OPFER DER VERGANGENHEIT: DIE SÜNDE 

WIDER BLUT UND RASSE (1937)

“Victims of the Past: The Sin Against Blood and Race.”

Director:Gernot Bock-Stieber
Production:NSDAP Reichspropagandaleitung, Hauptabteilung IV (Film) (Berlin)
Predicate:Staatspolitische wertvoll /Valuable in terms of state policy.
Length:  726 m, 26 min.  Format:  35mm, 1:1.33, B&W
Censorship:   15.03.1937, B.44992, suitable for audiences 14 years and older.
World premiere: 14.04.1937, Berlin, Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz

 

 

When this film was being shot and produced in late 1936, Dr. Joseph Goebbels wrote the following entry in his private diary about it:

 " Checked out various films: with Weidemann*, a film about Spain and its revolution. Not clear enough yet.  Needs to be reworked. More precise and more effective. Weidemann can do that. Then, a film from mental asylums to justify the sterilization law. Horrific material. With great shots. It just makes your blood run cold when you watch it. Sterilization is only a blessing. That's why our churches are so against it. They need our idiots, partly as believers, partly to test their charity on them. Terrible mental confusion! But we'll move on, get on with the day."

* Weidemann was a Propaganda Ministry staffer in 1933, and in 1935 became the VP of the Reich Film Chamber.

In the May 1937 issue of Der Deutsche Film, the official magazine of the Reich Film Chamber (RFK), an announcement  appeared :

New cultural films

On behalf of the Führer and Reich Chancellor, the Reich Medical Leader Dr. Wagner had a sound film produced that brings to mind the physical and mental devastation caused by the reproduction of genetically ill people: "Victims of the Past". The film, which Gernot Bock-Stieber had recorded by the surgeons G. O. Schulze and A. Pennarz based on a manuscript by Dr. Fercks, takes us straight into a mass gathering of victims of such reproduction in an insane asylum. Images of horrific devastation, such as mental and sexually transmitted diseases have brought upon the image of God, pass before us in these insane pictures; the entire misery of humanity dwells in the eye sockets of these stupid, brutalized, crippled people. We see doctors and nurses talking to such unfortunates; we see the sick raging, crawling on all fours, laughing senselessly, and making hideous faces. We see a bunch of stupid Jews. All of these poor people are carefully cared for, with one carer for every five, whose training is shown in an instructive series of images. The German people spend millions every year on these victims of a false humanity, which once did not want to infringe on the right to procreate. The aim of our racial policy legislation is to limit such offspring in the future and ultimately to prevent them altogether. The film ends with scenes of a medical examination of suitability for marriage, to which a young groom (Kurt Mühlhardt) subjects his bride (Trude Haefelin) amid the grumbling of a man of yesterday (M. Lohmann). The film is accompanied by enlightening words and dramatic music (Kurt Krüger). (Production and distribution RPL)

[Der Deutsche Film, Mai 1937, Heft 11/Jhrg. 1. RFK, Berlin]

 

 

Background:

 

In a "Memorandum of the Reich Propaganda Directorate on the need to align the film work of the NSDAP with general German film production"  dated  4.10.1938, the role of the Nazi Party in producing its own films was reiterated thusly:

"The Reich Propaganda Directorate of the NSDAP has received from the Führer the task of imbuing the entire people with the nationalist worldview and of realizing the Führer's cultural will is presumed by this task that the party's film work is non-profit and based on purely propaganda. In fulfilling its task, it cannot, therefore, impose any restrictions on the use of its technical means and is also required, in contrast to the film industry or commercial theater companies, to cover all locations in the Reich, regardless of the respective economic structure. Years of development have led to the party now having at its disposal an exemplary propaganda apparatus from the Gau [i.e., District] film offices that is ready for use at any time. The party's film work in the countryside has become an extremely productive and indispensable propaganda factor, which has a very important role to play in terms of state and party politics."

 

The Racial Political Office (Rassenpolitisches Amt) of the NSDAP produced six 16mm silent “short” films between 1935 and 1938, at the height of the pro-euthanasia efforts of the Nazi Party and government. Those films were the following:

"Die Sünden der Väter" („Sins of the Father, “1935)
"Abseits vom Wege" („Off the beaten Track“, 1935)
"Das Erbe" („The Inheritance,“ 1935)
"Erbkrank" („Congenitally Ill,“ 1936)
"Alles Leben ist Kampf" („All Life is Struggle“ 1937)
"Was du ererbt..." („What you Inherit,“ 1938)

Adolf Hitler saw Erbkrank and wanted a sound film for cinemas to be produced, so "Opfer der Vergangenheit" (Victims of the Past, 1937) was filmed in mid–1936.

On April 4, 1937 a letter from Stabsleiter Hugo Fischer of the NSDAP Reichspropagandaleitung to all Gau leaders stated that the Führer wished to have Opfer der Vergangenheit shown in all Reich cinemas because of its importance. This included screenings in all Gau, Kreis, and Orts groups (i.e., down to the local level of film distribution).  The letter stated that Fischer was to be informed when the film would be screened in the Gau leader's area.  The first page of the letter, which is in the Bundesarchiv–Filmarchiv files:

 

                                    

Victims of the Past premiered on April 14, 1937, at the Ufa Pavillon cinema on Nollendorfplatz in Berlin. High Party and military officials, medical leaders, and representatives from the Racial Political Office and the Propaganda Ministry attended the premiere. It was then shown in every one of the Reich’s 5,300 cinemas prior to the feature film screening.

The film narration starts:

All living things on this earth are engaged in a permanent struggle with the forces of nature. Only mankind subordinates the elements to its own ends and purposes. Wherever fate puts us, whatever station we must occupy, only the strong will prevail in the end. Everything in the natural world that is weak for life will ineluctably be destroyed. In the last few decades, mankind has sinned terribly against the law of natural selection. We haven't just maintained life unworthy of life; we have even allowed it to multiply. The descendants of these sick people look like this!

Another soundtrack narration excerpt:

The prevention of hereditary diseases is a God-given command, like the Law of Nature. To prevent the growth of weeds is to promote the healthy plants that will be of some value.... In nursing the mentally handicapped, this essentially Christian law has been shamefully transgressed. Moreover, the money it takes to care for these people could be put to better use helping strong and healthy children.

A final excerpt:

In future these poor creatures will no longer live alongside our healthy children. Sterilisation is a simple surgical operation. It is a humane method designed to spare the nation endless misery. The innocent should never suffer on account of the sins of the past. However, every honest and proud person will understand if we prevent these sins from becoming an endless chain. In the last seventy years, our population has increased by 50%, while over the same period, the number of hereditarily ill has risen by 450%. If this development continues, in fifty years, there would be one hereditarily ill person for every four healthy people. An endless column of horror would march into the nation. Limitless despair would come upon a valuable population, which would march toward its doom with giant steps. The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny is not interference in divine law, but rather the restoration of a natural order which mankind has disrupted because of a false sense of humanity.

 

 

The heretofore venerable Deutsches Ärztenblatt / German Doctor’s Paper, founded in 1870, wrote in its article the following commentary about the film’s premiere:

"After a musical prelude, whose character was adapted to the content of the film and, after chaotic unrest, finally revealed the clear line, the melody, Reich Medical Leader Dr. Wagner gave a few words of introduction to the screening to indicate the political value of the film. Nothing, he emphasized, was initially met with such incomprehension in German and especially in non-German crises as the racial policy laws of National Socialist Germany. ....

The Nuremberg Laws in particular, provide the guideline for the government of the Jewish question, while the eradication of the sick is based on the law for the prevention of genetically diseased offspring, which should be effectively explained by this film."

The commentary continued:

"The eradication of the sick ... goes back to the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring, which should be effectively explained by this film. ... The task of the party and the responsible bodies - the Racial Policy Office and the Office for Public Health - must be ... to keep these vital problems before the eyes of the German people in a variety of ways, again and again, in order to convince even the last member of the people that the path they have taken is correct."

 

The newspaper edited by Dr. Goebbels, Der Angriff, wrote:

"So that everyone can see the correctness of the racial policy measures that the Third Reich took out of a healthy instinct for self-preservation and a feeling of genuine charity..., this film will be shown as part of the supporting program of all German cinemas."

 

In the same issue of Der Deutsche Film, the following review was written:

Film In The Service Of Race Politics

Curt Belling, Reichshauptstellenleiter der NSDAP, Reichspropagandaleitung, Amtsleitung Film

"The extent to which film is suitable for providing information about the measures and plans of the state and party leadership was already discussed in detail in issue 9 of this magazine (Curt Belling, "Work for Germany in the Mirror of Film") in an article about the use of film to propagate the Four Year Plan. It was emphasized on this occasion that since the beginning of the National Socialist era in German film, i.e., from mid-1933 onwards, film was repeatedly entrusted with tasks of a political nature, which it devoted itself to conscientiously. Political propaganda films, short films, election films, newsreel scenes, and finally, those major feature films that either had political themes as their content or at least raised and answered political questions of the National Socialist worldview within the framework of the plot (“Frisians in Peril”, “Traitor”, “The Ruler”, “Togger”) have proven that film is capable of most forcefully also to show the broad masses what all the measures of the National Socialist state are about, what the state aims to achieve and where each individual citizen should contribute to support the Führer's reconstruction work. The film thus joined the front line of the decisive educational factors of our state leadership in order to do justice to the questions and objectives of the present as the most popular and popular art form of our time. The fact that it is always the party film organization with its 32 Gau film offices and its tens of thousands of film offices in all districts, local groups and bases that is at the forefront of carrying out major educational campaigns about certain measures is justified by the matter itself. It was precisely in recognition of the educational and propagandistic strength of the film that the party promoted and supported the use of film to educate the masses. Therefore, in recent years there have been repeated calls for a film that would increase the people's understanding of the public health and racial policy.

A film like this was even necessary, considering the stubbornness with which certain groups believed they had to oppose the sterilization law. It was difficult for ordinary people to recognize the importance of preventing the birth of genetically ill children for the nation as a whole and the dangers for our nation that had been eliminated by the legal measures. Newspaper articles and books on this issue, lectures on German radio and public presentations on the subject could not deepen our understanding because they had to be scientifically based, but the broad mass of our community was neutral towards the scientific explanations, if not unintelligible, then at least due to the lack of visual impression. Although these figures depicted the devastating situation, that the maintenance and feeding of genetically ill clans often cost hundreds of thousands of Reichsmarks in national assets, they did not give the lasting impression that would have been necessary to call the whole nation to action against a national danger.

Only a film aimed at the entire population could provide information about racial policy and the danger of hereditary diseases. At the suggestion of the Racial Policy Office, the Film Department of the Reich Propaganda Department of the NSDAP created an educational film entitled "Victims of the Past" (The Sin Against Blood and Race), which shows the damage that the wrong policies of the past had to cause in the question of public health and which will only slowly lose their horror after legal intervention. If one considers that if the health policy and the carelessness of the past era had continued, the German people would have contained an army of millions of mentally inferior people in the not-too-distant future, one realizes how much gratitude we owe the National Socialist leadership in this area alone.

It is therefore particularly welcome that this film is being made available to all members of the population who are even eligible to go to the cinema by initially showing it as part of the regular cinema program that will be shown in all 5300 cinemas in the German Reich, and then will reach the most remote corners and the smallest towns via the film events of the Gaufilmstellen of the NSDAP, in order to reach all members of the people and show them the dangers that threatened the German people. It is precisely because not a single film event is missed, that the film fully fulfils its role as the nation's strongest educational factor. Every German in town and country will be able to take a look inside the sanatoriums and care homes through the film and will perhaps have the opportunity for the first time to see how much misery has been brought about by false, liberal sentimentality. But he will now be able to see that only a purposeful health policy is capable of eliminating the misery of offspring with a hereditary burden.

Dr. Rudolf Frercks commented on the film itself, which was created by Gernot Bock-Stieber with the assistance of O. Schulze, A. Pennarz, and Kurt Krüger: “There is no more fitting motto and at the same time no better justification for the racial-political cultural film ‘Victims of the Past’ than the Führer’s words from ‘Mein Kampf’: ‘The national state must teach the individual through education that it is not a disgrace, but only a regrettable misfortune, to be sick and weak, but that it is a crime and therefore also a disgrace to dishonour this misfortune through one’s own egoism by burdening innocent beings with it.’ The German people will only remain strong and creative if they preserve their most valuable heritage and push back everything that could threaten and destroy this most beautiful possession. A bygone era saw its pride in being blinded by humanity to nurture and care for all weak children who cannot survive on their own. 

When the narrator of the film says that preventing the birth of hereditarily ill children is a moral commandment and is the result of love for one's neighbour, the images provide the most compelling evidence of this. It is very clever that the director lets a complainer put forward the often-heard counterarguments; a young couple who have gone to the doctor to get a certificate of fitness to marry provides a genuine and convincing refutation. The doctor is shown in his new task that the present day presents him with; he has to look beyond the individual to the health of children and grandchildren; he has to be a hereditary doctor, an often difficult and responsible task. The doctor at the sickbed has often been shown on the screen, we only need to think of  the films 'Pediatrician Dr. Engel', 'Doctor with a Passion', and others, but the doctor as an advisor to healthy people, as a friend and helper in building a family with a future is probably the first time. The attempt may have been risky, but it was successful. Only at a later time will we be able to appreciate the full benefits of purposeful care of hereditary and racial heritage.

If the film was now used for the first time to show all German people the important problems of our time for the health of the people so that they recognize the importance of the National Socialist racial policy for the continued existence of the people, then this is a further step in the development of the film into a friend of the people. From the entertainment and pleasure of past years, it became a forward-looking enlightenment factor of a popular political nature without being stripped of its value as an art form and cultural asset."

 

 

 

After the film was screened in all 5,300 German cinemas, it then was brought by mobile projection vans to hundreds of rural and country towns and villages which did not have a movie theater. Some 23% of Germans in the 1930's had no access to a cinema. The Gaufilmstelle (Film Distribution Bureau) made this possible, and reached many, many millions of Germans annually until 1944.

 

 

The film's shocking footage and message was well known to the propaganda offices which had the responsibility of showing it to fellow citizens. It was thus combined with a second more positive film in a double feature. The second film was either a film about the training of Wehrmacht soldiers in Sport (Sport und Soldaten) or one about the dignity and pride in manual labor.  (Hände am Werk.)  The Gaufilmstelle Sachsen (Dresden district) magazine Film & Foto wrote about the new film available for distribution in August 1937, suggesting a plan to present the film to local populations of farmers and worker:

 

[Printed as a manuscript. = Intended for service use only. = Not authorized for distribution. ]

“Opfer er Vergangenheit” und “Hände am Werk“

The films “Victims of the Past” and “Hands at Work”, which were released by the Reich propaganda leadership, can, contrary to what their content may seem at first glance, be shaped into an exemplary political rally with the film at its center. The combination of both films would be absurd and ineffective without a political speaker. Only this speaker is able to build a bridge from the horrific misery of people with hereditary diseases to the powerful victory song of labor. Without film, no speaker could achieve the effect that can be achieved with such a propagandistic juxtaposition of the two films. It is, therefore, a basic requirement for such an event: a racial-political speaker between the two films, revealing the abyss we have been striving toward so far, and then transitioning to our powerful commitment to everything strong and healthy, the crowning glory of which is work and achievement. In addition, these film screenings are given an impressive framework that sets them apart from the usual film events.

 

In the following, we give a detailed plan of how such an event can be carried out, but under no circumstances should it be shortened. The pure playing time of the films is 70 minutes (2226 meters).

Event sequence:

1.Song: “We are the watchmen.”

2. Introductory Words.  (presentation of the purpose of the rally, emphasizing the idea that it is to be a political rally, not a cultural film event comparable to a movie theater).

3. Poem: “You inherited your ancestors' heritage.”

4. Film “Victims of the Past.”

5. Address by the racial-political speaker (20 to 30 minutes), which transitions from a deepening of the impression of the previous film to a commitment to work.

 6. Song: “Workers, farmers, soldiers”

7. Poem: “Moving his hands again”

8. Film “Hands at work.”

9. (immediately after the end of the movie!) Poem: “Führer and People.”

10. closing words and Sieg Heil!  victory salute.

 

 

Three months later, with the film still in rural circulation, a second article urging Gaufilmstelle film leaders to get out and sell the film, from the November/December 1937 issue urges:

 

Propagandists out!

No civil servant, no worker, no farmer - no one today is so enlightened and educated that they no longer need to see the film “Victims of the Past”, which is gripping in its unrelenting truth and unforgettable in its forcefulness.

All film directors, whether in very rural, industrial, or 'intellectual' areas, should therefore make every effort to use this film to do the educational work that the Führer expressly wanted.  By juxtaposing it with the film “Hands at Work” or “Sport und Soldiers”, the rally sounds a powerful positive affirmation of work and development that takes away the depressing effect that the film “Victims of the Past” leaves behind when shown on its own.

A film station manager who organizes such a rally with the framework proposed by us can prove to his local group and propaganda leaders that the film occupies an outstanding position within the propaganda.

“The visit made with the major film event on October 11 and 12 to use the 1800-person capacity hall of the ‘Drei Linden’ for film events must be described as brilliantly successful.  Picture and sound were reproduced in the best possible way. This could also be heard from the numerous experts in attendance.

The film “Victims of the Past”, preceded by an introduction by a speaker from the Racial Politics Office and followed by “Sport and Soldiers”, showed the people in the best possible way the correctness of the path taken by the racial politician in the Third Reich. Regarding the film “Sport und Soldiers”, it must be said that much is repeated in it, and one cannot shake off the feeling that it could be 400 meters shorter. But the film “Der Reichsparteitag 1937”, which was shown at the end, was received with great applause and, as the most beautiful climax, was a wonderful conclusion.

Despite the fact that two very important events were suddenly organized by the district on both days, the induction of the new district leader and the farewell to the previous district leader with a torchlight procession, 2,500 comrades, including the HJ and the BDM, attended the film events.

The success has shown us participating local groups West A, B, and F. that we are on the right path to use the film in a worthy manner as a means of propaganda and public education.”

On February 23, 1937, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary:

"The film 'Victims of the Past' with our children at the end. All three of them seem very sweet. Helga is already like a real mother. They were with Magda. Oh, what joy! [...] "

 

Victims of the  Past was still being shown through the Reich Film Distribution Service /Gaufilmstelle)  in March, 1938, almost year after the Berlin premiere.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burleigh, Michael; Death and Deliverance – Euthanasia in Germany, 1900-1945. ©1994

Der Deutsche Film, Zeitschrift der RFK, Berlin, Heft 11, Jhrg.1/ Mai 1937

Deutsches Ärztenblatt, Jhrg. 67, Nr. 17, 24 April 1937, Berlin

Film & Foto, Nachrichtenblatt der NSDAP, Gaufilmstelle Sachsen,  Jhrg.2, Heft 8, Heft 11/12, 1937

Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, 4.12.1936 diary entry, Teil I, Bd. 3/II;  K.G. Saur Verlag, München

Hochmeister, Sylvie; Kinopropaganda gegen Kranke @1992

D e n k s c h r i f t  der Reichspropagandaleitung über die anzugleichende Pilnarbeit der NSDAP mit dem allgemeinen deutschen Filnschaffen. Reichsfilmkammer, 4.10.1938 (The William Gillespie Collection.)

Rost, Karl Ludwig; ‚Euthanasie‘-Filme im NS-Staat;“ zeitgeschichte, 26 Jhrg; Juli/August 2001

 

NOTE: We have acquired the ultra–rare original A1-sized poster for this film and it will be added to our Poster Gallery in a higher quality image than the one shown in this article, after we have brought it back home from Europe in late Summer 2025.