Chapter 6—
Film

The general collapse in the spring of 1945, which impacted all branches of Berlin's industry and culture, seemed to strangely pass over the film industry. Perhaps it had to do with the old escapist tendency of the film medium itself. There was something unreal in how, up until the last gasp of the Third Reich, the studios in Babelsberg, Tempelhof, and Jo-hannisthal continued to turn out light entertainment, and equally unreal how after the collapse, business continued without production. The directors and studio executives, financial and legal advisers of the three large production firms in Berlin—Ufa, Tobis, and Terra—went on with their usual activities, pursuing old directives and making new plans as though nothing or nothing essential had happened. True, the state holding company Ufi had disappeared along with the Third Reich,^[*] but this signaled less a defeat than the promise of new opportunities. The German film industry, centralized and disciplined under the Nazis, now required complete reorganization. Based on his initial inquiries in July 1945, the American officer in charge of film, Vienna-born Henry C.

[*] Ufi was created by Reich Commissioner Winkler in 1942. He had worked for years to consolidate the film companies nationalized in the late 1930s into a single state-run enterprise. The resulting holding company united the formerly independent studios of Ufa, Tobis, Terra, Bavaria, and Wien-Film and would keep the German film industry profitable. Ufi (an abbreviation for Ufa-Film), borrowing the name of its largest subsidiary, became an umbrella organization for all activities with the exception of production; Ufa remained a gigantic production company.

Alter, described the situation like this: "The individual film companies [of the former Ufi conglomerate] are still there, very uncertain, and are trying to deal one another a blow, each one hoping to emerge from this confusion at the top."^[1] While the old studio heads in Berlin-Mitte built their castles in the air, the studios and technical facilities located in other districts of Berlin and outside of the city had become independent.^[2]

The spring and summer months also witnessed a profusion of new film companies. There was less illusory denial of the situation in these efforts; their founders had for the most part worked for the old companies as managers, directors, or technicians, and were aware of the uncertainty, risk, and adventurousness of their undertaking. The motives for setting up a new film company ranged from artistic or moral frenzy to political opportunism and purely financial interests.

The director Wolfgang Staudte, who belonged to the first category, had first tried his luck with a manager of one of the old firms, Walter Reitzel at Tobis. Reitzel appointed Staudte "artistic director" of his shadow company on June 5, 1945. Four days later Staudte presented the Russian control officer Colonel Ratkin with a proposal for a film project under the working title Die letzten Tage (The Final Days) , the story of a young couple who survived the final trials of the Nazi period and were liberated by the Red Army.^[3] This met with as little success as his attempts to obtain an American, and later an English, license for his later to be famous project, Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are among US ).^[4]

Demo Film was one of the firms set up by members of the resistance in the spirit of the new antifascist beginning. The partners in this venture were Franz Graf Treuberg, dramaturge at the Hebbel Theater and soon afterward head of the artists' club Die Möwe, a central figure on the Berlin cultural scene between 1945 and 1948 who has fallen into obscurity now; Werner Hochbaum, a director expelled from the Reichs-filmkammer in 1939 because of the insufficiently veiled antipathy toward National Socialism in his films; and Günther Weisenborn, a resistance fighter freed from prison and the author of the play Die Illegalen . Weisenborn and Treuberg wrote the script for a film set in the resistance milieu (Der Weg im Dunkeln ), which Hochbaum was to produce. This project, too, remained a plan.^[5] Projects like Heinz Rühmann's and Eberhard Klagemann's were of a more opportunistic bent. With their company, Pax, they hoped to start producing again as quickly as possible. The same was true of the former head of production at Terra, Alf

Teichs, who made two or three attempts to reestablish himself. We find him among the founders of Studio 45, Inc. (along with Hans Tost, also a former member of Terra), as a partner in Demo Film, and finally in 1947 collaborating with Rühmann as a founder and member of Comedia Film.

All of these firms were frustrated in their goal of producing feature films—not only because they did not have the necessary capital, but because production was not permitted without an Allied license. And in the summer of 1945, none of the powers issued production licenses. However carefully set up according to commercial laws, or lively and ingenious in their proposed projects, these new companies remained in the end as illusory as the old firms. Their founders, to earn their keep, had to pick up side jobs, which as a rule meant assisting in the dubbing of Allied films into German as authors, announcers, directors, and technicians. Before he could shoot his postwar classic The Murderers Are among Us, Staudte had to do the same, assisting in the dubbing of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible .^[6]

There was a third theater for Berlin's imaginary postwar cinema. The film division of the Kammer der Kunstschaffenden seemed to be even more caught up in illusions about Germany's postwar film industry than the existing and newly founded film companies. Two groups were at work at Schlüterstrasse: those who were already involved in the new firms and saw in the Kammer a welcome source for information and communication; and those who had not yet found a position and now set their hopes on the Kammer's film division. The latter included the head of the division, Wolf von Gordon, a dramaturge at the Terra film studios until 1945. Like the other film people at Schlüterstrasse, he seemed to have in mind making the Kammer into a vehicle for the overhaul, supervision, and management of the entire German film industry. Though not meant to be directly involved in production, the Kammer would select and supervise all of those who wished to be active in film. This is how Gordon presented the situation to Billy Wilder, who served as a film officer in Berlin in the summer of 1945: "The Kammer would check the political reliability of all persons of the film branch, regardless of whether they are technicians or actors, directors or financiers. It would also oversee all film projects, which would of course then be brought before a board of the Allies before being released for production."^[7] Finally, according to these plans, the Kammer would also take over the distribution of German films. Production would shift into the hands of private producers while the means of production remained

in possession of the state—the legal successor to Ufi—from whom the producers could lease, rent, or borrow them as needed. Presumably the film division in the Kammer also wanted to have its say in this restructuring. The plan envisioned (depending on one's political stance) the creation of a giant conglomerate to succeed the Reichsfilmkammer and Ufi, or a democratically supervised and guildlike self-management of film production. It is unknown who else besides Gordon supported this plan and what benefits were hoped for, but such considerations were clearly not restricted to the personal wishes and fantasies of members of the Kammer.

In the summer of 1945, before relations between the Kammer and Winzer's Popular Education department in the Magistrat had cooled, there were similar thoughts there as well. Theodor Baensch, the Magistrat's deputy for film, proposed that the Magistrat assume the Ufi legacy and reorganize it into a city undertaking, entrusting artistic control to the Kammer der Kunstschaffenden.^[8] As there is no more than a draft of the Magistrat's plans, it can be assumed that they were either just personal speculations or abandoned by orders from above. The immediate reason why Gordon's and Baensch's intentions came to nothing was the arrival of the Americans in Berlin. They regarded the film people at Schlüterstrasse at worst as Goebbels's accomplices, at best as fellow travelers and opportunists who were to be treated with utmost suspicion and under no conditions entrusted with the powerful medium of film. And as Schlüterstrasse came under Western control, the Kammer also ceased to be a reliable basis (if it had ever been one) for Winzer. Winzer's and his party's plans for new German film production had to seek another venue.

While Theodor Baensch pursued his plans for the Magistrat's own film company less with the intention of building up new German film production than seizing the resources of the old, a group of functionaries and intellectuals in the leadership of the KPD set about implementing a resolution made in Moscow. In September 1944 the party leadership had decided that new German cinema should become "a means of artistically reflecting real life and creating conditions worthy of man."^[9] Anton Ackermann, the functionary in charge of film affairs, seems to have taken the first decisive steps toward this goal by entrusting the matter to the Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung (ZfV, Central Administration for Popular Education). Set up in August 1945, the ZfV was responsible for the cultural matters of the entire Russian zone, a fore-

runner to the later Popular Education and Culture Ministry of the GDR. It had its seat on Withelmstrasse, in the half-ruined former Prussian Ministry of Culture (which had later become Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry). The ZfV's "Art and Literature" division was ordered to assess the film situation, to draw up a proposal for the conception, organization, and personnel for future film production, and—as soon as this had been done—to transfer matters into the proper expert hands for implementation. Herbert Volkmann, the head of the division, took care of the matter personally.

Unlike his boss in the ZfV, the forty-four-year-old Volkmann was not a party functionary who had ended up in the cultural administration. Of middle-class background, he was a trained sociologist and political scientist, an educated and cultured man with a particular interest in the modern media of photography and film. He had spent the Nazi period in Berlin, for a time as head of the United Press news agency's Berlin office. In 1945 he was one of the few survivors of the Harnack-Schulze-Boysen resistance and espionage group ("Red Chapel"). Immediately after the ZfV was founded, Volkmann concentrated his attention on the film industry, and he quickly brought together a group of six experts. The group was dubbed the Filmaktiv in the ZfV. Its members, in one way or another, had all been involved in the leftist film and theater scene before 1933: the set designers Adolf Fischer (known from his work on Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück ) and Willi Schiller; the assistant director Kurt Maetzig; the actors Adolf Fischer (from the Piscator ensemble and Kuhle Wampe ) and Hans Klering (from several Russian films from the 1930s); and Alfred Lindemann, a blend of actor, organizer, and factotum. As half of the Filmaktiv's members (Schiller, Fischer, and a certain Haacke) remained passive, the group came to consist only of the three active members: Maetzig, Klering, and Lindemann. Kurt Maetzig, whose film career was broken off in 1933 after he had barely begun it as an aspiring young cameraman, was primarily interested in producing and directing his own films. Klering became the nominal boss, his Moscow background foreordaining him to what would become his chief task, acting as a liaison to the party leadership. A reliable party man, he had little entrepreneurial and organizational talent, and the actual management was left to the only remaining member, Alfred Lindemann.

A few simple facts suggest the energy that drove Lindemann. Returning from an American P.O.W. camp, he arrived in Berlin on November

12, 1945. On the 13th he became a member of the Filmaktiv.^[10] Three weeks later the Filmaktiv moved into Ufa's former, half-destroyed administrative building on Krausenstrasse. In four weeks' time there were 60 members, and a month after that 127 people^[11] were involved in producing newsreels and preparing the first feature film (Staudte's The Murderers Are among Us ). The Filmaktiv predated Lindemann's arrival, but only his involvement put it in action and transformed it into the film company Defa. ("In the first few meetings I proposed an immediate initiative, which was accepted and implemented right away")^[12]

Alfred Lindemann was one year Volkmann's junior, and his exact opposite in terms of background, education, and professional development: a blend of adventurer, organizational genius, and braggart, also a communist with a passion and devotion seldom found among functionaries—in short, a kind of postwar version of Willi Münzenberg. Having joined the KPD during the Spartacus Rebellion as a seventeen-year-old, he considered the party a substitute family, without ever having been tempted by—or capable of—entering upon a functionary career. His whole life he remained an outsider who placed his unconventional talents in the service of the party that needed such abilities so greatly yet at the same time so decisively refused and stifled them. In the 1920s, Lindemann got along by taking various jobs in the film industry, as a camera assistant to Joe May, projectionist, lighting technician, and production manager. He acted in the Piscator ensemble and put his great organizational talent to work in Wangenheim's Truppe 1931. He spent part of the Nazi period imprisoned, part as a lighting technician for Ufa. For a short time he was manager of the Theater am Schiffbauer-damm, a position that he apparently used to gather information about the NSDAP for his resistance group, Friends of the Soviet Union.^[13] In the 1930s he organized a series of small-scale embezzlements from Nazi state funds to provide support for needy members of the group, and paid for it with a prison sentence.

The situation in 1945 could not have been more favorable to a nature like Lindemann's. The rapid development of the small Filmaktiv organization into the larger company Defa was due in large part to his talent for organization and improvisation. His later claim of having financed the first phase of the Filmaktiv by selling personal possessions (a camera, a watch, a telephoto lens) revealed an exaggeration typical of the man himself.^[14] At no time was there a lack of money. Funding came in sufficient quantity from the ZfV. Of course in 1945 money alone was

not sufficient to create a production company. Greater management skill was required to push forward with his plans, including procuring materials on the black market not otherwise available. Not an easy undertaking even for private firms, this seemed a sheer impossibility for an enterprise subordinate to the ZfV. Yet Lindemann found ways, very much in his element navigating the gray and black zones of the economy, carrying out what would today be called money-laundering schemes. Film-production materials like wardrobe supplies and technical equipment, additional foodstuffs, and the cigarettes so stimulating to morale were procured through a "Special Account Lindemann" under his control. The salary demands of former Ufa stars were so high that they could not be officially submitted to the ZfV and revenue office. But Linde-mann considered the glitter of big names imperative for Defa productions, and he found a solution in what he called a "system of premiums." In addition to their nominal salaries, big stars received a sum paid in cash. These premiums did not appear on the books, or rather, they turned up under other names as bills that the German revenue authorities never laid eyes on, preferably under the cover of productions commissioned by the Russians. The "winning over of bourgeois film people," which Lindemann later stated was the principal motivation and justification for his premium system,^[15] was not his only goal. His party also profited. For the SED's campaign for the Berlin Magistrat elections in 1946, Defa produced fifty-two films gratis, the costs for which—1,50,000 RM by Lindemann's count—were hidden in other productions—for instance, in a film commissioned by the International Red Cross.^[16]

This management style rested on two prerequisites: first, Lindemann's own ability and eagerness for such balancing acts; and second, the fact that Defa itself represented an adventuresome undertaking. As long as the Filmaktiv remained a subdivision of the ZfV, relations between the two were clear and simple. This changed when it was renamed Defa and became an independent business venture. On May 17, 1946, the company received a Russian license for feature-film production, but it existed legally neither as a joint-stock company (which it pretended to be) nor as a limited-liability company or limited partnership.^[17] Defa did not really exist at all. It was merely a name under which the men who had formed the Filmaktiv now began actual film production, remaining so for the next two years. In November 1947 it was transformed into a joint-stock company, but this was simply a fiction of another order. Defa stocks were not traded on any exchange. Neither its owners nor

the amount of its capital were public knowledge. Defa was not a true joint-stock company but a type of "Soviet joint-stock company" (SAG) not uncommon at the time. What leaked out in the course of the years before it was transformed into an East German state-owned company in the 1950s was never made publicly known: its capital amounted to 10 million reichsmarks, 55 percent in the hands of the Russians, 45 percent in the hands of the (SED) Germans.

Russian interest in the German film industry was there from the very beginning. Only a few days after the capitulation, the state distributor Sojusintorg took control of Berlin's entire film distribution.^[18] When the Filmaktiv came into existence a few months later, its members might not have known what was agreed upon by those who had stood behind this initiative: the production company was to be a joint venture, the capital and supervision Russian, the technical and artistic personnel German.^[19] Presumably differences within the Russian camp caused the long delay in carrying these plans out—that is, differences of opinion between the SMAD, in charge of political and administrative affairs, and the financially oriented state companies Sojusintorg and Sovexport.^[20] The same sureness of instinct guided Lindemann here as it did in his fictitious bookkeeping. He was on such good standing with Tulpanov and other members of the SMAD's information division that colleagues at Defa considered him Tulpanov's protégé.^[21] Perhaps he knew or believed he knew that he had in Tulpanov a potential ally against any excessive economic influence from Sovexport and Sojusintorg on Defa.

Though a communist and Soviet sympathizer, Lindemann undertook actions as the head of Defa that were "patriotic" to the extent this was possible in the circumstances. The sale and distribution of Defa films were in the hands of Sovexport and Sojusintorg, whose monopoly allowed them to dictate prices^[22] and, when films like The Murderers Are among Us and Ebe im Schatten (Marriage in the Shadows) became international successes, keep foreign-currency revenues entirely for themselves. Lindemann applied his unconventional tactics to counteract this situation. Bypassing Sovexport, he contacted an American film representative, apparently hoping for more favorable results through direct negotiation.

In the fall of 1947, Defa offered a model of successful postwar reconstruction. It was the second-largest film production company in Europe (after Mosfilm), commanding over a thousand employees and the use of the Ufa studios in Babelsberg and the Tobis studios in Johannis-thal. Defa produced the first German feature films after the war and

made them into artistic successes. Its management could now broach broader aims with confidence, like moving beyond the restriction of the Russian zone to become a suprazonal national company. Lindemann took the first steps in this direction when he instructed the agent Paul M. Bünger in Munich to persuade key figures of German cinema stranded in southern Germany and the Tirol at the end of the war to return to Berlin.^[23]

The transformation of Defa into a joint-stock company in November 1947 marked both the end of its "wild" phase and of the reign of Linde-mann. No match for the circumstances that had confronted them, his colleagues in management had all too willingly left the direction to him. Now they reproached him for disregarding the principle of collective leadership and making himself the "dictator of Defa."^[24] Lindemann had run-ins with Klering and Maetzig and with Karl-Hans Bergmann, who had later joined the company as a financial adviser. A situation arose in which his talents, his aplomb and ingenuity, and not least of all his charismatic effect on his coworkers were of little use. Obliged to him for so many special rations and cigarettes, the staff remained loyally devoted to him once the rift within management became clear. The SED party cell of Defa also stood behind him, testifying to the party leadership that Lindemann was the "true engine of Defa, enjoying an extraordinary trust from the entire staff and esteemed as a companion and comrade,"^[25] whereas Bergmann was "conscientious ... but too bureaucratic and narrow-minded" and "unpopular" and "related poorly to the staff." (The only comment about Klering was that he was active in the party group.) But it was of no avail. Even to those who had protected him so far Lindemann no longer seemed the person who belonged in the picture. He was relieved of his post in March 1948. Only Volkmann remained by his side, and fell with him. ("Because of their [i.e., Klering and Bergmann's] failure, Lindemann was the man in Defa into whose hands practically all the threads ran together and who did all the work.")^[26]

Half a year later Lindemann was also expelled from the party. The official grounds were mismanagement and embezzling. When a Western newspaper dug up the old story of the "embezzlement" of Nazi state funds,^[27] the party added this to his list of sins as well. The fate of the adventurer and communist Lindemann, who did everything for the party only to find himself repaid in such a manner, distantly echoed the Moscow trials of the 1930s. Lindemann himself described the expulsion from the party in these terms:

I saw it as my principal task to make Defa serve the goals of the party in every way possible, without ever demanding funds for this from the party. I was the one who ... delivered up Defa to the party in the end. I am embittered that the party should now consider me a parasite. Since 1945 I have deferred all personal interests; I built up Defa.... I have utilized all the resources at Defa for important party work. Until recently, 22% of party comrades within Defa were placed in important positions. Through Defa assistance has been offered to many émigrés. Not because I wanted to waste Defa's funds by doing so, but because I saw this as a political and party duty.... I have been in political life for 30 years, was an active fighter and leading functionary in the great strikes in the film industry, was on the industry's blacklist, worked illegally during the Nazi period, was arrested by the Gestapo several times, and despite everything continued working right to the end. In 1945 I immediately placed myself at the disposal of the reconstruction and have allowed myself not a single day off in the past three years. Today I am without livelihood, nor do I possess private means. On the contrary, I am leaving Defa with a debt of 9,000 RM ... I would at least like to request that I be given the opportunity to remain active as a party comrade and be allowed to work for the party on a new footing.^[28]

Hollywood—Berlin

In its moral and pedagogic impulses, American film politics in Berlin was hardly distinguishable from its Russian counterpart: new German cinema was to be the medium of reeducation. However, the victors parted ways over the appropriate business structure for the film industry. A new version of the state-run Ufi was out of the question, likewise all other forms of centralization or conglomeration. The Americans wanted to see film production in the hands of Germans, operating on a basis of private capital as broadly distributed as possible. This stance explains the sympathy that several American cultural officers, despite their fundamental political mistrust, showed toward the Kammer for Wolf von Gordon's plans to place all of Ufi's production assets and facilities in trust and rent out the facilities as needed to individual producers. Like editors and publishers in the press and publishing industries, film producers would be selected by Information Control on the basis of their political past and the suitability of their projects for the official goal of reeducation.

So much for the general course set for the control officers of the "Film-Theater-Music" department of Information Control in the summer of 1945. However, unlike in the press and publishing industries, where this plan could be implemented without great interruption or

impediment, there were considerable delays in the film division. Washington's plans were one thing, the interests of the American film industry another. The scale and shape of the conflicts and confrontations that resulted—given Hollywood's economic influence and power of intimidation—were worthy of an adventure or spy film.

Slightly simplified, Hollywood's attitude at the end of World War II can be summarized in one sentence: war had been waged to win back the European film market. Acting on this belief, the eight largest film companies formed a kind of cartel in the summer of 1945. The Motion Picture Export Association (MPEA) was supposed to coordinate exports and, in particular, prevent the thousands of American films that had amassed during the years of exclusion from the European market from ruining the industry in a wild competition with one another and leading to the collapse of the market only just regained. Prudent self-control and self-imposed quotas would guarantee the American film industry an orderly return to its previous status in Europe. In early 1946 there were MPEA offices in all of the European capitals considered important, including Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and Sofia.

This strategy assigned the most important European market, Germany, particular significance, not only because the defeated enemy was lying at the American industry's feet, but also because the German film industry had been Hollywood's most prominent and dangerous competitor in the prewar international market. The opportunity seemed favorable not only for winning back the Americans' old share of the market (or perhaps gaining a larger one), but also once and for all of getting rid of the German competition. Visions of a cinematic Morgenthau plan occupied Hollywood moguls like Jack Warner, who stated plainly in August 1945, "If it is true as Field Marshall Montgomery stated that 'He who controls the cinema, controls Germany,' and if it is true, as others have stated that 'films are as strong as bullets,' and if the Allies will not permit Germans to rebuild the munitions industry, they should not be permitted for any reason, even if temporary, to rebuild a motion picture industry."^[29] When the American military government invited the heads of the big studios, including Jack Warner, on an informational trip to Germany in June 1945, they all had reason to be optimistic. Hollywood was already in Washington's good graces because of its exemplary support of the war effort through numerous films made to boost morale. And now further help was requested in the form of American feature films the military government could show to the German public in their zone of occupation. It was not a very lucrative business proposition for

Hollywood. Revenues in Germany could not be exchanged into dollars and pocketed as actual profit. On the other hand, there existed the possibility of investing these revenues within Germany, into the German film industry, and thereby establishing a foothold and perhaps ultimately gaining control over the German industry. The stumbling block here was that American investment in Germany was not yet officially permitted; but this might change, if necessary by applying gentle pressure, like cutting off the supply of feature films to the American zone so important to OMGUS. At any rate, the result of the visit to Germany looked promising for the MPEA-member studios, and literally drew them into the military government: the MPEA representative in Berlin received an office in the building of the division of Information Control responsible for film, theater, and music. He was treated as an associated member of this department and, as the representative of the owners of the films shown to Germans by OMGUS, worked closely with it.

However, none of this meant a revision of the original American decision to have the new German production of feature films built up by Germans. The cultural officers in charge deliberated on which American experts could be pulled in to guide and supervise this build-up phase. Yet they were unable to escape entirely the lure that the tabula rasa of German cinema exerted on foreign film interests. They showed a strong inclination to dedicate themselves in equal measure to discharging their official duties and pursuing their own projects. Germans alert to such tendencies, like Munich's municipal film delegate in the city's studios in Geiselgasteig, saw clear signs of this: "The Americans do not proceed according to official and prescribed channels, their private interests are right in the foreground. They are for the most part American officers and soldiers who were insignificant in American cinema and unable to obtain important positions there, and now, because of their power with the occupation authorities, are trying to lord it over German cinema and bring it under their wings."^[30] There is no evidence of such practices in Berlin, which was perhaps due to the fact that the incentive here was slight: the big studios were not in the American sector. But even here some officers found more appeal in forging their own film plans than pushing along the official plans for German production all too vigorously. Billy Wilder, who back home had just had a great success with The Lost Weekend, was certainly not one of those Americans "insignificant" back in Hollywood and therefore hoping for success on the German side-stage. Arriving in Berlin that summer as an American film officer, Wilder found the atmosphere there simply too seductive a cine-

matic cache to go unused. ("I saw a crazed, ruined and starving city, fascinating for the back drop of a film. My notebooks are full of fresh impressions.")^[31] He wrote the treatment for a feature film ("the very simple story of a GI stationed here with the occupation troops and a young German woman") and counted on the approval of his superiors in OMGUS to carry though the project as a Paramount production. Perhaps nothing came of this because the other Hollywood studios protested against giving preference to one of their own. (Wilder's Berlin comedy A Foreign Affair came out only three years later.)

The example of Billy Wilder shows how difficult it was to draw a clear dividing line between personal advantage and artistic interest. Given OMGUS's interest in good entertainment films with a reeducational function (the phrase Wilder used was "propaganda though entertainment") and the Americans' conviction that such films would be made better by Americans than Germans, film projects like Wilder's (or Preston Sturges's plan for a Berlin film)^[32] seem less a deviation from the official policy of reestablishing German film production than a variation of, or perhaps a propaedeutic to, new German cinema. If the goal was to have American experts educate future German producers, exemplary American-produced films could be seen as a part of the new German film production, which would then build on and follow them. OMGUS's objectives were motivated by aesthetic and moral, not commercial, concerns, but in all else they differed very little from Hollywood's plans. Both shared the conviction that the methods and achievements of American cinema were precisely what the Germans needed.

What explained the wavering course of American film policy in the first year after the war? The fact that it took into consideration so many possibilities and acted on none, that it did not distinguish clearly between German films for Germans, American films for Germans, and American films for the world market that would also be shown in Germany, and finally the fact that nothing concrete was accomplished in this year—was this all the result, as contemporary observers and historians later believed, of the Americans' distrust of the Germans, whom they wanted to deny the use of film for as long as possible? Or was there something different behind this behavior?

A shared awareness of belonging to the world-power American cinema drew together the OMGUS officers in charge of film and the American film industry. The MPEA was acutely aware of its economic advantage ("The most important advantage enjoyed by American motion pictures in the world market is the simple fact that people everywhere

like them"),^[33] and the American film officers acted on this assumption with the sovereign indolence of one who knows that his incontestable superiority requires no displays of proof. The Americans took the Film-aktiv's activities in the fall of 1945 no more seriously than an English industrialist in the early 1800s would have regarded the competition of a Prussian manufacturer: "We should not be worried about the Russians' film activities.... time is the factor we have on our side. We have a lot of time, at least ten years."^[34] This reassuring statement made by the American film officer Robert Joseph on December 8, 1945, in his weekly report reflected less the actual situation than an attempt to justify the indolence, aimlessness, and inactivity of the film policy until that point. By December 1945 it must have been evident to every OMGUS officer that a serious film enterprise was developing on the other side. A few weeks earlier the Filmaktiv had introduced itself to the public with a reception that attracted general attention and was attended by numerous figures prominent in the Berlin cinema. As anyone could figure out who knew that all the important film production sites lay in the Russian sector and in the Russian zone around Berlin, this was no empty demonstration on the Russians' part.

But Joseph's report reveals in itself how little he himself believed in the decade at the disposal of the Americans to reconstruct the German motion-picture industry. The report states that Information Control urgently required an expert from the States "to get the matter in hand and underway." The job description, listing the requirements for this position, suggests an increased urgency: "Born in Germany, speaks German like a native; has a precise knowledge of the German film industry and the persons active in it up to at least 1937 or 1939. First-hand knowledge of all stages of film production, preferably a recognized producer or director from Hollywood."^[35] An attached list of "suitable candidates" included Henry Blanke, Curtis Bernhardt, Erich Pommer, William Dieterle, E. A. Dupont, John Brahm, and Seymour Nebenzahl.

Joseph's report suggests either a miscommunication within Informational Control or that an already concluded search was presented as still open. For, three months earlier, in September, one of the candidates named on the list had already received—and answered affirmatively—an inquiry from the head of the film department as to whether he was prepared to head up new German film production in the American zone.^[36] Information Control's effort to present as still open the decision already made had to do with the candidate selected. It was thought advisable to defer announcing the name for as long as possible.

The name was Erich Pommer. He had had great repute in the German film industry and cinematic art from 1918 to 1933. Pommer's leadership as a producer at Ufa generated films that have since become legendary: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Der müde Tod (Destiny), Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), Metropolis, Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungs), The Blue Angel —to name only the most popular. If an industrial and collective artistic form like film can be reduced to one person, then Erich Pommer had been the person above all responsible for the quality of German cinema in this period. With matchless skill he brought together talents—for the most part already "discovered "—into the combinations whose creative concentration proved their success. His talent for production was in pulling together "the true export item of the German cinema in these years: manuscript, lighting, design, actors, sets" (Wolfgang Jacobsen)^[37] into the totality (or in Hollywood's terms, the package) that brought worldwide admiration to German cinema. His creative and organizational talent was complemented by a "political" prowess regarding the international position of German film. As the head of production for Ufa, the largest film company in Europe, he attempted to challenge American domination of the world film market, or at least provide competition for the U.S. market on its own soil. In retrospect, his strategy in the 1920s seems like a carefully thought-out plan not unworthy of Dr. Mabuse. Developing the German trademark product, the "chamber film," was the first step. Then, building on this success, the move into the American domain of elaborate, large-scale productions was to follow. The production costs of Metropolis, Die Nibelungen, and Der Kongress tanzt (The Congress Dances ) surpassed by far the typical budget for previous European films. The attempt failed. "American moviegoers were not interested in a Pan-Germanic epic like The Nibelungs ."^[38] Ufa's unsuccessful expansionist policies brought the company to the edge of bankruptcy, from which only several million dollars from the American film industry saved it. Cosmetically packaged into the Parufamet joint-distribution agreement of 1925, Ufa itself now guaranteed its American competitors a share of the German film market greater than before.^[39]

Hence there was already a history to Pommer's relationship to Hollywood when he emigrated to America in 1939 and settled down in Los Angeles. Even the fact that he had spent his first six years of emigration in Paris and London showed his reluctance toward California. This was unusual, since many of his former colleagues had settled there and begun careers that surpassed anything they had achieved in Berlin. If

Pommer's hesitation stemmed from a fear that the American nemesis would persecute him again on its own soil, he was not entirely wrong. In his best years in Berlin, he had produced twenty films a year. Even in the final year before his emigration, despite all impediments, he made six films, and in the six years of his European exile he brought out eight. For the whole length of his emigration in Hollywood, he produced only three films, working for the RKO company.^[40] When he suffered a heart attack in 1941, RKO dismissed him. At age fifty-two, Pommer was unemployed, in forced early retirement, and suffering—if not materially, at least psychically—from Hollywood's disinterest. His numerous friends and colleagues from the Berlin years were his only contacts. This circle also included Billy Wilder, who had worked under Pommer in Berlin as a screenwriter (for Ein Mann sucht seinen Mörder [A Man in Search of His Murderer ]). Apparently Wilder suggested Pommer for the Berlin post of OMGUS's film deputy.^[41]

The Berlin offer was a kind of consolation prize for Pommer, or as his wife, Gertrud, stated, "a great satisfaction ... after the Louis B. Mayers and the Darryl Zanucks turned him down. Still, he would refuse to go if something better were available here in the near future. Unfortunately this is not the case."^[42] At first it seemed that even the few illusions Pommer allowed himself when he accepted the offer in September 1945 were unfounded. The whole matter came to a standstill before it really got started. For weeks he heard nothing; then he was informed that "for a variety of reasons" further delays were to be anticipated.^[43] Pommer thought he recognized behind this the resistance of the American film industry toward plans for rebuilding German film production.^[44] When General McClure, the head of Information Control in Germany, returned to the States in October to discuss function and prerequisites required of OMGUS's future film officer with government officials and representatives of the film industry, Pommer assumed that McClure "got the works from the representatives of the industry."^[45] Although there is no documented evidence of this, the subsequent progress—or rather, the standstill—of the affair suggests that Pommer's suspicions were not entirely unfounded. The matter viewed as so urgent in September 1945 did not budge for half a year, only to be decided all at once in Pommer's favor and against Hollywood's interests within a matter of weeks the following spring. In this six-month period the Filmaktiv had developed into a serious film enterprise. Staudte began shooting The Murderers Are among Us, and Paul M. Bünger began working for Defa in Munich. Lindemann looked increasingly worthy of compari-

son with classical founding figures and pioneers like Pommer. The situation required quick action and counteraction. Commercial interests, however influential they may have been under normal conditions, had to take the backseat to the general political and diplomatic task. The American military government's judgment of how critical the situation was is evident in the catalog of duties for the film officer (his official title was Film Production Control Officer) given to Pommer in April 1946. It reads as though in a moment of crisis the Roman senate had appointed a dictator for the film industry. Pommer's duties and powers were listed as follows:

1. Advises the Director of Information Control in connection with the policy to be followed for the reconstruction of the German motion picture industry.

2. Drafts policy for the guidance of the German motion picture producers, German motion picture studios and all others concerned with the production of motion pictures.

3. Advises the Director of Information Control on policy to be followed in the Quadripartite discussions involving German motion picture production.

4. Screens and guides directly those Germans who intend to become motion picture producers.

5. Supervises directly all activities in the Information Control Division of the various Länder of the US-Zone, pertaining to motion picture production....

6. Fully responsible for approval of all shooting scripts to be produced.

7. Fully responsible for policy supervision of motion picture production.

8. Fully responsible for censoring new productions.

9. Fully responsible for policy supervision of studio operations.

10. Supervises all financial arrangements made by motion picture producers, film studios and film distributors....

11. Fully responsible for approval of all major contracts made by motion picture producers, film studios, etc.

12. Directly responsible for supervision of new productions to insure that only acceptable actors, directors, etc., are employed and that new productions conform with the desires of the Military Government.^[46]

Pommer arrived in Germany in early July 1946. His impression that this was celebrated in German film circles "like the coming of the Messiah"^[47] was not exaggerated. Given the advanced progress in the Russian zone and noticeable first steps in the English zone, both the French

and American zones were trailing behind. "German film experts," commented Erich Kästner on Pommer's arrival, "above all in the American zone, looked to him as sailors look to the polestar. Directors and lighting technicians, stagehands and actors, set designers and divas, sound men and screenwriters, cinematographers, and makeup artists—an entire, huge, lamed industry has been waiting for this man and this name."^[48] Pommer's return was for the German film world what Thomas Mann's return would have been for the literary world. Even those who opposed him soon began to feel the consequences of his presence. On September 7, Paul M. Münger reported from Munich to the Defa central office in Berlin: "After the much discussed buildup of Pommer production in the press here, film people have become somewhat more reserved toward us." Some of them, including Erich Kästner, who shortly before had listened with interest to offers from Berlin, now politely declined.^[49]

Even before Pommer's arrival, Germans in the film industry in the Russian and American zones used the vigilance and apparent progress of the other side as an argument to win more support for their own efforts from their respective occupying power. This mode of argumentation now became a component of the rhetoric on both sides, as though there existed some kind of secret accord between them. Pommer also availed himself of this argument regularly and with success. "They build a powerful industry along the lines of the old Ufa," he wrote in his report about Defa. "If the zonal boundaries are ever dropped, they will be in a perfect position to absorb the weak, decentralized industry in the US Zone. The final result may well be a Russian-dominated industry. "^[50] The analogous argument came from Alfred Lindemann, who wrote to Dymschitz to request more support for Defa, pointing to "the most important event of recent days, the appearance of Erich Pommer.... If we cannot hold our lead now, there is a danger that film production capacities will go over to the Americans." Even if the authenticity of this letter is doubtful,^[51] its logic is authentic. Deploying the enemy as an argument in order to win more support from one's own leadership did not preclude personally good relations between the opponents. As Kurt Maetzig recalls, Pommer had "no aversion to us and was happy to be seen as a guest at the premiere of the first Defa feature film, The Murderers Are among US ."^[52]

Two rooms in a villa in Dahlem made up Pommer's residence in Berlin. Among the Allied cultural officers, he was probably the only one to employ a personal servant, or rather reemploy one, for Bruno Pahlow

had worked in his villa on Winklerstrasse in Grunewald prior to 1933. Pahlow prepared dinner parties for Pommer and his old colleagues and friends—including Hans Tost, Günther Rittau, Robert Herlt, and Fritz Thiery—who soon afforded him a better understanding of those who had remained in Germany. Pommer quickly recovered his old friendly relationship from the pre-Nazi period with Eberhard Klagemann, whom he initially considered an opportunist and treated coolly.^[53] Less empathetic émigrés like William Dieterle and his wife, who visited Pommer in Berlin in the fall of 1946, took offense at this and circulated rumors that Pommer wanted to remain in Germany after his official duties ended to begin his own film production. Gertrud Pommer saw reason to bid her husband to be cautious in all statements to third parties: "How easy it is to be misunderstood by people and how careful one has to be not to be misinterpreted!"^[54]

The plans for the new German motion-picture industry Pommer presented at several press conferences after his arrival recalled in a clear, unambiguous, and express manner the period of his former prominence. Like German cinema after 1918, postwar German cinema would be defined by the "rich tradition of poverty and ingenuity." Hence a renunciation of everything that was economically unfeasible and better left to American and French cinema anyway: "No pompous stage magic. No offerings to the masses. No cinematic luxury. No stardom. Instead a focus on artistic ingenuity. The undistorted image of people in our time.... The reality of our ruins is dearer to us than a film castle on the moon ... the fate of a single, helpless veteran caught between nothing and starting over again is dearer to us than the cinematic deployment of every revolutionary summons to arms. Our refugees, our bombed-out population, the future of our youth—these are themes in plenty."^[55] In addition to post-1918 German cinema, the Italian postwar film à la Rossellini was evidently the second model toward which Pommer wanted to direct new German production. In concrete terms, this meant that he had to select and grant licenses to German producers and directors who shared these ideas and were capable of realizing them. This soon proved to be the problem. While Rossellini, collaborating with Defa in Berlin, was shooting another of his neorealistic contemporary films of postwar Europe (Germany Year Zero ), Pommer licensed producers and directors in the Ufa tradition: Eberhard Klagemann and Karl-Heinz Stroux in Berlin, von Baky, Thiery, and Harald Braun in Munich—men as unlikely to serve up the gritty realism of the rubble-filled streets in the "rich tradition of poverty and ingenuity" as David

O. Selznick might a documentary social critique. Those familiar with Pommer's work were not surprised by this move. For at the bottom of his heart, the greatest German producer of the interwar period was a studio producer. Concentrating production in Munich, where the large and intact studio facilities of the former Bavaria film company in Geiselgasteig were available, was a clear sign of this. Had Pommer seriously tried to realize his plans for realistic and contemporary low-budget films, Berlin, despite its comparatively modest studio facilities in Tempelhof, would have been the more appropriate site for production. As Staudte's and Lamprecht's films at Defa demonstrated convincingly, Berlin offered an on-site location like no other for visualizing the German present.

Apparently Pommer no longer fit into the Berlin Of 1946 as he had during the period from 1918 to 1933. His failure to appreciate The Murderers Are among US^{[ 56]} shows that he in fact did not recognize an aesthetic of "Poverty and ingenuity" when he encountered it. Perhaps his tragedy was geographical; he was responsible for building up new film production in the part of Germany whose most important film studios lay in the provinces, and not in the ruin-filled metropolis. Would Pommer have been better able to draw on—not to mention continue—his work from the interwar period if Berlin-Mitte and the studio city of Babelsberg had been his domain? Did he become, like so many other returning exiled urban intellectuals of Weimar culture, a victim of Germany's postwar provincialization?

The American film industry remained remarkably calm during Pommer's first six months of activity in Germany. In the fall and winter of 1946, a series of articles appeared in the film press containing astonishing statements. Pommer was reportedly working in Germany "with a long-range view of building politically-important friendliness toward this country [i.e., the United States] and opening up a tremendous new market for American films."^[57] "Pommer has laid the ground work for acceptance and appreciation of US films by the Germans."^[58] "Pommer expected to represent US interests."^[59] Given that Pommer's actual task was well known in the film industry's press, the reasoning behind this media policy was curious. Was it perhaps Hollywood's attempt to now win over and entreat the man whose appointment it had been unable to prevent?

If this was the strategy, it was abandoned as soon as it became clear that such expectations would not be fulfilled. This moment came in De-

cember 1946 when Pommer issued the first licenses to German producers. Hollywood's reaction was swift. Through their spokesman Irving Maas, the MPEA went public in January 1947, declaring that American film policy in Germany had taken a fundamentally wrong course. The New York Times reported on January 18 that in the MPEA's opinion, the German film industry "was being revived too quickly and on too broad a scale." Its reconstruction should have taken place more slowly, or better yet, not at all, for the Germans were better off being "fed heavy doses of all pictures except those of their own making."

In Berlin these statements were regarded by the military government for what they were—the attack of a private interest group against a government policy it disagreed with—and expressly repelled. The event was regarded as important enough to send a statement to Washington signed by both the head of Information Control, General McClure, and the head of the military government, General Clay.^[60] At the same time the MPEA representative in Berlin was instructed that, if he favored further profitable collaboration with OMGUS's film division, he had better make sure that attacks like Maas's did not occur in the future.

The MPEA representative, we recall, had his office under the same roof as Pommer's film division and worked closely with it as a "special consultant." He served as a liaison between the MPEA and OMGUS in organizing the distribution of American films in Germany. In January 1947 distribution was still entirely in the hands of OMGUS, and the MPEA made attempts to transfer it to their own management as soon as possible. The MPEA representative, who had only recently taken up his post, on January 1, 1947, was named Robert E. Vining. Pommer took him aside in several "private discussions" (as he reported home) and presumed "that he [Vining] has now understood the situation as it really is. At any rate, he has assured me that he will deliver the most vigorous reports to the industry with the intention of preventing future attacks."^[61] He could not suspect that the man who to him seemed so understanding would merely add fuel to the fire. Eight days before Pommer wrote this to his family, Vining had sent his boss in New York the protocol of an alleged conversation with Pommer—or rather less a conversation than Vining's four-page account of Pommer's presumed monologue. It read:

Dear Mr. Maas,

I arrived in Berlin one month ago today. Without comment, I want to record to you the exact conversation I had with Eric Pommer, when at his repeated

request I went to lunch with him in the Truman Hall on Saturday, February 1, just prior to my departure for Wiesbaden. I am sorry not to have been able to get this off to you sooner, but after making notes of Pommer's statements I just had time to catch the train. Here they are and verbatim:

I [Pommer] have observed you closely and I think the time has come for me to talk to you very frankly. You seem to consider only the American point of view, whereas I try to see both the German and the American viewpoints. After all, I am German born and bred and I am only over here because of sentimental reasons. Pommer was the German motion picture business once and Pommer is again. Pommer wants to see the German film business back in its former position. Here are 60,000,000 people of the highest culture and attainments located in the very heart of Europe. Do you and Hollywood want to see these millions of good Germans live in a vacuum? As Germany goes in the next ten years, so will all of Europe, and how stupid the American industry has been about me. When I arrived back here in Germany on July 4, 1946, I was suspected as being a spy for Hollywood. They would not come to my secret meetings, they would not tell me so little because they suspected me. Then Zanuck and the others began to blast me in America, and nothing could have helped me more as every time someone of Hollywood said anything about or against Pommer all my old German friends flocked to me in droves. I only get in really good licks at night when all of the important men of the German business come to my house and we talk business sometimes until two and after. Not only Germans come, I have the decartelization boys, the economic boys [from OMGUS], other key people of OMGUS come to dinner. And let me tell you frankly your real enemies are these boys because I have convinced them that in rebuilding the German industry I can get them millions in export credits. They had overlooked the film business until I came.

I am not a young man any more and this is taking a lot out of me, but I loved the German film business and I want to see it back on its feet once more. I am 57 and am only getting ten thousand and working like a dog. I did not ask to come here, they pleaded with me to come. My contract is up in the early summer and I may not even be able to go back to Hollywood, without being pointed out as a traitor. Do you seriously believe I am not a friend of the American industry? My only child is a son, who is working in Hollywood, happy with the American film business. My wife is living on the coast. I am not saying I will not return to live in Germany because no man knows his future....

I built up the German industry once and I would like to do it again because if I don't the Russians will take what should be German markets away. Doesn't Hollywood recognize this fact? At my secret meetings I hear all my old friends have to say and let me tell you this for your own good, if there is one thing they are united on it is a determination that the old days and conditions when Ike Blumenthal, Al Aronson and all the rest of the boys rode roughshod over this German market are gone forever, they will never come back, even if I have to lick them again as I did once. I am a famous producer, but production is not what I really enjoy it is getting into foreign markets. I

was the Ufa man who was continuously on the road. It was Pommer who was always in London, in Paris, in Prague and all over the Continent. I was smart because I only allowed three, four, five, six of Ufa's best pictures to go out of Germany annually, the ones I knew would be box office abroad. Look what my Blue Angel did in addition to sending Marlene to Hollywood. And I am now grooming another girl [Hildegard Knef] Hollywood is going to want to grab.... Every day I get mail from Turkey, from Egypt, from all over South America, from Mexico, yes, and from the USA, asking me for German product. I've got the German film business right in my pocket, and there it is going to remain. The Near and Middle east will become a wonderful market for German pictures, this is the game I like to play. All my friends in Hollywood, who were forced to flee Germany, write me asking how much money I need. My former German friends now in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and all over America write and beg me to allow them to invest money in my new German productions....

I am a well hated man. Hollywood hates me because they fear the competition of my German pictures. The Russians hate me because I am beating them at their own game, and they know I am keeping the best directors, producers and technicians here in the American zone. The British hate me because they know I have absolute control of all studio facilities.... Berlin is going to be the new center of the new Europe. And Pommer would enjoy being the foreign sales manager for German product....

What right has Zanuck to say things against me and against German films? He's just a Nebraska boy and he certainly doesn't have a world outlook. I have great respect for Zanuck and wish I had been half as successful in Hollywood, but when it comes to German productions, past, present or future he talks through his hat. I watch over the dubbing of Hollywood features like a mother with a baby.... Where would Hollywood be without Pommer supervising the dubbing for Germany. Every dubbed picture I put through is competition for German films and it means building up not only box office but star values. Yet they point the finger of scorn at Pommer and say he is an enemy.... I tried to protect Hollywood until I found I was attacked, now Hollywood can protect itself and I'm not going to stick my neck out any more. I am going to tell you what is my conviction—the American industry has dug its own grave in Germany by its stupid and repeated mistakes. MPEA has even gone to the State Dept. to have me removed from Germany.

I realize that there are those, yourself included, who look with suspicion on my boys like Nilson, Hirsch, Van Eyke [i.e., Van Eyck], and Carl Winston [Pommer's colleagues in the OMGUS film division], and feel they will eventually have big jobs in the German industry. Hirsch and Nilson are just simple boys, Van Eyck is an actor, and Carl Winston is just an old idealist. I am not saying I would not like to have some smart Americans associated in the German film business whether or not they were ever identified with Military Government.... Now Hollywood wants to say to Pommer, you can't have Nilson, you can't have Hirsch because they were in Germany as Military Government officers. The pot is calling the kettle black.

Now comes Irving Maas who blasts me in the New York Times. I just don't understand it as I personally took Irving out to the studios here in Berlin, showed him everything and told him exactly what we were doing.... I know every move the industry is making against me and I'm telling you frankly this business of Hollywood constantly blasting away at Pommer has got to stop.... I'm damned by everyone and getting no thanks from Military Government for the job I'm trying to do.... And you will be a failure here in Germany if you don't stop looking for the ghosts under the bed.^[62]

This report, which soon became publicly known, was to play an important role in the disputes between the MPEA and OMGUS. In many ways it is puzzling. The original apparently no longer exists. The only existing copy is in the Erich Pommer Archive in the Manuscript Department of the University of South California in Los Angeles.^[63] Erich Pommer himself called the statements attributed to him "sheer fakery" and "a series of misquotations and malicious lies."^[64] His son John considers them "totally fictitious and concocted by Vining," and in a language unlike his father's: "I have never seen or heard my father talk about himself as 'Pommer' or call industry executives 'the boys.'"^[65] Erich Pommer never would have made any mention of the name Vining, and certainly not as someone with whom he had had an intimate talk. ("it is beyond belief that my father would repeatedly request a luncheon with Vining. It probably was the other way round.")^[66] Two of Pommer's colleagues in Berlin at the time, Kurt Hirsch and Eric Pleskow, confirm this. In Pommer's private and official correspondence from the years 1946–47, there is no trace of the slang that dominates Vining's protocol. Pommer spoke and wrote an émigré's awkward English. In all of his statements, as in the testimony of others about him, he appears as a person who behaved loyally to his new homeland and correctly carried out in letter and spirit the policy of the American military government in Germany.

Who, then, was the man who put these words in his mouth? No more is known about Vining than appeared in a brief obituary notice in the New York Times after his early death (at age forty-eight) in October 1949. He was born in Massachusetts in 1901; worked for several years as a journalist; took on several public-relations jobs, including one for Eleanor Roosevelt during the war; entered active duty in the Marines in 1941; built up the South Pacific division of Psychological Warfare under General MacArthur in 1943; and from 1946 to 1948 was Eric Johnston's assistant in the MPAA and MPEA. Vining died "after a brief

illness" in October 1949 in Palo Alto, California, where he had accepted another P.R. job. Though not improbable, it is no longer certain whether his departure from the MPEA was the result of the stir around his report on Pommer. Presumably a man who had once worked for Eleanor Roosevelt (her correspondence, however, offers no mention of him) had certain professional and moral standards. It is astonishing that he would call "verbatim" the words of a meeting that he could not possibly have recorded on tape. His report was at most a recollection of Pommer's statements. Were they—however much Vining distorted them—a true expression of Pommer's thought?

Consider Gertrud Pommer's warning that her husband be on his guard when talking to outsiders and not make statements that could be misunderstood. Coming from his wife, who knew well his tendency to pronounce his opinions spontaneously and make momentary exaggerations, this warning might have been a plea for reservation. Someone who did not know Pommer and bore him ill will had a relatively easy game of provoking the harmless statements Pommer made in annoyance or self-confidence. And as letters to his family show, Pommer did not exactly hold back from such pronouncements. "It looks as if the American film industry will need my good will and help much earlier than I ever expected" (July 29, 1946). "Everyone here from General McClure on down places decisive weight on my opinion." "Overnight my stature with the film industry has soared to an astounding degree. All speeches are made exclusively for my benefit" (August 10, 1946). Taken out of context and maliciously edited, such statements could easily produce the blather in Vining's report. And what Pommer's alleged monologue contained was not entirely false. Given the history of his relationship with Hollywood and Pommer's frequently aired sentiments on this subject, it is possible that with all his distorting malice, Vining had put into words Pommer's unconscious thoughts.

Whatever the truth content of the protocol, its explosive power was obvious. The time bomb ticking beneath Pommer's chair was triggered when OMGUS announced its decision not only to build up German film production but also to release for export German productions from the years 1933–45 and use the profits to finance film stock. The decision was purely economic, made by financial advisers from the now collaborating American and English zones. Neither Pommer nor the film division of Information Control were consulted, and both, as it later

proved, opposed the plan.^[67] The films scheduled for export were the apolitical entertainment films which had made up the larger part of the productions during the Third Reich.

There could not have been a better occasion for the MPEA to once again strike out against American film policy in Germany, and this time the industry was not representing its own interests and could count on popular support. Leading representatives in Hollywood turned in enflamed protest to Washington and appealed to the public. In their opinion, allowing films produced in Nazi Germany—that is, Nazi films—to flood the global motion-picture market and even appear in American theaters practically amounted to a postwar propaganda victory for the Nazis. The plan for export, they said, "foreshadows an early restoration of the German propaganda machine and constitutes a threat of the first magnitude, politically, socially and economically."^[68] Unlike previous attacks, this was no longer a head-on attack against OMGUS, but an attack against its representative, Erich Pommer. ("The whole film production and export program was worked out by the control authorities in Berlin apparently under Eric Pommer's guidance.") The Vining protocol was now pressed into service. The pithiest passages appeared in the press and very quickly transformed Pommer's image. The Jewish émigré and victim of National Socialism was turned into a power-hungry Teutonic monster, like a figure from one of Pommer's own movies from the 1920s, who had set about continuing and completing Nazi conquest policies with the help of unsuspecting American officials. Articles concerning the "Pommer case" bore the titles "Secret Anglo-US Plan to Re-Establish Reich Film Industry Bared" and "'Germany Film Industry Is in My Pocket' Says Pommer."^[69]

However, even this campaign, launched with cinematic melodrama, ended anticlimactically. OMGUS decided that Vining's protocol was a fiction and stood behind Pommer. Under the guidance of the acting Secretary of War Petersen in Washington, an agreement was reached between OMGUS and the MPEA in the summer of 1947. The American military government would forgo the export of German films, and the MPEA promised not to interfere with American film policy in Germany in the future. The man who now spoke for Hollywood made a guarantee that this promise would be kept. Eric Johnston, president of the umbrella organization MPAA, was judged even by Pommer to be a person who saw things not only "from the perspective of a 'high pressure salesman' but has the vision to give consideration to the political conditions as they really exist."^[70] Johnston was the kind of business-

man who behaved in accordance with the political leadership, voluntarily renouncing short-term gains in order to better attain long-term goals. He later came up with the motto Partnership Capitalism, which marshaled the American economy into the politics of the Cold War. Johnston corresponded so precisely to the new exigencies of the emerging East-West conflict, it seems astonishing that a campaign against OMGUS and Pommer could ever have occurred during his tenure at MPAA/MPEA.

From the summer of 1947 onward, Hollywood recovered the harmony with government policies it had enjoyed during World War II. A new opponent had been defined—the East—and a new task entrusted to the film world: to lead the charge in this global dispute through its worldwide medium. The remains of the antagonism with Germany were pushed aside. Hollywood declared itself ready to renounce its grand postwar plans by accepting Germany—that is, the part of it that now belonged to the free world—into Partnership Capitalism. "I believe," Johnston announced in Berlin on August 6, 1947, "that the German film industry must be set on its feet again and the Germans should re-emerge as fellow rivals on the motion picture world market."^[71] The use of the friendly term "fellow rivals" in place of "competitors" signaled the changed relationship between the old victors and losers as new allies against a common enemy. Erich Pommer's demonization in the spring of 1947 embodied this transition. For a final time Hollywood had pulled out all the stops of the anti-Nazi propaganda of the past. From now on it would direct all of its power and skill of demonization at the new global enemy.