Titanic Lie

Some years ago the Lincoln Center had a festival of Nazi-era German films. The liberal crowd who flocked there expecting crude propaganda of the Jew equals rat type were in for an unpleasant surprise. Apart from a few well known exceptions such as Jud Suss, the bien pensants found much to approve of in the films. The heading of one letter to the New York Times sums up the reaction with, “Nazi Movies: Giving Credit Where Due”.

I was reminded of that on Sunday while watching the least likely film ever to be captured on celluloid.

In 1943 Joseph Goebbels had a brainwave and commissioned the most expensive Nazi film up to that time. The subject he chose to bolster German morale at that crucial juncture in the war was the sinking of the Titanic! That archetype example of the famous English stiff upper lip in action. The pint-sized propaganda minister may have had second thoughts about the project as the film’s director, Herbert Selpin, after a personal interview with Goebbels was persuaded to hang himself in Gestapo custody before his masterwork was completed.

You might expect that the Nazi Titanic is a somewhat more sinister version of the old music hall gag about the great liner:

"Did you know that the Jews were responsible for the sinking of the Titanic?"

"No they weren't, it was the iceberg."

"Oy, already. Iceberg, Goldberg? What's the difference?"

There were more than 100 Jews on the manifest of the Titanic, so had they wished to craft a plot around dastardly Jews, they wouldn’t even have had to invent them. But not a conniving hook-nose in sight.

What they did invent, though, was Herr Petersen a fictional German First Officer of the doomed vessel. However, those expecting a gloriously evil Nazi in the mould of Major Arnold Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark will be disappointed. Herr Petersen resembles nothing so well as a Norwegian social worker, but with rather less personality.

The plot of Titanic is essentially that all sorts of obnoxious English capitalists are conspiring to make money from White Star stock. The baddest of the baddies is Bruce Ismay, who bribes the Titanic’s captain to sail too fast for safety in order to arrive in New York ahead of schedule. Herr Petersen does what he can to fight the evils of “Anglo-Saxon capitalism” even engaging the services of a beautiful Russian who unaccountably has the hots for our noble Aryan.

Tragically all Petersen’s efforts and annoyingly sensible advice is in vain and the ship bites the big one. Then in the midst of panicking Anglos another side of our dull ubermensch is revealed as he rushes here and there assisting various damsels in distress. His final exertion is to save a blond girl abandoned by her heartless money grubbing parents. The look in his lover’s eyes as he splashes up to her lifeboat with goldilocks in tow tells us that she is pleasantly surprised at his physical endurance and hopes to see further demonstrations in the not too distant future.

The film concludes with the epilogue that: "the deaths of 1,500 people remains un-atoned, forever a testament of Britain's endless quest for profit."

This was the unpleasant surprise awaiting those Lefties watching the Nazi films retrospective. No Jew hatred, no militarism only the good stuff, pure unadulterated socialist idiocy, just like contemporary Hollywood.

The reason you haven’t seen the Nazi version of Titanic is not because it is horrifically different from the Cameron version, but because it is horrifically the same. It presses so many of the same buttons as the 1997 production that it could have been used as an early draft screenplay for the equally ridiculous, if entertaining, anglophobic Cameron film.

The Titanic lie about the Nazis is that they were right-wing.

The basic truth of the matter is encapsulated in the Nazi flag designed personally by Hitler. The racial symbol of the swastika on a white circle representing the nationalist aspect of Nazism is enveloped by a sea of red to symbolize the socialism of National Socialist German Workers Party( NSDAP).

Hitler’s movement was targeting the same people as the commies and it was in both the Nazi’s and the communists interests to sell the lie that they were polar opposites.

What’s amazing is that conservatives today still accept that the Nazis were right-wing and so lay themselves open to endless accusations of being “fascists” and “Nazis” whenever they propose any policies extending freedom.