drama film
directed by Veit Harlan
and starring Otto Gebühr
. It depicts the life of Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia
from 1740 to 1786. It received the rare "Film of the Nation" distinction.
The film is a depiction of the Führerprinzip
, with the analogy to Hitler being so clear that Hitler sent a print to Mussolini, and Goebbels warning against the drawing of the comparison in print, in particular because the pessimistic mood that opens the film.
But what first motivated me wasn’t anything I read. I just got mad seeing the machines ripping up the woods and so forth...
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.
If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.
Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society.
[W]e are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not.