Harvard Scholar: Hollywood aided Nazis and Hitler directly

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Jeffrey Newman

A Harvard scholar has written a soon to be published book which asserts that Hollywood did not just collaborate with Nazi Germany, it aided Adolf Hitler directly. Ben Urwand, currently at Harvard’s Society of Fellows has written the book “The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler,” to be released in October. According to press reports (I have not read the book yet), he draws from German and American archives that studio bosses, many of them Jewish immigrants cut films scene by scene to suit Nazi officials so that the films could be re-purposed into Nazi propaganda films. In the book, he apparently states that Jack Warner was the first to invite Nazi officials to Warner’s headquarters to screen films and suggest cuts. In the German state archives in Berlin, Mr. Urwand found a January 1938 letter from the German branch of 20th Century Fox asking whether Hitler would share his opinions on American movies and signed “Heil Hitler!”.