1944

1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (dominical letter BA) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1944th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 944th year of the 2nd millennium, the 44th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1940s decade.

Events

Below, events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.

January

Die Deutsche Wochenschau

Die Deutsche Wochenschau (English: The German Weekly Review) was the title of the unified newsreel series released in the cinemas of Nazi Germany from 1940 until the end of World War II. The coordinated newsreel production was set up as a vital instrument for the mass distribution of Nazi propaganda at war. Today the preserved Wochenschau short films make up a significant part of the audiovisual records of the Nazi era.

History

Newsreels had been regularly released since the early days of German cinema, especially during World War I, when companies like Messter Film started producing short silent film documentaries. With the final changeover to sound films in the early 1930s, the newsreel market concentrated on four dominating production companies: Universum Film AG (Ufa-Tonwoche and Deulig-Tonwoche), 20th Century Fox (Fox Tönende Wochenschau), Bavaria Film (Emelka-Tonwoche), and Tobis (Tobis-Wochenschau). After the Nazi Machtergreifung in 1933, the production was supervised and censored by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels, who had realized the enormous significance of newsreels for his propaganda purposes.