Beast of Britain

Between bomb blasts, through the blackout, Berliners stumbled to their cinemas last week to get a Nazi-eye view of what the unspeakable British have been up to all these years. With noisy and immense satisfaction they saw beefy, aging Emil Jannings play Stephanus Johannes Paulus Krueger, South Africa's famed Boer statesman, in Tobis Film's production Ohm Krueger. This Nazi rewrite of the Boer War for home consumption is pure propaganda--reminiscent of The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin, and other thrillers tossed off during World War I to raise the U.S.'s blood to battle heat against the unspeakable Germans.

Ohm Krueger jerks along with the customary lack of continuity of the German film. Its Nazi-drawn characters are either snow-white or jet-black. Krueger is a simple, modest, wise Boer elder statesman. Cecil Rhodes (Ferdinand Marian) is a rich, conniving Englishman who behaves like a sinister city slicker out of a Class B Western. His one thought is to rob the hard-working Boers of the gold beneath their peaceful farm lands. Behind him is the might of Britain in the person of a fat, money-lusting Queen Victoria (Hedwig Wangel), sly, oily Minister Chamberlain (Gustav Griindgens). Throughout the film only two nations befriend the Boers--The Netherlands and Germany.

Not until Britain traitorously declares war on the Boers does the Nazi propaganda begin to make hay. British troops come to the farm of Krueger's pacifistic, English-educated son, Jan (Werner Hinz), molest his wife, drive him into the Boer forces. In a concentration camp his wife and children are starved, whaled with rifle butts by the sadistic British. Dead prisoners lie in open ditches while bored guards cover them with quicklime. The camp commandant lives the life of Riley with a mistress and a puffy bulldog to whom he feeds juicy steaks. Meantime Lord Kitchener announces that the war shall proceed against women & children.

At the end old, blind, fugitive Ohm Paul Krueger tells his Swiss nurse that some day a big nation will arise to avenge the Boers for their treatment by that bully, Britain. In Berlin that brings down the house.

In one interesting scene English missionaries are shown simultaneously distributing Bibles and guns to native Africans. These recipients of British largess were played by 50 Senegalese captured last summer on the Western Front in time for the film's shooting. Somewhat confined by the British blockade, Producer Jannings made the fields of Berlin's suburbs serve for the African veldt. It was no trouble to get oxen from Hungary. Nor were soldiers a problem. Adolf Hitler gladly supplied them from his vast unused troop pool.

Actor Jannings, Germany's No. 1 cinema star, spent 1,500,000 marks producing Ohm Krueger. When it opened recently, he explained the new conception of the Boer hero in the light of history as the Nazis now see it. Said he: "In the most difficult hours of his life Krueger clung always to the theory that no individual and no nation shall deviate from the path of duty by withdrawing from its mission of sacrificing itself for the future."

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