The Face of Germany, 1918–1945: Ufa Personnel, Censorship, and Propaganda

Abstract

oward the end of World War I (WWI), with the Allied powers’ anti-German propaganda at its zenith, Generalquartiermeister Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff considered the German propaganda efforts to be too fragmented to be effective and felt the need to create a film production company that would be controlled directly by the German armed forces. Thus, at the end of 1916, Bild-und Filmamt (Bufa) was created as an umbrella organization for all government and military film, as well as press agencies, to promote the German war effort. Bufa mainly produced short educational, propaganda, and entertainment films for both the front line and the reserve forces. Still, General Ludendorff, wanting to move beyond the mechanism of Bufa, wrote a letter to the Imperial Ministry of War on July 4, 1917, that would lay the foundation for the consolidation of the German film industry and the formation of a larger film conglomerate, Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa):