WHY Are There So Many Nazi Sympathizer Movies?? | Where Hands Touch 

You got a little mixed up about circumcision, jewish people do get circumcised. Its a 3000 year old jewish tradition that symbolizes the bond between Abraham and God. The nazis were not circumcised, as it was and still is very uncommon for non jews/muslims to be circumcised in Europe.

The “minority teaches racists how to not be racist” trope is so tired. The burden is always put on the oppressed, never the oppressor.

I feel Jojo rabbit did a good job of showing the main character as a confused kid who just wants to fit in to the other kids and his friendship with the Jewish girl his mother hides changes his mind on what the Jewish people are like and the mindset he had. It's not sympathetic to the nazis, making fun of them and yet showing how they brainwashed kids to follow their beliefs.

“Remember, he’s not racist…he likes jazz.”💀

“An African American patient who believes Adolf Hitler has taken presence inside her” Jesus i didn’t know i could roll my eyes harder

To clarify, Jazz music was quite literally created by black people in America during the 30’s Harlem Renaissance era. It wouldn’t be considered “stereotypically black” when it literally is black, so it makes sense that it would be banned in Nazi Germany. It’s also so weird that black females are consistently used in these style of movies as if it’s our responsibility to change these extremely racist and violent people. Anyway love ur vids 💕

The most frustrating thing about the idea of "not all of them were bad people" is that we KNOW the nazis, including a lot of the TOP officers in the camps, etc, were actually, pretty normal people. Who did horrible things. They weren't mentally ill or psychopaths or whatever sanist words get thrown around to describe heinous acts. And people DON'T want to acknowledge that--they want to other and distance fascists and nazis and think of them as monsters or as somehow mentally "off" or ill or brainwashed. Thing is that, no,--normal people, people we would usually think of as "decent", with families and communities they cared for, etc, can do horrible things because we are very good at compartmentalizing parts of our lives and dehumanizing others when we want to. While still believing we're doing the "right thing." And not acknowledging these facts and just how "normal" Nazis actually were (and colonizers and slave holders, etc) really not only does a disservice to actually mentally ill people, (which then ironically dehumanizes and others them) but also makes it a lot easier to ignore or slip into fascism again or dehumanize others without acknowledging where that can and has lead. It's much easier to think "that can never happen here/again/now" or to think that you or the people you know would never participate in that or passively let that happen. Fascism and genocide are monstrous, but it's not a monster we can distance ourselves from without risking that it takes seed again. Winston Churchill held basically all the same views as the Nazis--they just weren't practice "at home" in Britain, they were practiced in their colonies like India, where Churchill and the British government was responsible for a famine there during WWII. We like to pretend there are good and bad actors in world history and that's not always the case, ESPECIALLY with governments.

This reminds me of that whole tiktok trend where people pretended to be a jewish person that died during the holocaust and it was disgusting af. I remember one where some girl was looking at the camera and there where voices in the background that where meant to be nazis saying stuff like `she´s so beautiful, we should keep her´🤮 The narcissism. The victim complex. The disrespect. Just using real trauma that doesn´t have anything to do with them and make it all about themselves and commercializing it for Tiktok fame. This movie feeds into that very same sickening ´fantasy´. Like NO get out of here 🤢

As a black woman, movies like these scream the whole “black people can be racist too!” Sentiments. Which is weird for the writers to want the audience to not sympathize with an Afro German girl during the Holocaust. They use her race as a plot device but don’t explore why or how Lena is the way she is…

Recently an author popped up on booktok who writes literal SS officer x Jewish prisoner romance and when asked if she actually talked to anyone Jewish about it she said she didn't and that she didn't have to and she also made like "Thirst' videos over her Nazi characters because she wrote more than one. It was wild. And when called out about it she acted like it was perfectly normal and that there was nothing wrong w/ it. She also said that they were "important stories to tell.' It was WILD

I feel like we can really blame The Boy with the Striped Pajamas for these kind of movies. It's extremely popular among non Jews aka most of the world's population despite being filled with inaccuracies and being one of the worst pieces of holocaust media ever made.

When I saw that this was written and directed by a black woman my heart DROPPED

This is so disgusting .... Last week one of the last survivors of a concentration camp the went to my school, she's 94 now, and hearing all she went through really broke my heart. I hope she doesn't never hear about this movies .....

As a German those movies make me uncomfortable af. They are taking our horrible history to romanticise stuff which is not meant to be romanticised and then commercialise it wtf Edit: since right-wing people are trying to interpret my comment as self-pity for Germany's history: ofc it isn't ment like that and pls spread your antisemitic/ nationalistic ideas somewhere else (or just stop it. It is absolutely stupid and inhuman af)

As a Jew it's incredibly distressing whenever a movie is released that sympathises for Nazis or German families who supported the Nazi regime. It dehumanizes us Jews and instead people feel for the Nazis. Germans were not oblivious to what was going on; which was genocide, and many Germans supported the regime or simply kept quiet in fear.

I am Ukrainian, and a few days ago I saw a post somewhere about a movie that Netflix plans to film after the war in Ukraine is over. It's probably a fake new, but it made me feel bad anyways. Basically about a russian soldier and a ukrainian woman falling in love. I honestly think it's disrespectful.

You know like I understand the feeling about “wanting a redemption arc” and “bad guy turned good by the power of LOVE”, but like that only works for fictional people... why nazis bro 💀😀

the fact that there is nazi sympathizer movies and confederate sympathizer movies is shocking

As a Cohen... why are they taking a traditional Jewish last name and using it as a first name??? For the one non-discriminated against character?? The creators failed on Step 1: name your characters

ok i get that a lot of nazis (like the children, not the adults) were brainwashed into these beliefs and they were literally all that they knew, but movies like this where you’re supposed to sympathise with the ones that should have known what they were doing was wrong really upsets me, not just as a jewish person but as a person generally. movies like jojo rabbit that shows how ridiculous the nazi beliefs were and show how the children were brainwashed into thinking those ridiculous things make sense to me and i like a lot. jojo rabbit is a great movie and i recommend that everybody watches that if they want to see a movie about nazis that a lot of people misunderstand and think is about sympathising with nazis but is literally the exact opposite

I genuinely did not know that there were people who made these movies. Who wrote these? And actually made it? Writing out dialogue, doing auditions, hiring people, and full on producing it and not once they were like “maybe this is just a tiny bit insensitive and disgusting”

kind of loving Grayson’s movie critic era

the idea that nazis didn't know what was happening during the holocaust or didn't know hitler's goals is so disgustingly inaccurate. hitler was not hiding his intentions, he publicly spoke about his genocidal goals. and many germans knowingly and outwardly supported it! they watched their neighbors being forcibly removed from their homes never to return, they watched concentration camp prisoners work in the factories in their towns, and many either did not care or were happy about it. the idea that germans didn't know is a post-world war 2 attempt by complicit germans to separate themselves from the holocaust and the war so as not to be "punished."

Also I feel like the elephant in the room, the boy in the striped pajamas, should be addressed. The story is historically inaccurate and is fiction written by a man who isn’t jewish, and the story tries to humanize the nazis and their son (the mc in the film, alongside a jewish character who lives in the camp.) it’s historically revisionist for many reasons but also for the fact it is very unlikely that Shmuel (the Jewish boy) would actually have met Bruno (the nazi’s son), because Jewish children were sent to gas chambers and killed instantaneously, and if they weren’t killed, they were experimented on (ex. Mengele’s twin experiments). Also, Bruno wouldn’t have been empathetic to Shmuel. From day one German children were spoon fed antisemitic propaganda, leading up to the Shoah in classes the “Aryan” students would point out the differences between them and the Jewish students. It seems as if Bruno doesn’t know what a Jewish person is in the film until he meets Shmuel, when he definitely would have. Germans were well aware of the Holocaust and complicit in the Nazis’ crimes, the idea that they didn’t have any knowledge of what was going on is so so harmful and false.

If they where going to make a movie about Nazi anything, it should have been about those like 6 teenagers who where apart if hitler youth and realized that what they where doing was wrong, and became activists against what was happening and got murdered for trying to hold a protest at their university

As a Jew, this is gonna be interesting because I constantly wonder the same thing.

I feel like American History X and Jojo Rabbit did a good job showing us why people fall for fascism.

American history X is a good example of a movie that (heavily) touches on neonazism without trying to whitewash everything and turn it into a corny story where "the bad guys just needed a hug and now theyre good and forgiven by the group they hated and now everything is ok 🤗🤗🤗". That movie is HEAVY.

Lately I’ve been interested in all of the aftermath of WWII. Mass suicides and how POWs were treated. Like, I don’t think the repercussions are really explored as an interesting story. It’s just assumed that the war itself was the interesting bit. Massive amounts of people were displaced, people were still killing each other. If we’re going to be forced to pay attention to Nazis in a humanizing light, I’d rather it be a true story about the aftermath of allied occupation and the harrowing realization of the impact of the propaganda they were fed than some bullshit story about a black girl and a Nazi white boy falling in love. Does that even make sense?

People in the comments mad she didn’t buy the other movie…I don’t think she wanted to directly give those ppl money. Also people are allowed to spend money on what they want even if you think it’s silly, I’m sure the decorations she bought in a past video are cool.

growing up learning about what happened in Germany, they almost never touched on the fact that black ppl or anything not white was not accepted and would also be in the camps. I found it interesting and surprising as a child.

"My brother in Christ, you are a Nazi and this is Nazi camp. The call is coming from inside the house." That almost made me do a spit take.

One time someone sent me a screenshot from neo Ned and said “this could be us” I’m black and they were white 💀💀💀

The fact that someone not only made a movie about this, but multiple people did? That's absurd.

"he isn't racist, he likes jazz" "he isn't racist he likes rap"

i feel this movie COULD’VE possibly been done well. it would work if… 1. the nazi boyfriend was only a nazi bc his dad is forcing him, he’s against the whole thing 2. the main character’s internalized racism was addressed (and resolved at the end) 3. There was a story for the father. He wasn’t deadbeat, but unable to be there either by death or camps 4. The characters weren’t so selfish OR make it a comedy/parody. the whole point is satire, it is not meant to be taken seriously. it just shows pure stupidity and the horrors of the Holocaust

As a POC Jew, movies like this sicken me. We have to deal with antisemitism and racism on a daily fcking basis, and now we have movies that are basically "haha antisemitism and racism is so quirky and whimsical!" Like.... NO.

im not gonna lie, i got traumatised by 'Where hands touch' that movie is so bad and the fact that, like you said, they tried to water down nazisism is disgusting and gross. and the fact that such good actors played in such a dumb scripted movie. i've watched alot of war movies and 'Where hands touch' is the most fucking horrible one...

Also, anti-Semitism and racism was pretty engrained (to varying degrees) in ALL of Europe. I mean, eugenics was still a very resent thing at that time and her parents would have been raised with it.

If someone's interested in Neo Ned, Kennie JD did a review in her "Bad Movies and a Beat" series and I saw the video a while back, so I don't remember it well but yeah the movie is mostly "you're not one of the bad ones"

it would've been one thing if it was a story abt her internalized racism and it became her realizing it's all propaganda and trying to be an activist or smth.... idk there was a lot of weird choices

what’s truly wild is that i think this is a fantasy for some people?? i knew someone who told me they wanted to fall in love with a reformed nazi, and was completely serious about it. like that is not a goal 😭 some people just really like the idea of fixing people

It is actually possible for white supremacists to be deradicalized by interacting with the groups they hate so much. But I’d prefer that story done by someone in a targeted group so we can avoid the whole “apologist” issue

side note, my older brother worked at a juvenile correctional facility a while ago where a kid raised by a neo-nazi family and he was like scared of the black kids at the facility until he actually opened up and like he was just straight up brainwashed by his abusive parents into being a lil skinhead. hopefully he’s okay now, by this point he’s well into adulthood so hopefully he wasn’t re-indoctrinated into that cult

I think the scene with Lutz’ dad was maybe supposed to imply that the dad isn’t _that_ bad of a Nazi. Like sure he’s still a Nazi, and sure he’s still terrible to the prisoners, but he’s not _as_ terrible as all of the other Nazi generals. So that must mean that he hasn’t taught Lutz any of that _really_ bad Nazi propaganda, just the _kind of_ bad Nazi propaganda! Isn’t Lutz such a good Nazi boy from a good Nazi family! /s

Lutz, a walking 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 Leyna: aww he wiped my shoes 😍😍😍😍

There's a book called "The Nazi Officer's Wife, " which tells the story of a Jewish woman name Edith Hahn Beer, who married a Nazi officer. Unfortunately, after the war, the former officer couldn't bring himself to live with a wife with a law degree who was now a government official and not pretending to be a good little German hausfrau, so they divorced. I think the wife ended up emigrating to England.

You got the circumcision thing backwards. Jews=circumcised, nazis=not circumcised.

(As a black girl) WHHYYYYYY, WHYYYYY. WHO ASKED FOR THIS

2:10 the sound that left my body when you said "jeremy renner"....

my great grandpa was a german man high up the ranks that was married to a Jewish woman and the mother of his unborn child, his father funding nazi projects and bribing them managed to hold off problems with her. she'd eventually be killed just because she's a jew and he was arranged to marry the aryan woman that would become my great grandma, when people make "omg some nazi people are good🥺🥺" movies i wonder in they realize these men end up marrying their own and having children with them.

To be perfectly honest, I would argue that _no_ movies about the Nazis are made for Jewish people. Like, Jewish kids get an age-appropriate explanation of the Holocaust when they're around six, it's kind of an important part of their social development to understand why certain elderly relatives behave the way they do. Given that context, why would any of them want to see a movie about shit that happened to their families? I know _I'm_ not interested in watching movies about the genocide of First Nations people, and I'm barely even Metis.

I think the fact that this movie exists and it has relatively big names in it should clue people into what the nature of the film industry really is, regarding the big guys and the money guys in there.

'My brother in christ" was my last straw before I bust out laughing

I feel like the key thing studios get wrong is that most of the time good people aren’t “forced” to do bad things, rather average people are radicalized. It doesn’t make them somehow exempt from their hateful actions. It isn’t really anyones duty to try to empathize with them, but rather recognize and avoid the same patterns today

I told one of my black friends about vaguely remembering a movie with Jeremy Renner as N@zi. She managed to find a link somehow and we both sat and watched it. It had no age rating, but boi dropped like 20 slurs in 1 second. And most importantly we were confused because it seemed by the end he was a "good guy" but we didn't buy it. Better to pirate these types of films lol.

I’m a Jew and Where Hands Touch gave me such a migraine it took me a week to get through it. I don't know who thought that would be a good idea but it was not ❤

it is so hard for me to believe that the nazi love interest played the main character in 1917 only a year later💀

I don’t mean to nitpick, but America was actually more involved in the Pacific area of the war fighting Japan, than the one in Europe. Don’t get me wrong, they sent reinforcements to help the European allies, but generally the war in Europe isn’t referred to as America and their allies vs Germany.

I really don't know why but for a movie set in 1940's Germany, with German characters, this felt very American

Bruh, I’ve known about Neo Ned for years, and I’m still like *stares at the camera like on The Office* whenever I hear about it. Like HOW is this a thing that exists??

I am someone that believes that people can reach redemption and I love to see it. I think life is a constant battle of being better and not being perfect. That being said, I couldn’t watch this movie. It watered down what was actually happening in Nazi Germany. Like you said, the teenagernew what they were doing. They were being taught. They may not have known the full implications, but teenagers can tell right from wrong. These sympathizer movies are very irresponsible. I could have bought soooo much cheesecake with the money they wasted on this movie.

Grayson I love this so much from you. I like watching movie critiques in general but hearing it from you makes it all the more satisfying.

I'm reading articles about what the main actress and the director had to say about the film, and she says it was meant to portray a biracial experience in Nazi Germany. So... why is there a love interest? why didn't the director make a movie purely about being biracial in Nazi Germany...

There's LOTS of really problematic films about Nazis and the Holocaust. Once you start looking closer at the mini industry-inside-the-film-industry that are these movies, it becomes pretty clear how fucked up it is. Most of it is trauma porn and white savior veneration, and a lot of it refuses to give Jews any voice, humanity, agency, or Jewish identity (Schindler's List is a great example of this - Jews are basically props. And it, like lots of these movies, fails to cast Jews in Jewish roles). Claude Lanzmann, a Holocaust survivor who made a 9.5 hour long documentary about the Holocaust, hated Holocaust movies for these reasons. The only one he liked that I know of is 'Son of Saul.' (Edit: People are commenting to tell me that Schindler's List is a bad example for my point. It's not. Jewish journalists and scholars have written lots about this - Tablet, Forward, Dara Horn, etc. Just because Spielberg is Jewish and had good intentions doesn't mean that he can't produce media that plays into systemic dehumanization of Jews. Any member of a minority group can unintentionally produce media harmful to their group, especially when that media's commercial success depends on approval from a society that historically oppressed that group.)

My dad was Jewish and my mom is French, so let’s just say my family and nazi’s don’t have the best history (luckily though my dads side of the family immigrated to the United States during the early 1900’s so my family wasn’t directly affected by the Holocaust, my deepest condolences to anyones loved ones who have been affected)

Neo Ned genuinely sounds like one of those fake shitpost movies you'd see on like GTA 5 or South Park

The girl in this movie reminds me of a classmate I once knew. She was claiming she was Austrian and nothing else and did not like to be associated with her culture, what I found really sad. I always loved my culture. Anyway, I always told her that I didn't see her as a skin bag but as who she was.

I think it’s kind of interesting how they posed Lena as someone who also identifies with her German-ness and not just her blackness . . . but that doesn’t change the fact that she was racialized as black and has no concept of self preservation whatsoever. The obvious idiocy of sympathizing with nazis aside, the writers certainly could have done a better job with developing that theme.

your movie discussion videos have been so good Grayson, i love it

This sounds like the type of movie Ben Shapiro's production company would make.

The fact these movies exist disgusts me and breaks my heart.

as a german living in germany, i only accept jojo rabbit. period. EDIT: when "where hands touch" got released, i was physically upset. It turned our history into a fucking wattpad story lol....

I enjoyed this critique very much. I remember reading the summary of this movie and just being completely flabbergasted that so many people signed off on that and thought it was a good idea

anyone who wanted to see more about neo ned, kennie jd did a commentary video on it and i highly recommend you watch!! she goes into the issues of the whole black people being expected to redeem horrible racists and the other implications of the movie. she’s also hilarious and her and grayson are the only people i actually watch on this platform lol

as someone who’s polish and great grandparents were in world war II, these movies make me sick- especially what fellow Poles went through.

I caught your phineas and ferb reference with the nickels 👍

This was definitely a fetishist movie

Oh gosh, I german and I remember reading a book in German class about smth similar like where hands touch. Except there was a black boy who insisted that he was as aryan as the white guys in germany and couldn't understand until the end his fate. I guess this story is based on that pretty historical book

0:53 "i cannot do this, this cannot work" *persists nonetheless* ( also me when neo ned gets produced.. all of this money. and for what. )

She gives “I can change him, he loves me”

American History X does the neo naz main characters thing pretty well. The main guy does change but he still faces the consequences of his actions and his change was executed and explained well.

Thank you so much for making this!!

It’s really weird that this is a setting the filmmaker decided to set this topic in. This is her third movie about interracial romance set within historical time periods, except this time she’s romanticizing literal nazis?? Like I read an article where she’s trying to say Lutz is supposed to portray the children forced into Hitler youth by the regime but Lutz is openly anti-semitic amidst other things.

"The red flags were always there" Yeah, and they were gigantic and had swastika's on them. XD

i- a gaming console without a place to insert game discs? is your xbox okay

I recommend looking into Summer of my German soldier if you want more infuriating Nazi stories. We had to read it in my district in middle school, because it’s “historical” and “relatable.” It’s about a 12 year old Jewish girl who hides a 19(?) year old German POW who escaped a POW camp in her home with her and falls in love with him.

Amandla Stenberg's film choices are quite interesting

This topic reminded me of one of my favorite books. It’s called Milkweed by Jerry Spenelli and it’s about a young gypsy boy living in Warsaw, Poland during the holocaust. There’s no happy ending, no sugar coating, just innocence from the prospective of an orphaned child. It’s a very well written book and I would definitely recommend it, it’s very informative while also coming in an easy to read fashion.

New to your channel- I enjoyed listening to you breaking this subject down -

There's so many movies of racist meeting "one if the good ones" and showing how good they are and I get making one to show how people can change but there are so many and the poc in it are barely there and deals with discrimination soooo wrong.

the hair! the background! the shirt! ur slaying

i am loving this type of content sooo much💕💕

This was an amazing video and really got me thinking. Who would these be for? Such a chilling thought. Btw, you are such an awesome critic -- such clarity in thought and eloquence in expression.

"My brother in Christ, you are a Nazi" killed me 😂

This movie might JUST be for Candace Owens tbh

I had to read a book called “Daniel Half Human” about a half German half Jewish boy struggling with his own antisemitism and the antisemitism used against him. A solid part is about the romance between a Nazi and a Jewish girl. And it’s so deep in the “not all Nazis were bad” that the original book totally was GENUINELY “Danial Half Human and the Good Nazi” HOLY SHIT

It seems odd and ironic that the brother is named Koen and it’s pronounced Ko-en. To my knowledge it’s not a German name. It’s a Dutch nickname, but in that case it’s pronounced “koon”. When pronounced “ko-en” it’s a *Jewish* surname (usually spelled Cohen in English) and clergy position (?). As I understand it, it’d be akin to naming a non-Christian child “Deacon”. Certainly an odd and confusing choice for a movie about WWII Germany. (Also, as far as I know Kerstin would have been an unusual name for a woman in 1940s Germany. It wasn’t a popular name until the 1960s. It’s like they just picked names that sound kinda trendy and German-ish *now* without paying attention to if they fit the time or place.)

I 100% agree that this feels like a parody. Like the jazz line, the ring line.....it's so over the top bad that it feels like they must have done intentionally. like it feels like they literally pulled up a list of dog whistles and treated it like a checklist.

12:47 anytime someone sings in a show/movie I get secondhand embarrassment so bad, it's never good 😭