The Red Terror (film)

Last updated
The Red Terror
GPU
Directed by Karl Ritter
Written by
Produced by Karl Ritter
StarringSee below
Cinematography Igor Oberberg
Edited by Conrad von Molo
Music by
Production
company
UFA
Distributed byDeutsche Filmvertriebs
Release date
  • 14 August 1942 (1942-08-14)
Running time
99 minutes
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman
Budget1.849 million ℛℳ
Box office3.5 million ℛℳ

The Red Terror (German : GPU) is a 1942 Nazi propaganda [1] film directed by Karl Ritter. [2]

Contents

Plot

Olga Feodorovna, a Baltic German, saw her family massacred by the GPU. She joins it in order to track down the murderers. After avenging the deaths, she commits suicide.

Cast

Production

Joseph Goebbels ordered UFA GmbH to start production on four anti-Soviet films in 1941. Andrews Engelmann came up with the idea for The Red Terror and wrote the script with Karl Ritter and Felix Lützkendorf. Production started in December 1941. [3] It was the first anti-Soviet film by the Nazis since the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. [4] It cost 1.849 million ℛℳ (equivalent to $8,000,000in 2021) to produce. [5]

Release

The film was approved by the censors on 17 July 1942, and premiered in Berlin on 14 August. [6] It earned 3.5 million ℛℳ (equivalent to $15,000,000in 2021) at the box office for a profit of 1.161 million ℛℳ (equivalent to $4,870,000in 2021). [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nazism and cinema</span> Nazi influence on film between 1933–1945

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.

<i>The North Star</i> (1943 film) 1943 film by Lewis Milestone

The North Star is a 1943 pro-resistance war film starring Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan and Erich von Stroheim It was produced by Samuel Goldwyn Productions and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Milestone, written by Lillian Hellman and featured production design by William Cameron Menzies. The music was written by Aaron Copland, the lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and the cinematography by James Wong Howe. The film also marked the debut of Farley Granger.

Homecoming is a 1941 Nazi German anti-Polish propaganda film directed by Gustav Ucicky. Filled with heavy-handed caricature, it justifies extermination of Poles with a depiction of relentless persecution of ethnic Germans, who escape death only because of the German invasion.

The Red Terror was a campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia in 1918–1922.

<i>The Hymn of Leuthen</i> 1933 film

The Hymn of Leuthen is a 1933 German film depicting Frederick the Great, directed by Carl Froelich starring Otto Gebühr, Olga Chekhova and Elga Brink. It was part of the cycle of nostalgic Prussian films popular during the Weimar and Nazi eras. The title refers to the 1757 Battle of Leuthen.

<i>Refugees</i> (1933 film) 1933 film

Refugees is the 1933 German drama film, directed by Gustav Ucicky and starring Hans Albers, Käthe von Nagy, and Eugen Klöpfer. It depicts Volga German refugees persecuted by the Bolsheviks on the Sino-Russian border in Manchuria in 1928.

<i>The Great King</i> 1942 film

The Great King is a 1942 German drama film directed by Veit Harlan and starring Otto Gebühr. It depicts the life of Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786. It received the rare "Film of the Nation" distinction. It was part of a popular cycle of "Prussian films".

<i>The Fox of Glenarvon</i> 1940 film by Max W. Kimmich

The Fox of Glenarvon is a German propaganda film from the Nazi era portraying the years of the Irish fight for independence during World War I. It was produced in 1940 by Max W. Kimmich and starred Olga Chekhova, Karl Ludwig Diehl, Ferdinand Marian and others. The screenplay was written by Wolf Neumeister and Hans Bertram based on a novel of the same title by Nicola Rhon that had been published by the Ullstein publishing house in 1937. It was made at the Johannisthal Studios in Berlin, with sets designed by the art directors Wilhelm Depenau and Otto Erdmann. The shoot lasted from December 1939 to February 1940. It passed censorship on 22 April 1940 and had its debut in Berlin's Ufa-Palast am Zoo two days later.

<i>Ohm Krüger</i> 1941 film by Hans Steinhoff, Herbert Maisch, Karl Anton

Ohm Krüger is a 1941 German biographical film directed by Hans Steinhoff and starring Emil Jannings, Lucie Höflich, and Werner Hinz. It was one of a series of major propaganda films produced in Nazi Germany attacking the United Kingdom. The film depicts the life of the South African politician Paul Kruger and his eventual defeat by the British during the Boer War.

Unternehmen Michael is a 1937 German film directed by Karl Ritter, the first of three films about the First World War which he made during the period when the Third Reich was rearming.

<i>Bismarck</i> (1940 film) 1940 film by Wolfgang Liebeneiner

Bismarck is a 1940 German historical film directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner and starring Paul Hartmann, Friedrich Kayßler, and Lil Dagover.

I Accuse is a 1941 Nazi German pro-euthanasia propaganda film directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner and produced by Heinrich Jonen and Ewald von Demandowsky. It was developed to promote the involuntary euthanasia of disabled people conducted through the Aktion T4 mass murder program and to garner public support for the Nazi concept of life unworthy of life.

The Dismissal is a 1942 German film directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner about the dismissal of Otto von Bismarck. It was one of only five films to receive the honorary distinction "Film of the Nation" by the Reich Propaganda Ministry Censorship Office.

The Rothschilds is a 1940 Nazi German historical propaganda film directed by Erich Waschneck.

<i>Hitlerjunge Quex</i> (film) 1933 film

Hitlerjunge 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.

<i>Stukas</i> (film) 1941 German film

Stukas is a 1941 Nazi propaganda film, directed by Karl Ritter and starring Carl Raddatz, which follows three squadrons of Luftwaffe dive-bomber (Stuka) flyers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Ritter (director)</span> German film producer and director

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.

<i>Cadets</i> (film) 1939 film

Cadets is a 1939 German historical war film directed by Karl Ritter starring Mathias Wieman, Carsta Löck, and Andrews Engelmann. The film is set in 1760, against the backdrop of the Austro-Russian Raid on Berlin during the Seven Years' War. It depicts a group of Prussian cadets holding off superior Russian forces.

<i>Above All Else in the World</i> 1941 film

Above All Else in the World is a 1941 German drama film directed by Karl Ritter and starring Paul Hartmann, Hannes Stelzer and Fritz Kampers. The title refers to the second line of the German national anthem. It was made as a propaganda film designed to promote Nazi Germany's war aims in the Second World War.

<i>Pour le Mérite</i> (film) 1938 German film

Pour le Mérite is a 1938 propaganda film produced and directed by Karl Ritter for Nazi Germany. The film follows the story of officers of the Luftstreitkräfte in the First World War who were later involved in the formation of the Luftwaffe. Pour le Mérite propagates the "stab legend", which consigns the German military defeat in World War I to an alleged treason in the homeland. At the same time, Ritter also glorifies the former fighter pilots as heroes of National Socialism.

References

  1. "Nazi anti-Soviet propaganda film - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". collections.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2022-09-06.
  2. "New York Times: G.P.U. (1942)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-11-04. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  3. Welch 1983, p. 214.
  4. Welch 1983, p. 212.
  5. 1 2 Welch 1983, p. 270.
  6. Welch 1983, pp. 214, 280.

Works cited