Prior to the outbreak of World War II, tourists from around the world were curious to see life in Nazi Germany firsthand. One of these travelers was Julien Bryan, an American filmmaker whose work was popular in newsreels. He spent much of the late 1930s in Germany documenting everyday life under Nazi rule. Bryan took footage depicting political meetings, university lectures, crowds at markets, and children at school. In 1937, he made this film of a German amusement park.
The opening shots of this film demonstrate the degree to which Nazi symbols had become visible in places of leisure and entertainment. The amusement park is captured on a busy day, with dramatic gates framed by several Nazi banners. Shots of the crowds show several men in uniform, including a lengthy scene of a man who appears to be a policeman, likely visiting with some guests or his own family.
Bryan's film shows how the influences of Nazi ideology spread throughout German society in the 1930s. The Third Reich's intense interest in modernization is reflected in images of rides built in the shape of zeppelins or a race track named after the recently completed Autobahn highway.1 A shot of a balloon vendor shows a racist caricature of a Black child. Images of the crowd show what appear to be mostly middle-class German families taking in the sights and sounds of the park.
Bryan's film offers a rare perspective on daily life in Nazi Germany—independent of official Nazi propaganda—during the years of the country's pre-war economic and military development. Bryan claimed that his approach aimed to "take people as he found them, not as he wanted them to be."2 This effort to capture daily life makes the film an important resource for understanding citizens' encounters with Nazism.