OK clearly I should have read up the fine detail before posting but I was swamped with other things.
My abiding impression, also upheld by
this article (which is not so good given that they can't tell the difference between the 19th and 20th centuries, but), which pretty much states what I though. That Hitler's real take over of power didn't start to roll until 1935 and onwards.
So he had the makings of power. So he had passed acts to give him overall control of the Jews. BUT, he was not, at that time, doing all the things which give "Nazi" the connotation it does today. Dachau, which I have been to and stayed for the tour, was an SS training camp. Yes it was a work camp but it was the initial camp where Hitler dumped his political prisoners and, whilst extremely brutal, was not the kind of camp which, for instance, Auschwitz was designed to be.
At that time, in fact, it was perceived as no worse than the
concentration camps Kitchener had used in the Boer war. Something _we_ were hardly likely to complain about given that we allowed 26,000 women and children to die in them.....
So, to put the background to the entire thing, Germany, in 1933, was in an unholy mess. The country administration had essentially collapsed, it was bankrupt, being pillaged by wealthy French and people were out of work and starving. A wheelbarrow was worth more than the money it could carry.
Hitler was seen as a stabilising force and his arcane tactics was "allowed" in the name of bringing order out of total chaos.
IF the world had known generally about the laws passed against Jews and racial purity, I doubt very much whether they would have actually bothered that much. Certainly it would only have been certain portions of the press who would have cared to report it. Before 1933 Germany had actually been one of the Least hostile places in the world to live, for a Jew. Russia? Poland? Ghettos where the Jews were separated by race and Pogroms were carried out regularly by the high born. Even after the advent of Communism in Russia Jews were still seen with suspicion and ostracised in the "Great Workers Republic".
Are we to believe that the western world _knew_ the horrors Hitler was building up for the Jews and both DID and SAID nothing, by word or action, to condemn it? Are we to believe that the world attended the 1936 Olympics knowing that Hitler was planning (if not actually executing), mass murder of Jews in the Death Camps. 1936 being either 2 or 3 years after this film is supposed to have been taken.
No, I'm not going to believe for one second that we can view the actions of this film in the light of full foreknowledge of the nightmare of terror which the Nazi regime was to become. To me it was simply an aping of a stupid salute. I must admit that only the Adults would remember what was being said on that film and there is no soundtrack and the Adults are all dead.
Could the voice from the back of the camera be saying "Go on make that stupid salute again for the camera". Of course it could. Could it also be saying "Go on practise that salute so we can also be like them"? It could be, yes. BUT, in the absence of evidence, it would take me a lot to persuade me that it is true.
So, Yes, it is a political manipulation of the people trying to garner outrage at a salute, given in full innocence of the horrors that salute was to preside over, to present that film now and try and use it as a weapon to discredit the monarchy.
Sadly, also, this is personal. After my Grandmother died my Grandfather entered into a relationship with a Jewess which only ended with his death. Had she not had a sister who needed constant attention and chosen to marry him, I would probably have a Jewish Uncle or Aunt right now. My Grandfather, due to his involvement in the Jewish community, wound up the owner of a family company of whom all the rest of the family had died in the Holocaust.
Anyone who wants to try and use this situation for their own political gains and their sordid attacks on the Monarchy makes me physically want to vomit. I never really liked the Sun but they are now, officially, on my hate mail list....
