In their propaganda campaign against the British (or, more accurately, the English), the Nazis not surprisingly selected four of the murkier episodes in the history of Britain’s relationships with other peoples: Palestine, India, Ireland and Africa. Palestine and India did not become the subject of feature films: in Palestine there was a double enemy: the British and the Jews. Although they could easily be depicted as conniving to suppress the Arabs, this would have complicated the simplicity of the propagandist’s message. In India the problem would have been slightly different: although there was ample genetic evidence that the Indians had Aryan connections, it would have been difficult for the Nazis to portray the Indians as superior, even to the British, whom Goebbels once described as the ‘Jews among the Aryans.’

     The subject of Ireland produced two powerful films: The Fox of Glenarvon in 1940 and My Life for Ireland in 1941. These films, like Uncle Kruger, were intended to prepare German audiences for Operation Sealion, the invasion of the British Isles. They constitute a powerful indictment of the crimes committed by the British against their nearest neighbors, and they would make far more effective propaganda for the IRA than the slaughter of innocent civilians. But it was in Africa, and in the long envied process of imperial expansion and colonization, that the Nazis found the most fertile ground for their propaganda in the form of Uncle Kruger.

     The message for the 1941 audience is crystal clear, and SS reports demonstrated that it had got across: ‘For wide circles of the population the film had undoubtedly fulfilled its propagandistic purpose. The belligerent attitude towards England has been significantly strengthened and deepened. The film was released on 4 April 1941 in Berlin. Shortly afterwards it became the first film to be honored with the new designation ‘Film of the Nation’. Emil Jannings was presented with something called the ‘Ring of Honour of the German Cinema’ and, at the Venice film festival, Uncle Kruger won the Mussolini Prize for the best foreign film. For obvious reasons there was much support for the idea, voiced by Kruger in the film, that ‘One can never come to an understanding with the English.’