These two films illustrate – with quite drastic footage, you are warned – what the Allied powers thought of Germany immediately after the end of World War II. They did see, correctly in my view, a continuity of German militarism and aggression from Prussia to the German Empire to the Third Reich.
What changed so quickly after 1945?
The Cold War.
If it hadn’t been for the division of Europe, these two films and not the Marshall Plan might well have set the tone for the future treatment of Germany by the rest of the world, for decades to come.
The Happy Hermit 
Thanks for those links.
What I found amazing was that in ennumerating all the atrocities committed by the Nazis, and spelling out all the victims, the word “Jew” was mentioned only once, in the second video. Was that intentional?
That was also something that made me wonder. The films several times speak of the “burning of churches” instead of synagogues. And they use footage of the 1938 November pogroms to speak about the destruction of businesses as if the intention had been anti-free market.
Very weird indeed.
The films seem very well choreographed and put together, so I doubt anything was left to chance, certainly not the narration.
I am wondering if the producers thought that US soldiers (apparently the target audience) would hate the Nazis more if they didn’t know that their hatred was primarily directed against Jews. Very strange indeed.
Exactly, that was my surmise also. But I agree, it doesn’t really explain much.
Read the works of James Bacque as to the treatment of the Germans from late 1944 to 1950. The Allies did their own holocaust to the Germans.
No, they didn’t.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Losses#Criticism_of_Other_Losses and “Eisenhower and the German POWs”.
German POWs in British and US-American camps actually had the highest rate of survival, were better off than most civilians in Europe, and some of them did not want to return to Germany once they were released.
Now, Soviet and in particular Yugoslav POW camps were a different matter. But I will have more on the latter point when I will be researching the story of my grandfather.
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