Nazi era comedy film has received very little attention in academic writing because most of the focus on Nazi era films has been on propaganda films and dramas. This lack of interest in the comedy genre came from the perception that Nazi era comedy film was mostly apolitical, and thus not relevant to understanding the regime. Valerie Weinstein's fascinating book Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany breaks with the notion that Nazi era comedy film did not contain anti-Semitism or ideological underpinnings. Karsten Witte analyzed this film genre in his important 1995 book Lachende Erben, Toller Tag. Filmkomödie im Dritten Reich, in which he attributed the lack of overt anti-Semitism in Nazi era comedy to the idea that these films were not involved with Nazi racial politics. Weinstein “dispels this illusion, explaining how antisemitism influenced the themes and techniques of Third Reich film comedy, which, in turn, helped spectators envision a Germany free of Jewishness” (3). The author's assertion that anti-Semitism was implicitly present in all German film produced under the Nazis signals a significant and long overdue shift in how these films are perceived today.

Weinstein provides several arguments for why these comedy films, previously considered apolitical, were indeed anti-Semitic. After they took power in Germany in 1933, the Nazis were concerned with “Gleichschaltung (coordination)” of the “Volksgemeinschaft (racial-national community) without Jews in it” (5). The immediate removal of Jewish filmmakers and characters in itself was anti-Semitic, and creating a German film industry that conspicuously eliminated any markers of Jewishness in film further contributed to the goal of the Nazi racial-national community.

“Humor teaches, unifies, and excludes. Its pedagogical and disciplinary aspects made it well suited for building Volksgemeinschaft” (9). Thus, without even explicitly mentioning Jews or Jewish traits, filmmakers were able to exclude the Jews and, in fact, mock their existence in comedy film. Weinstein cites Fritz Hippler, the Reichsfilmintendant (general director of Reich Film), who wrote in 1942: “As is well known, there is nothing more educational than making fun of bad habits. Ridiculousness leads to laughter, and, beyond that, famously, it kills. And what all there would be to kill: intellectualism, snobbism, egoism, individualism and very much else with the same ending” (9). Comedic mockery ridiculed character traits that were associated with Jews.

This subtle anti-Semitism, unlike the overt anti-Semitism in some of the openly anti-Semitic films such as Jud Süss and Der ewige Jude, is inferential in these comedy films. Weinstein defines this: “Although less explicit and less overtly articulated than more familiar versions of Nazi antisemitism, the form of antisemitism most common in film comedy and emphasized in this book subtly coded Jewish and non-Jewish people, places, and things, naturalized Jewish difference, and used a variety of strategies to exclude or eliminate the Jewish” (14). This insidious method of “inferential racism perpetuates racist ideologies and buttress racist social structures without audiences noticing” (15). The fact that inferential anti-Semitism can go unnoticed by some audiences explains why Nazi comedy film has been overlooked for so long by scholars. The author reminds her readers that even Goebbels argued that “subtle rather than explicit propaganda was most effective” (6). This, in turn, may explain why far fewer propaganda films than comedy films were produced by the Nazi film industry.

Drawing on Gerd Albrecht's 1969 study Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik. Eine soziologische Untersuchung über die Spielfilme des Dritten Reiches, Weinstein provides important statistical information that “523 of 1,094 German feature films (48 percent)” produced from 1933 to 1945 were comedic (1). This is important information to provide at the start of the book to show the scope of Nazi comedy film. However, this book provides in-depth analyses of only approximately eight Nazi era comedy films spread out over seven chapters. The films discussed are Nur nicht weich werden, Susanne! (1935), Glückskinder (1936), Wenn wir alle Engel wären (1936), April! April! (1935), Donogoo Tonka (1936), Robert und Bertram (1939), Münchhausen (1943), and Die Feuerzangenbowle (1944). Of these eight films, however, only the latter two—which Weinstein analyzes in her seventh chapter—enjoyed popular success, continued to be screened after 1945, and retained a certain popularity with postwar audiences. The other films either struggled at the box office or were even overtly anti-Semitic, such as Nur nicht weich werden, Susanne! (1935), which thus stands out as less representative of the 523 film comedies produced during the Nazi era.

Although Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany provides an important shift in analyzing Nazi era comedy film for being inferentially anti-Semitic and for portraying the vision of a Germany free of Jews, the book falls short of examining or classifying a significant number of the more than 500 comedy films produced in the Third Reich, which would be a much bigger project, beyond the scope of this book. Nonetheless, Valerie Weinstein has advanced the scholarship on the topic tremendously, and this book is a must-read for all scholars interested in Nazi era film.