Exculpating Germany *During* World War II (!): Bosley Crowther on "The Seventh Cross"

Bosley Crowther

Thanks to the inadequacy of President Barack Obama, Governor Chris Christie, and Mayor Jeff Jones, Paterson, New Jersey's third largest city, and one of the nation's most historic, has left a good number of its citizens without power for the sixth day.

We are cold, we are hungry, and we are worried.

And I've been unable to blog in that time.

But I have been thinking about Polish-Jewish relations.

And I came here to a public library that actually has power to share some thoughts.

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Readers of "Bieganski" will fully understand the significance of the below-quoted Bosley Crowther, New York Times film review of 1944's "The Seventh Cross."

"Bieganski" describes how guilt for the Holocaust, which properly belongs to German Nazis, is often displaced onto, not just individual Poles, but onto a posited Polish archetype, the Brute Polak.

At the same time, German Nazis can be depicted as sexy. And German Nazis can be exculpated for their guilt through a variety of rhetorical strategies. The chapters on Bieganski in the Mainstream Press and The Necessity of Bieganski talk most directly about the process of exculpating Germans and/or Nazis, and implicating Poles qua Poles, and the clever rhetorical strategies that make all that ethical legerdemain viable.

One previous blog post talks about part of this process in a review of a film, "Decision before Dawn."

While camping out in my dark and cold post-Hurricane Sandy apartment, and reading through my massive clip file on Polish-Jewish relations, I came across Bosley Crowther's review of "The Seventh Cross." Crowther was the New York Times' film critic for twenty-seven years. He had influence, and he reflected the opinions of those who have influence.

"The Seventh Cross" is a grim, black-and-white Hollywood film that attempts to present to American audiences the horrors of the Holocaust.

That this film tries to do that work is admirable. As my own essay on "Hollywood and the Holocaust" reports, too few took up that work.

What I find fascinating about Crowther's review is his immediate and emphatic emphasis, in September of 1944, on NOT blaming or stereotyping Germans.

Think about it.

September, 1944.

By that point, the Holocaust was all but over. The Lodz Ghetto was liquidated in August, 1944. It was the last ghetto in Poland. The gas chambers of Auschwitz murdered their last victims in October, 1944.

Paris had been liberated. The Battle of the Bulge was in full swing. Allies were advancing east. Soviets were advancing west.

It's remarkable that given those world events, American elites were already pressing against any stereotyping of Germans, were, rather, urging Americans to show "tolerance" to Germans. To see how very differently Poles have been treated, please read "Bieganski."

Excerpts from Bosley Crowther's September 29, 1944, review of "The Seventh Cross."

"'Seventh Cross,' Anti-Nazi Drama, With Spencer Tracy, at Capitol Theater

By Bosley Crowther

It was Edmund Burke, the British statesman, who said many, many years ago that he knew of no way of drawing an indictment against a whole people. (The people to whom he then had reference, of course, were the American colonists.) And it is in this same spirit of tolerance that the modern German people are viewed in Metro's absorbing screen version of Anna Seghers' powerful novel, 'The Seventh Cross.' Without in the least overlooking the bestiality of Nazi brutes nor the miserable self-surrender of German citizens to their black regime, this film, which came yesterday to the Capitol, visions a burning zeal for freedom in some German rebels and a core of decency in many simple folk.

True, the German people which it pictures are not supposed to be those of today. They are specifically shown as German people reacting to a crisis in 1936. And presumably most of the rebels and daring burghers of that day are now dead. But the basic theme, by implication, holds today just as much as it held then. It is that in men—even in Germans—there is an instinct for good that cannot be destroyed.

If you will accept this premise, despite the evidence of recent deeds, then you should be both moved and shaken by the better part of this film. For it tells a truly hair-raising story of a German anti-Nazi who escapes from a concentration camp and runs a gamut of terrible trials in his attempt to flee the land. He sees the men who broke out with him killed or captured, one by one; he feels the blank despair and disillusion which comes from finding loved ones false to him. He knows the primitive terror of an animal ruthlessly hunted down, and he gropes in constant dread and suspicion, like a pitiful creature at bay.

All of these torturing emotions are sharply conveyed through the film, as are the more tensile anxieties of the hero when he finds himself with friends. For the most trying part of his experience—and the most touching impact of the theme—comes with the perilous endeavors of these little people to give him aid. The human response of an old pal, now a comfortably settled family man, to the plight of the anti-Nazi outcast is a fine, ennobling portion of the film.

Credit Fred Zinnemann, the director, and Karl Freund, the camera man, for much of the crackling tension and hard-packed realism that prevails. And credit Helen Deutsch for adapting Frau Seghers' novel with all its monstrousness intact. Except for a wholly meretricious romantic interlude provided for the fugitive at the finish, the whole thing rings stunningly true.

Spencer Tracy gives a splendid performance as the tortured and anguished hunted man—a performance sharply reminiscent of that which he gave in 'Fury.' Hume Cronyn is splendidly bourgeois as the old pal who helps him out, and Jessica Tandy is emotionally devastating as the latter's courageous wife. Other good performances are given in lesser roles by Herbert Rudley, Paul Guilfoyle and Signe Hasso, even though that of the last named is a senseless one at best

The big reservation which this writer holds with regard to this film is that concerning the discretion of its theme at this particular time. Without any question, it creates a human sympathy for the people of a nation with whom we are at war and it tends, as have some others, to load Germany's national crime on Nazi backs. Obviously this picture can make sentiment for a 'soft' peace. It looks as though we are getting a dandy 'thriller' at a pretty high price.'"