Since the beginning of cinematography the filmmakers have been using historical plots. But, as a rule, it has always been a mythologised version that was shown, and not the real one. That tendency has not changed, and therefore films have always been an important source for historians to do research into the state of social consciousness at the moment when the film in question was being created. This phenomenon is quite visible in the German cinema in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, i.e. in times of the socio-economic crisis and the triumph of the totalitarian state. Among all the Prussian characters in the films made in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich the favourite one was Frederick II. He was much more popular than – for example – Bismarck, another outstanding figure in the Prussian history.
An analysis of the press material of the first two quarters of 1939 indicates that the Szczecin daily in the reality of a totalitarian state was guided by the directives of the central authorities of the Third Reich. There was no formal preventive censorship, however ‘Stettiner General-Anzeiger’ had to take into consideration the raison d’état of the Third Reich. Therefore the changing attitude of the German authorities towards Poland is well visible in the articles; from hope that Poland might become Germany’s Juniorpartner, i.e. a state at the same time allied and dependent, cherished to the end of March 1939, to a growing disappointment at the beginning of April and open threats since May 1939. That state of political tension between Poland and Germany was to be maintained up to the tragic September 1939.
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