Shareholders of the Third Reich

15 February: Goebbels speaks to the film industry: "Now that film has come into the possession of the Reich, we have essentially experienced the following change: whereas film used to be governed by majority shareholders, it now is governed by the national leadership."

This passage on p. 255 of Rentschler's book typified the position of the Third Reich in response to many of its actions in the early 1940s; we do it for the good of the nation, therefore it is a justifiably good thing. Yet there really is no distinction between the former "majority shareholders" that ran the film industry and the film industry under the rule of Hitler and Goebbels. Just as they did with the German government, the Nazi party organized a hostile takeover of the film industry insuring that they were the ones in charge. More importantly, this was done without a democratic means as chosen by the people. Hitler, Goebbels, and the rest of the Ministry of Propaganda were as much shareholders as their predecessors in the film industry. Their chief profit goal may not have been financial, but they invested a lot of time, money, and resources into the film industry in order to win the support of the German people. Therefore, it's clear that there is very little difference between the former "majority shareholders" and the then-current "national leadership."