Triumph of the Will (1935)
The Trump Prophecy (2018)

@Zaku, I never heard of The Trump Prophecy, but I just read the Wikipedia article about it. Is there anything about Nazis in it? I didn’t see a mention.

The Triumph of the Will is a stunning film that ought to be shown and shown again. Watching it some years ago, I could begin to understand for the first time how people could get caught up in the fervor of the time and place and be moved to believe in Hitler’s cause. I think many of us need to be reminded how susceptible people can be to the overwhelming flood of public pressure even when they think they’re immune to it. It made me realize that I honestly can’t say whether I would have been able to resist it.

However, I don’t think that film is influencing a lot of people these days. Who outside of a handful of enthusiasts watches old, old movies anymore? I get a charge out of seeing a movie that’s a hundred years old, but my sons can’t stand to watch those primitive B&W productions.

I’ve seen a movie or two in which there was a “good” Nazi, an ordinary guy in uniform who hated what he was doing but did it anyway. I remember one where the German officer was involved with a woman who was in the French Resistance. As I recall, it didn’t turn out well for either of them. No way to retrieve the title now, though.

@filmfann, we have built rebellion and contrariness into the foundation of our culture, from Lexington and Concord in 1775 to David-and-Goliath movies like the ones Bruce Willis stars in. (And if you look at it a certain way, it ties right in to Christian themes of challenge to the established authorities, which I think fueled some of our national heroes; it even brought the Pilgrims here.) Some people don’t discriminate; they’ll root for any maverick underdog, whether it’s a cult leader or the kid who makes faces behind the teacher’s back. This national trait is both a kind of strength and a major, major liability.

@Jeruba I could begin to understand for the first time how people could get caught up in the fervor of the time and place and be moved to believe in Hitler’s cause.
Nicely put.
I own Triumph Of The Will and Olympia on DVD. I don’t agree with their worship of Hitler, and the Nazi movement, but it is an awesome sight.
After asking the question, I thought of the movie Das Boot. It did give heroic displays, while avoiding the politics and position of the Nazis. However, nothing there would encourage someone into joining.

Agree on Das Boot.

The Captain. It’s about a deserter from the Nazi army who comes across an abandoned car with an officer’s uniform. He is hiding from his captors and has nowhere to go, so he puts on the uniform and assumes a different identity. On his way, he meets other deserters who hook up with him because they too have nowhere to go. The fake captain now has to fake being a real captain with a real mission at hand to avoid suspicion. He leads everyone into chaos as a result.

In the movie’s context, everyone who gets caught up in the guy’s shenanigans is the good guy.

Depends on your point of view. Some may say the nazis were the heroes in Raiders of the Lost Arc.

@Jeruba I think The Trump Prophecy is the closest example I know, not as explicitly pro-Nazi, but considering the various ways Trump has given tacit support to white supremacists and facism in the USA, any film elevating Trump as a positive figure who ought to be in charge of the USA seems like it’s pretty close to what the question was asking for. ( supporting meme )

I intentionally chose that and Triumph of the Will with a little dark humor in mind, but also as an implied answer that no, no explicit pro-Nazi film comes to mind that would be a cause of American Nazis.*

I don’t think Nazism generally gets caused by films. I think it is better understood as one type of alignment with racist/anti-semetic/xenophobic and facist tendencies, which have various origins and sustaining/encouraging groups and patterns of ideas, which overlap with some groups/ideas that also identify as conservative, or Christian, or capitalist/anti-socialist/communist, or American. ( supporting meme) )

In many cases, it seems to me that many people who become neo-Nazis and/or white supremacists are mainly very ignorant, isolated, disturbed, and paranoid people who profoundly don’t understand WTF they are angry about.

. . .

* On the other hand, there are an increasing number of videos on the Internet which are various flavors and combinations of conservative, QAnon, Y’all-Qaeda, Republican, white supremacist, and/or neo-Nazi, which do no doubt generate and reinforce a lot of support for those groups, including neo-Nazis. The actually pro-Nazi ones are probably rarest because they tend to be vulnerable to removal by hosting companies, but YouTube is crawling with videos and comments that are supporting views allied with the groups I mentioned.

@Chestnut The only people who think the Nazis are good guys in Raiders Of The Lost Ark are Nazis.

Sure, if you know of any.

@filmfann Exactly. Their point of view.

In the movie The Enemy Below both the Germans and Americans were portrayed as good guys. They were trying to kill each other, but neither was a villain. There was one true Nazi in the movie (the political officer) and he was scorned.