Bill Niven opens this erudite and engaging book by noting that previous authors have argued for Adolf Hitler's overriding interest in specific art forms, including architecture, music (more specifically, opera), painting and sculpture, interior design, and literature. Niven's brief here is to assert the importance of film in the Führer’s life and governing practices, and he documents the myriad ways in which the dictator engaged with cinematic productions; these included watching movies, commissioning projects, supervising the Wochenschau (newsreels), and interacting with artists. This is an informative and illuminating undertaking—Hitler certainly asserted himself in this realm—but it is important to keep his views about film in context. Hitler was more interested in architecture than in any of the other disciplines, and the fact that many of his closest aides claim that he never watched a feature film once military conflict commenced in 1939 makes it clear that cinema was not his highest priority.

Niven does not argue specifically that film was Hitler's greatest passion. Rather, he sets the bar considerably lower: “My argument is not that Hitler was more important than [Joseph] Goebbels when it came to overseeing film production. I am claiming, however, that Hitler was more than a passive consumer of feature films, watched night after night at his mountain residence, the Berghof” (2). Niven makes his case that Hitler was more than just a “passive consumer,” but later in the book, he revises his argument and claims that, “overall, [Hitler] remained the supreme arbiter in film matters; Goebbels deferred to him in disputes over individual films, and issues of general film policy” (141). The two claims, though ostensibly at odds, can be reconciled: Goebbels was more hands-on in production matters, but, when an issue arose and Hitler was consulted, the Führer clearly had the last word.

One of the challenges of tracking Hitler's involvement in film is determining which decisions were his—and which came from Goebbels. In his analysis of the designation “divinely gifted” artist, for example, the determination of this status (and the threats of revocation) came from Goebbels, with Hitler evidently playing a secondary role. Niven is able to separate the two leaders at times: for example, building on the work of earlier scholars, he points out that “Hitler believed in the production of explicit propaganda films, whereas Goebbels was more interested in insinuating propaganda discreetly into feature films” (58). Yet, there are stretches in this book where Hitler is absent from the discussion. Niven instead provides a good and nuanced discussion of film in the Third Reich—making it a volume that adds to an already rich historiography. Niven has evidently viewed an extraordinary number of the 1,097 feature films produced in Germany between 1933 and 1945 (a figure provided in David Welch, Propaganda and Nazi Cinema, 1933-1945 [1983], 42). He offers insightful close readings of many iconic Nazi films, including Leni Riefenstahl's productions, but he also discusses many lesser-known works, thus augmenting the contribution of his book.

Hitler and Film commences with a study of the feature films that Hitler watched at the Berghof and at the Berlin Reich Chancellery prior to the outbreak of war. Niven makes especially good use of the recollections of Hitler's aides, such as his bodyguard Rochus Misch and his adjutant Julius Schaub. In a lively discussion, Niven chronicles how Hitler “watched adventure films, crime thrillers, film dramas, historical epics, musicals, revue films, comedies, romance films, westerns, cartoons—anything” (9). Niven's analysis yields insights into Hitler's personality that are sometimes surprising. He notes, for example, that the Führer “did not always or only judge films by their content” (14), i.e., he enjoyed films by Laurel and Hardy, in addition to other comedies, and Clark Gable was one of his favorite actors. Niven also notes Hitler's obsessive-compulsive personality, citing Herbert Rosendorfer, who claimed in Bayreuth für Anfänger (1984) that Hitler viewed the 1933 movie King Kong some three hundred times. In trying to answer challenging questions (e.g., what film was Hitler's favorite? Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs from 1937 merits consideration), Niven is admirably transparent and cautious. He points out when there are gaps in the evidence or when witnesses offer contradictory statements. Niven has conducted impressive archival research and he exhibits a command of the scholarly literature in both English and German. But he is prepared to acknowledge that certain questions elude definitive answers, and this only strengthens his analysis.

Niven's chapter on Hitler's interactions with actors and others in the film industry is also nuanced and well crafted. Hitler, like Goebbels, identified with artistic types, and, up until the start of the war, the dictator spent considerable time with artists. “Hitler gave actors the feeling they mattered,” Niven notes, “he granted them tax concessions, attended their film premieres, sent them presents, gave them awards and titles, and sometimes offered his help and protection when they ran into difficulties” (120). Niven goes on to show how, in turn, the actors and crews served Hitler—often right up to the end of the war. The careful scholarship here, including a consultation of Hitler's personal telephone book, and Niven's deep knowledge of the film personalities of the time, make this chapter a tour de force.

Chapter 7, which focuses on Hitler and cinema during the war, sometimes drifts away from the dictator himself (in part, as mentioned, because he rarely, if ever, watched features after 1939). Yet, Niven's treatment here of the documentaries and newsreels is particularly strong. Hitler had a keen interest in how military events were portrayed, and he micromanaged certain productions, such as the army film Victory in the West (1941), which involved “requests for the message behind certain passages to be strengthened or toned down” (145). One comes away from Niven's book with an appreciation of Hitler as a propagandist: he took great care, and showed considerable skill, in simplifying a message and communicating it in a powerful way.

The goal of chapter 8—exploring antisemitic Nazi film (more specifically, Jud Süss and Der ewige Jude) “in relation to the evolution of Hitler's anti-Semitic policies and ideas” (163)—is a laudable if exceedingly difficult task. The issue here concerns the extent to which Hitler used film to intensify antisemitism and compel Germans to participate in, or at least tolerate, a genocidal program. Niven offers insight into the making of antisemitic films, going back to Per-Axel Branner's Petterson & Bendel (1933). His analysis of both Jud Süss and Der ewige Jude is particularly deft: he triangulates between archival documents, an extensive scholarly literature, and the self-serving postwar memoirs of key figures, such as Veit Harlan, the director of Jud Süss, to gain an understanding of their creative process—and to point out their postwar lies (e.g., that Goebblels threatened to send Harlan to Dachau if he did not make the film).

The weakness of this chapter lies in the dearth of information about the evolution of Hitler's Jewish policy, especially during the war. Any consideration of the decision to commit genocide must include the scholarship of Christopher Browning, especially his magisterial study (with Jürgen Matthäus), The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939—March 1942 (2007). There is no doubt, as Niven writes, that the “production of Jew Süss stands in close relation to the three major events in the history of the Nazi persecution of Jews to which Hitler was central: Reichskristallnacht, Hitler's 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech, and the implementation of anti-Semitic measures in occupied Poland” (170). But, in offering formulations such as “the film points forwards to the Holocaust, insofar as it recommends killing as the ultimate answer to the perils of racial intermingling” (170), the connection that Niven sees between art and act remains uncertain.

Bill Niven makes a genuine contribution to both the study of Nazi cinema and to our understanding of Hitler himself. Even with the challenge of parsing the roles played by Goebbels and Hitler, Niven argues persuasively that Hitler appreciated the power of film—movies were shown in the Reich to the very end of the war—and that he truly enjoyed cinema during the prewar period. Niven concludes the book with this observation: “To this day, despite critical books and articles, Germany has never really confronted the fact that the German film industry as a whole pandered to Hitler in one way or another” (230). The way that Niven holds artists to account emerges as a powerful counterweight to his arguments about the Führer and film.