Alles Leben ist Kampf (1937)

Directed by

Herbert Gerdes

Genre

silent film, propaganda film

Country

Germany

Runtime

27 min

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This Nazi propaganda film uses footage and narration to argue for forced sterilization of disabled people and encourage healthy Germans to have more children. It presents disabled people as a threat to the nation's future under the 1933 eugenics law.

politicaleducationalpropagandisticbleakclinicaldidacticfactualcold

What happens

Alles Leben ist Kampf (English: All Life is Struggle) is a Nazi propaganda film produced in 1937, directed by Herbert Gerdes, and Werner Hüttig. This film is about disabled people and the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, passed to stop disabilities affecting subsequent generations through forced sterilization. At the same time, it called for hereditarily healthy Germans to reproduce so as to prevent their people from becoming extinct. It was one of six propagandistic movies produced by the NSDAP, the Reichsleitung, Rassenpolitisches Amt or the Office of Racial Policy from 1935–1937 to demonize people in Germany diagnosed with mental illness and mental retardation. This movie is along the same lines as Erbkrank (1936) which was similarly directed by Herbert Gerdes. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Victims of the Past (1937)
• The Inheritance (1935)
• Dasein ohne Leben (1941)
• Erbkrank (1935)
• Festliches Nürnberg (1937)
• Blut und Boden - Grundlagen zum neuen Reich (1933)
• An Enemy of the People (1937)
• Patriots (1937)