Erwin Leiser has made two compilation films about his native Germany under fascism, Mein Kampf, which juxtaposes Hitler's words against the reality shown by newsreel clips, and Germany Awake!, made up of sequences from feature films produced during the Third Reich. In Germany, Awake!, which was originally shown on West German TV in 1968, Leiser has skillfully assembled his material around one theme: propaganda in the films of Nazi Germany. In the preface to his book, “Nazi Cinema,” written as a supplement to the film (and available in English from Collier Books), Leiser states:
“There is very little commentary, and only occasionally are the distortions which these films make juxtaposed with the truth. These sequences, which I have classified as propaganda and arranged in some kind of order, are in themselves enough to expose the workings of National Socialist propaganda. To have presented them more explicitly would only have prompted some kind of emotional reaction, and might thereby have activated in many viewers a defense mechanism and a readiness to suppress the truth. Because things are left unsaid in the film, the viewer is placed in an emotional vacuum and obliged to adopt a personal, critical attitude towards the material. It is thus impossible for an audience to identify unthinkingly with either the propaganda contained in the film sequences or with my own comments. No value judgments are made; this is left to the viewer. There is no mention of names, since it is the subject which is important. The material must be judged in a contemporary light.”