martyrs in 1933, the other two being SA-Mann Brand and Hans Westmar.[4]
The film's Producer, Karl Ritter, recalled in his private diaries the famous scene where Vater Völker slaps his son violently after he overhears him singing the HJ song Unsere Fahne flattert uns voran. The diary entry: Unforgettable was the George–Jürgen Ohlsen ear–slapping scene. George first paid for Jürgen's ice cream and took him into the canteen like a godfather would. Jürgen saw nothing to fear in him. So then, when the dreadful ear–slap scene came, the tears shot from his eyes. [7]
Themes
The character of Wilde was played by Karl Meixner, of whom Jay Baird said that he looked like "a Nazi version of the incarnation of the 'Jewish-Bolshevik' will to destruction".[8]
The film allows some sympathy for communists. Heini's father, though violent and drunk, has become a communist because of his, and the workers', desperate condition.[9] In one scene, his argument for his son being with him revolves around his sufferings in the war and his unemployment.[10] Stoppel, the communist who invited Heini to a Communist Youth outing, while saying that he has to be eliminated, takes no part in the killing, Quex having made a strong impression on him.[11]
Release
Hitlerjunge Quex was approved by the censors on 7 September 1933, presented to Hitler at the Ufa-Phoebus Palace in Munich on 12 September, and premiered at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin on 19 September. Thousands of Hitler Youth members lined the streets during the Munich showing.[12][3]Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Robert Ley, Ernst Röhm, and other high Nazi functionaries also attended the Munich showing.[13][14]
It was premiered in the United States as Our Flag Leads Us Forward[15] at the Yorkville Theatre on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on 6 July 1934[16] and in March 1942 in Paris as Le jeune hitlérien.[17] Over 20 million people saw the film and it was still being show at the Hitler Youth's jugendfilmstunden[de] by 1942.[18]
The film was shown in a double bill with Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, Ireland on 27 October 1935. The event was organised by the German Legation and was attended by about 200 people. The Garda Síochána (Irish police) feared the screening would be disrupted by communists and provided heavy protection inside and outside the theatre. They noted the attendance of Senator Joseph Connolly who was an Irish government minister, as well as diplomats from Belgium, France, Germany, and Poland.[19][20]
Reception
Goebbels reflected on the film as follows: "If Hitler Youth Quex represents the first large-scale attempt to depict the ideas and world of National Socialism with the art of cinema, then one must say that this attempt, given the possibilities of modern technology, is a full-fledged success."[21] By January 1934 it had been viewed by a million people.[4] It was banned in Germany after World War II.[17]
Nazi songs are songs and marches created by the Nazi Party. In modern Germany, the public singing or performing of songs exclusively associated with the Nazi Party is now illegal.
Horst Ludwig Georg Erich Wessel was a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, who became a propaganda symbol in Nazi Germany following his murder in 1930 by two members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). After his death, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels elevated him into a martyr for the Nazi Party.
Der Hitlerjunge Quex is a 1932 Nazi propaganda novel by Karl Aloys Schenzinger based on the life of Herbert “Quex” Norkus. The 1933 film Hitlerjunge Quex: Ein Film vom Opfergeist der deutschen Jugend was based on it and was described by Joseph Goebbels as the "first large-scale" transmission of Nazi ideology using the medium of cinema. Both the book and the film, like S.A.-Mann Brand and Hans Westmar, which were released the same year, fictionalised and glorified death in the service of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler.
Nazism made extensive use of the cinema throughout its history. Though it was a relatively new technology, the Nazi Party established a film department soon after it rose to power in Germany. Both Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, used the many Nazi films to promote the party ideology and show their influence in the burgeoning art form, which was an object of personal fascination for Hitler. The Nazis valued film as a propaganda instrument of enormous power, courting the masses by means of slogans that were aimed directly at the instincts and emotions of the people. The Department of Film also used the economic power of German moviegoers to influence the international film market. This resulted in almost all Hollywood producers censoring films critical of Nazism during the 1930s, as well as showing news shorts produced by the Nazis in American theaters.
Herbert Norkus was a Hitler Youth member who was killed by German Communists. He became a role model and martyr for the Hitler Youth and was widely used in Nazi propaganda, most prominently as the subject of novel and film Hitler Youth Quex.
Hermann Braun was a German film actor, and the son of chamber singer Carl Braun.
S.A.-Mann Brand is a German film made around the time that Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. It was released in mid-June 1933.
Die Rote Fahne was a German newspaper originally founded in 1876 by Socialist Worker's Party leader Wilhelm Hasselmann, and which has been since published on and off, at times underground, by German Socialists and Communists. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg famously published it in 1918 as organ of the Spartacus League.
Hans Westmar was the last of an unofficial trilogy of films produced by the Nazis shortly after coming to power in January 1933, celebrating their Kampfzeit – the history of their period in opposition, struggling to gain power. The film is a partially fictionalized biography of the Nazi martyr Horst Wessel.
Hans Steinhoff was a German film director, best known for the propaganda films he produced in Nazi Germany.
Herbert Böhme was a German poet who wrote poems and battle hymns for the Nazi Party. In 1930 he became one of the newly formed Junge Mannschaft, a group of semi-official Nazi poets that included Heinrich Anacker and Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach. Böhme joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1933 and its original paramilitary wing, the Brownshirts, on 1 September 1933. After the Second World War he became involved with neo-fascism.
The Ruler is a 1937 German drama film directed by Veit Harlan. It was adapted from the play of the same name by Gerhart Hauptmann. Erwin Leiser calls it a propagandistic demonstration of the Führerprinzip of Nazi Germany. The film's sets were designed by the art director Robert Herlth. Location shooting took place around Oberhausen and Pompeii near Naples. It premiered at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin.
Hans-Otto Borgmann was a German film music composer during the Third Reich.
Ernst Behmer was a prolific German stage and film actor who appeared in more than a hundred films during the silent and early sound eras.
Karl Meixner was an Austrian film actor.
Jürgen Ohlsen was a German actor best remembered for portraying "Heini "Quex" Völker" in the 1933 Nazi propaganda film Hitlerjunge Quex.
Karl Ritter was a German film producer and director responsible for many Nazi propaganda films. He had previously been one of the first German military pilots. He spent most of his later life in Argentina.
Rivalen der Luft – ein Segelfliegerfilm is a German film released in January 1934, which was banned in 1945 by the Allied Control Council as a Nazi Propaganda film, although it was later removed from the list of so-called Conditional Films.
Hermann Speelmans was a German stage and film actor.
↑ Gillespie, William (2014). Karl Ritter – His Life and 'Zeit Films' under National Socialism. German Films Dot Net. pp.17ff. ISBN9780980861228.
↑ Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press-Midland Books, 1990, repr. 1992, ISBN9780253311252, p. 121.
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