Hangmen Also Die!

When a truth is a lie stated with authority, we call that propaganda. When a truth we accept is stated with authority, we also call that propaganda — but in a good way.

Hollywood propaganda from World War II had a moral clarity that went like this: Nazis are bad. Love that propaganda!

White House propaganda from right now also has a moral clarity. It goes like this: immigrants are bad. Hate it!

Recently the White House put out propaganda in the guise of budget guidance called “Defunding the Open Border.” In it, they eliminate funds for adult education. They claim adult education incentivizes undocumented migrants.

I teach classes in adult education, funded by the grants they will cut. My classes are good, sure, but nobody walks from Venezuela just for the privilege of taking them.

I am reminded of Heather McGhee’s book The Sum of Us, which detailed the cost of racism for everyone, not just the intended victims. In one example, municipalities closed their public pools when they were mandated to stop their “whites only” policies. Nobody gets to swim if they get to swim.

Nobody gets adult education if they get to go to class.

Here’s the thing about being rich: you can swim at a private club or in your backyard pool. You can pay for an education at a private school.

Another thing about rich people: most of us aren’t them and never will be. But we might enjoy the public pool in the summer. Or get a high school certificate (GED) at a community college to move out of poverty.

I hate anti-immigrant propaganda.

Everybody loses — even racists!

If we need a symbol of America, the Statue of Liberty is right there in NYC. No need to offshore our aspirations as a country to a Salvadorian death camp.

As you may have guessed, these days are bit fraught for me mentally. I found unexpected solace in Hangmen Also Die!, 1943 film by Fritz Lang. The film is about the Czech resistance in Prague made while the occupation of Prague was still happening. The “hangman” of the title is Reinhard Heydrich who was assassinated by some badass Czechs. This guy Heydrich was bad for a Nazi. The film is loosely based on this real event.

There is real power in watching anti-fascist movies made during, not after, World War II. Does the movie veer into melodrama and, yes, pro-resistance propaganda? Yes, yes, it does and wonderfully so – with words by none other than Berthold Brecht, here credited as “Bert”. Oh, my lord, the catharsis of watching this movie’s moral clarity about Nazis. Yes, this may be propaganda, but it is my propaganda. No movie has gut-punched me like this one recently. That’s because of the authenticity of its fist: a resistance narrative made during the resistance, without apology. When it comes to Nazi occupiers, at least in 2025, screw the gray zone, the apologists, the whatabouters, the well, not really people, and the what does Fascism really mean? brigade.

All Fritz Lang and Berthold Brecht needed us to know about Nazis was that they also die.

What I really loved in Hangmen Also Die!, what’s delicious and delectable, is watching a sputtering lickspittle Nazi-collaborator absolutely squirm as he is found out and framed. Played by wonderfully by Gene Lockhart, the sniveling turncoat slowly changes from smug to scared as he is, inevitably, betrayed by the fascists he served. (The fascists, in a lovely twist, know he is innocent but find it more expedient to pretend the opposite.)

One Anti-Nazi Propaganda Movie Isn’t Enough!

The Ministry of Fear is another good Lang picture made the following year. Based on a Graham Greene novel, it’s about uncovering a Nazi spy ring in rural England.

Along with Hangmen Also Die! in the Criterion Channel’s “Noir and the Blacklist” series is None Shall Escape. It concerns a Nazi being held to account for war crimes. It contains the first depiction of the holocaust in a movie, when information about concentration camps wasn’t fully known. The movie was made before there were any Nuremburg trials. Yet, it imagines the day when those responsible for the suffering of innocents will be held to account. This is a deeply hopeful, and needed, message.

Both Fritz Lang and Andre de Toth who directed these films were immigrants who fled the Nazis for California. The Statue of Liberty meant something to them: Mother of exiles. From her beaconed hand flows world-wide welcome… 

The two exiles peddled grade-A propaganda. The good kind. The Nazis are bad kind. They provided a sort of moral clarity that is cathartic and mind-clearing — things are bad now but right and wrong are glaringly obvious. And, ultimately, if we act, the world will right itself. That’s the hope.

Desire Paths wafts in your general direction every two weeks. It’s all hand-crafted with love in the basement office of Jonathan Gourlay and seasoned with only the finest artisanal ennui. Do you get a kick out of it or imagine a friend / enemy might? Send them a link!