Together with that documentary, which talks about how much the British suffered during WWI, losing a generation of young men, this newsreel and the indifference it brought from the American government and business interests makes more sense.
The documentary talks about how Hitler did take Germany from the starvation that the rest of the world was suffering during the Great Depression and in five short years every worker has a job and hunger is gone. But at what cost? Wages are kept low so that industry has money to churn out as many arms as needed, food prices are kept high as the Nazis need farmers to be able to produce large amounts of food for the troops, every farmer must grow what he is told to grow, and no worker is allowed to strike. The German newspapers are full of stories of people freezing, starving, and rebelling in the streets in the U.S., and some of these stories may have been true in the depths of the Great Depression as the U.S. only could go as far as our democracy would let us, and even then Roosevelt was labeled a Communist for what he did do.
The short talks about how visitors will be surprised at how cheerful and relaxed the German people are, but then the narrator credits that not only to the recovery of the economy, but to the Nazi propaganda machine, and the "group think" that the Third Reich encouraged and actually exercised in German youth who were taught much about acting together, but whose school lessons kept critical thought to a minimum.
Precisely because Germany was so prosperous, the American captains of industry did not want to upset the apple cart - Hitler could have cut them off from trading in their economy with just a word. And because there had been so much seemingly pointless loss in WWI, politicians were afraid to once again point to Germany as the boogeyman. Note the large number of anti war films made from 1925 until up to 1939, including the ironically named "Idiot's Delight" from that latter year for examples of that.
I'd recommend this one. It is probably the best explanation you are going to get of life in Hitler's Germany before war actually broke out.
The documentary talks about how Hitler did take Germany from the starvation that the rest of the world was suffering during the Great Depression and in five short years every worker has a job and hunger is gone. But at what cost? Wages are kept low so that industry has money to churn out as many arms as needed, food prices are kept high as the Nazis need farmers to be able to produce large amounts of food for the troops, every farmer must grow what he is told to grow, and no worker is allowed to strike. The German newspapers are full of stories of people freezing, starving, and rebelling in the streets in the U.S., and some of these stories may have been true in the depths of the Great Depression as the U.S. only could go as far as our democracy would let us, and even then Roosevelt was labeled a Communist for what he did do.
The short talks about how visitors will be surprised at how cheerful and relaxed the German people are, but then the narrator credits that not only to the recovery of the economy, but to the Nazi propaganda machine, and the "group think" that the Third Reich encouraged and actually exercised in German youth who were taught much about acting together, but whose school lessons kept critical thought to a minimum.
Precisely because Germany was so prosperous, the American captains of industry did not want to upset the apple cart - Hitler could have cut them off from trading in their economy with just a word. And because there had been so much seemingly pointless loss in WWI, politicians were afraid to once again point to Germany as the boogeyman. Note the large number of anti war films made from 1925 until up to 1939, including the ironically named "Idiot's Delight" from that latter year for examples of that.
I'd recommend this one. It is probably the best explanation you are going to get of life in Hitler's Germany before war actually broke out.