Nazi Television?

Those who know me know I am a big history buff of many topics. Broadcasting is of course one of them. But I recently stumbled across a little know recent discovery of television artifacts in Germany. Television under Adolf Hitler's Nazi Regime. These artifacts were locked away in East Berlin for years where they languished, forgotten. A few years after the Berlin Wall fell the Soviet era German archives were cataloged and moved to a new archive and during this process is when the 285 canisters of film were rediscovered.

It is generally known that during the Nazi Regime in the 1930's and 40's, Nazi Germany had a fairly advanced form of television. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were televised live in Berlin. But there was no way to record it other than to film a TV tube where a film camera is pointed at a TV monitor (later called kinosope) so television of the time consisted of test patterns and extremely exaggerated made up people in either extremely bright lit studios or complete dark boxes with a spinning disk and light shining through it "performing" for the "camera" live. So to find that film of those programs from that time has survived is remarkable.

At the time the US, Great Britain, and to a lessor extent, France, were all developing useable television. In the US, there had been experimentation with mechanical spinning disk television developed by the German inventor Paul Nipkow in the 1890s. In the 1920's it slowly became obvious that the mechanical spinning disk TV was approaching its technical limits of about 150 lines of resolution. Philo T. Farnsworth began developing the first electronic scanning system, the basis of today's TV. Soon Dr Vladimir Zworykin, working for RCA came calling on Farnsworth to find out about this new system which lead to the first TV standard in the US, the RCA 441 line system which eventually morphed into the now familiar and recently defunct "analog TV" 525 line NTSC-M system . In Britain, the Marconi Company and an inventor named John Logie Baird were competing for which system, mechanical (Baird) or electronic TV (Marconi) would become their standard. In France, they were attempting to develop an early RCA electronic type called the 343 line system. In Great Britain, 1934 saw the Marconi-EMI 405 line electron system win and was used until 1985.

As the Nazi' came to power in Germany in 1933, they saw TV as a propaganda tool, but it was still deep in development with the mechanical/electronic debate still hotly being contested in many areas of the industry. They first began development on the Nipkow spinning disk and very quickly abandoned it for development of the early RCA electronic 343 line system. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were broadcast in this 343 line format. Since electron video tubes were still in their infancy, the German's developed a TV camera that used film and that film was then immediately developed in the camera and a small video tube imaged the developed film and then transmitted it via coax into the system. Total time from the exposure of the  film to time seen on a TV monitor, 1 minute. Some of this film still exists in the German archive. Development continued and in 1937 Germany adopted the RCA 441 line electron system as their standard.

German television broadcast only 3 nights a week and only for a couple of hours a night. Only about 100 sets were produced and those went to party officials, some journalists and the rest to "Television Parlors". These were areas where the public could come in, watch TV on two 25 cm screens. The hope was to produce a "people's television" similar to the Volkswagon or "people's car". People were not that impressed with Nazi television. Even the Party officials were not impressed. Only Berlin had an over the air transmitter. Other major cities had coax from Berlin run to them.

Unlike the other TV countries of the time, the German's did not confine themselves to studios. The surviving film shows they shot many programs on film and then ran the film on the air as we do video tape today. Most programs were of an entertainment-variety types,  but were very heavily laden in Party rhetoric. To watch these films now, it is very chilling to see and hear the anti-Semitic language used. One of the first regularly scheduled programs was "Garden Party" shot in a rooftop garden. It was basically an entertainment show with Vaudeville and radio acts but the underlying message was clear and was tied in the Socialist slogan of the time, "Strength through joy" meaning you worked hard for the Fatherland and the Fatherland would reward with "joy." Another show was a called "Variety Show" shot in a theatre. It too was vaudeville acts and plays and a not so subtle message of you comply or you will go to a "rehabilitation camp." The example used in the show I saw was the host praising the preceding musical act and then switching to "not everyone is playing the same notes. Those who do not play the correct music will go to musical reeducation camp." Message received loud and clear, Heir Hitler. Even all these years later! There was even a homemakers show telling the women what was expected of good Nazi women.

When war broke out and Germany invaded France, the French 343 line system was replaced with the German 441 line system. At that time only Paris had television and it was broadcast from the Eiffel Tower. Again only very high party members and the military had access to television. One thing the German's didn't count on was that the British were also watching German TV broadcast from Paris as well, setting up a receive station along the English Channel on the British side. To help the morale of the wounded German solders, TV's were placed in the French military hospitals. On these sets were shown how the German's were repelling the English from German newsreels and other programming. What they actually did was show the British just how much damage aerial bombing was doing to Paris. It was an unfettered look into the city in a way that traditional Intelligence could never get. German TV from Paris continued until they were driven out. On the way out of town, the 441 line transmitter was destroyed.

Television in Germany continued over the air until an Allied air strike in 1944 took out the Berlin transmitter. It was never repaired or replaced. The TV coaxial lines that had been laid years earlier continued to send Nazi TV signals to those fortunate enough to still have TV's connected until early 1945. The Nazi's were finally defeated on May 7th, 1945 and the war in Europe ended and so did Nazi television.

The DVD "Television Under the Swastika" outlines much of this history.