An Accident of Resistance in Nazi Germany: Oskar Kalbus's Three-Volume History of German Film (1935–37)

This article reconsiders the first comprehensive history of German film, Oskar Kalbus's two-volume Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst (On the Rise of German Film Art, 1935) in terms of its contemporary reception in Nazi Germany and in light of a newly surfaced third volume. This is the first article dedicated to a work that scholars have long cited, though rarely without suspicion. The newly surfaced typescript for Der Film im Dritten Reich (Film in the Third Reich, 1937) confirms the author's National Socialist sympathies, but at the same time it highlights by contrast the virtues of the two published volumes.