The Bulgarian poster in our Collection is a dead–ringer for the original German poster issued the same year. Below is the B&W image of the original German poster found in the "Werberatschlag" (cinema owner's guide to film publicity materials).

An ESSAY on the film:

Karl Ritter and  Über alles in der Welt (1940/41) 

Film director Karl Ritter (1888–1977) is universally condemned by post–WWII film historians for his militaristic, chauvinistic, and unwavering propaganda films which glorified war, aggression, and ‘senseless self–sacrifice.’ His films utilized anti–democratic, anti–Semitic and anti–communist ideological themes epitomizing the stereotypical Nazi warrior, and promoted a Greater Germany against all enemies of the Reich.  At war’s end, the Soviets demanded that he be tried for war crimes for ‘the systematic poisoning of German youth.’

Ritter’s September 1933 production of Steinhoff’s Hitlerjunge Quex had portrayed the ‘Kampfzeit’ of the Nazi movement and the sacrifices of the Hitler Youth on Hitler’s path to power; and in ’36 he turned his attention to that of enemy spies in the thriller Verräter. In 1937 he produced his famous WWI trilogy drawing on his own war experiences, in Urlaub auf Ehrenwort, Patrioten, and Unternnehmen Michael. His ferociously anti–Weimar Pour le Mérite (1938) bridged WWI to the devastating post–war years of hyper inflation, revolution, unemployment and the collapse of Germany under the Versailles Treaty.  

On 27 January 1939 he dined with Hitler and was asked to make a film on the Legion Condor and the Spanish Civil War, which he then produced in documentary style as Im Kampf gegen den Weltfeind (1939). Later that year, he turned his focus to the Hitler Youth and scripted and directed Kadetten, which was subsequently banned until December ’41 due to the intervening Nazi–Soviet Pact.

On New Year’s Day 1940 film director Ritter spoke to the German nation during the 25^th Silver Jubilee “Wunschkonzert”  from the Haus der Rundfunk, Berlin, and talked of the need for feature films which would unite the home front and the battlefront.

Über alles in der Welt (premiered 14 March 1941) followed, the first of Ritter’s propaganda films to deal specifically with the Second World War. In the Ufa studio press–book for the film, Ritter states that: ‘a film does not always need to have a star, and it doesn’t always have to tell an individual story. There is another kind of film, one that portrays a totality of a community.’ 

“Now Ritter wants to make a film whose hero is the entire German Volk. To show the readiness, the standing–togetherness of this people in all situations – like the German people are ready to do in the enormous experiences of this war – that is the task of this film.” (Filmwoche,  #31,1940).  

Über Alles in der Welt is a Ritter Zeitfilm telling five different stories across various contemporary WWII fronts  – in Paris, in London, on the Spanish coast, near the Maginot Line in France, and on the North Sea, as Germans caught by the sudden outbreak of war try to get home to join the fight.  As the press–book states, ‘all layers of the German people, men, women, children, soldiers, the labor front, volunteers (ie: Red Cross, etc) are shown, how they fulfill their duty to arrive at a common goal – the victory of the German Fatherland.’ Ritter explained that he wanted to present a particular ‘soldierly, manly–heroic stance without false pathos.’  

The film script lists a huge variety of characters. The loyal Germans include officers and men of the Army, a U–Boot, Military transport, Luftwaffe, Red Cross nurse, Siemens workers, Mountain troops, Gestapo agents, German border police, Spanish fascists, Falangists, and workers at the Munich Bürgerbräukeller.  The Enemy is portrayed by Jewish emigrants, named agents of the British Secret Service, the English concentration camp commander, English sailors and soldiers, the ‘black-haired paid traitor,’ Polish prisoners, various French civilians, and a Negro female dancer in a Parisian Variété.

All of Germany's enemies receive equal disdain. The British, the French, the Poles, and the Jews are portrayed respectively as warmongers, profiteers and cowards. In the end, all that is important is returning to Germany.

Ritter, perhaps surprisingly,  originally had the film script bring to the screen the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, by a vignette of the November ’39 Bürgerbräukeller bombing, which the film linked directly to the British Secret Service.  Furthermore, the dialogue of this incident had the Jewish emigrant radio broadcaster (Leo Samek) from London state: The German Gestapo is trying to pin the blame on us, because they don’t dare mention how strong the Opposition in Germany has become.’   The ‘slimy tirades’ of the Jewish emigrant media against Germany and the ‘total hypocrisy’ of the British coming to the aid of Poland are shown as proof that the outbreak of war was due to enemy intrigue and lies.  

This dialogue and the assassination plot scenes were never to appear in the film. They do exist on six pages of the original early copy of the film script found in The Gillespie Collection library. Below two pages out of that script:

The film script has a Foreword by Ritter in which he states that the purpose of the film was to present a ‘dynamic apotheosis of the certainty of German victory ‘ in ‘the fight forced upon’ the German nation and the German peoples’ resistance ‘against the dark powers in enemy camps.’  In the penultimate scene of the film, at the Luftwaffe air field, a radio speaker is shown reporting that ‘ 37 of 45 enemy planes were destroyed! England wanted this war ––  This is our answer!’

Five months prior to the film’s premiere, Reichsminister for Propaganda Dr Joseph Goebbels reviewed the film’s production progress and entered into his diary on 10 October 1940: ‘Über alles in der Welt. Richly naïve and primitive but probably a great public hit. Ritter tells national stories without inhibition that would make others blush.’

The film was given its world premiere on 14 March 1941 in Posen and one week later a prestige opening at the Ufa Palast am Zoo cinema.

Of the sixteen most important propaganda and/or anti–Semitic features of the Third Reich, the film was the seventh most profitable in domestic and foreign screenings by January ’42, after Ritter’s Pour le Mérite, Harlan’s Jud Süß, both Bismarck and its sequel Die Entlassung, Reitet für Deutschland, and Zarah Leander’s Der Weg ins Freie.

--- William Gillespie, author of Karl Ritter, 2^ndedition ©2014, and The Making of the Crew of the Dora, ©2016.