The Brothers Warner (2007 TV Movie)

Michael Birdwell: Self - historian

Quotes 

• Self - historian : It's not just he Hollywood industry that is selling its product overseas, but, Americans across the board are doing business with Nazi Germany. You know, the International Business Machine, for example, IBM, they're working with Nazi Germany. In fact, they develop the device to catalog the folks who will go to the prison camps. The Warner Brothers wanted to make a film called, "Concentration Camp." This was based on the reporting that had been coming in about the concentration camps. Dachau opened in March of 1933. I mean, people forget that the camps started that early. Harry Warner wanted folks in the studio to start collecting stories. You know, start going through newspapers. They're going to focus on the horrors of the camp. I mean, they can't be as graphic as they could be today. But, about people losing their civil liberties, people being rounded up, you know, put into these camps for forced labor. So, the Production Code says, "No, you can't do that." And they say that, "If you try to go through with this film, we'll contact the State Department." It's a funny thing to me if Warner Brothers knows there's concentration camps in the mid-30s, then other people know. And so, it was a real attempt at making a very hard hitting film that they didn't get to make, unfortunately.