Blutsbrüderschaft, or Blood Brothers, was a 1941 propaganda film that was forbidden after the defeat of the Third Reich. It has never been released post-WWII by the German Censorship Board. American film author Harry Waldmann called the film "odious" and "ignominious" in his book Nazi Films in America, 1933–1942, although his remarks were in regard to other films by the director and one of the actors, as Blood Brotherhood  itself was never screened in the USA.

Our Collection has the original 1939 German film poster, shown at the bottom of this page. We own the Cinema Owners Guide (der Werberatschlag) from which we have translated the film synopsis and an article about the depiction of twenty  turbulent years of German history in the film. We also own the "Aktuelle Filmbücher" pamphlet on the film from which the first image below was scanned.  We own no lobby cards.

FILM SYNOPSIS

 Lieutenant Olden is fighting a losing battle with his men. The ammunition runs out. Then the miracle happens: an aeroplane drops a few boxes of MG. ammunition! But the plane is hit. Risking his life Olden pulls his comrade out of the burning plane. Lieutenant Wendler and Lieutenant Olden shake hands in the dugout, covered in dirt and blood. The upheaval knocks the weapons out of the soldiers' fists. The great passion of the nation begins.

Klaus Olden and Jochen Wendler are released from the military hospital. With Sister Barbara, a childhood acquaintance of Jochen, they have both made friends. Goodbye, Barbara, now they have to see where they can “crawl”  They go to East Prussia, but the estate of one of Wendler's relatives lies in ruins from the days of the Russian invasion. The two friends work in a mine, they accept any job, but when they are ordered to destroy gun barrels in an Army goods recycling camp because the dictates of the enemy demand it, the soldier in them rebels, and they go back to the misery of unemployment.

Jochen Wendler, who feels the shame of the fatherland more strongly than Klaus Olden, leaves his comrade one morning so as not to stand in his way. He sees that Olden has drawn a thick line under the years of war and that he now wants to work and work again and secure a place in existence.

Half-jokingly, Wendler hinted that they could meet again in five years, on such and such day and in the waiting room of a Berlin train station.

In these five years, Jochen Wendler is in the front line against Germany's internal and external enemies. In the resistance against the occupation of the Ruhr, in the first stirrings of the National Socialist movement, in the fights against the saboteurs of the revival everywhere, Wendler is present. When he then, after five years, sits opposite Klaus Olden, the old brotherly friendship is revived, but Olden not only surprises him with the fact that he, the "Great One", as Wendler has always called him, has in the meantime become the director of a factory that has been bought up by the English, Jochen Wendler is suddenly standing in front of Barbara, whom Olden has given a job in his house.

The reunion between Jochen and Barbara decides the fate of the two young people, who now have certainty: we have always been waiting for each other, and now we belong together. Olden, who at the time got the girl out of an impossible position in a typical inflationary era pub and treated her all the time with correctness that often included a good portion of inner attitude, sees all his hopes dashed. In a fit of temper, he puts his clenched fist in front of his friend's chest. Having fallen apart with himself and the world, Klaus Olden struggles to come to his senses. He thoroughly spoils it with his English superiors, and takes care of Jochen and Barbara, ready to make up for everything. The reunited friends experience the nation's awakening, and on September 1, 1939, Olden and Wendler head their company into battle for Germany.

Article  translated from the Cinema Owners Guide:

CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE TERRA FILM.

20 years of time in feature films

A witty man once asked the question, what is a newspaper , replied:
on the first day actual, on the second day wrapping paper, in twenty years cultural history. This definition can also be applied - in a slightly modified form - to film. In fact, what we have in our film archives today is a cultural and contemporary history of the last four decades of such detail as could never, ever be written in the past, and every single film strip that is made today -.

And we don't just mean the newsreels here is another chapter in this history of time and culture, because every good film reflects a piece of this time of ours.

It is different when a film is asked to depict a longer period of time in the 1 1/2 hours of its running time. Such films, which depict the course of time in the most concise form, are rare, because it is very difficult for us to depict the concept of time through images.

The film "Blood Brotherhood" begins in the most terrible battle of the Western Front in November 1918. First Lieutenant Klaus Olden and his company seem to be doomed to die because they have run out of ammunition, when at the last moment Lieutenant Jochen Wendler appears with his plane over the position and throws down some boxes of machine gun ammunition to the company. Both officers are seriously wounded in the operation, but they come out alive and have become friends for life.

After the war, both are left penniless and at first try to get by together, but then they go their separate ways. Olden, who had previously attended the technical college, became a senior engineer and director of a large factory, which he continued to run after it had been forced into British ownership during the inflation. Wendler, however, does not seem to want to succeed in any of his ventures at first, not because he is perhaps more unfit for life than his friend, but because he simply does not have the heart to work for German inflationary racketeers or for foreigners, to whom Germany owes its downfall. - After years the friends meet again, but now a woman seems to stand between them, because of which they part in bitterness.

A friendship – But a friendship forged by blood cannot be separated by a woman. Through all the turmoil of the times, the friends find each other again, when in 1933 Germany rises again through National Socialism. Wendler, who has long since become one of the the Party, also wins over his friend Olden, who destroys the plans of a caterpillar tractor he has designed so that they cannot fall into English hands.

Together they march in the ranks of the National Socialist fighters, and together they march, too, when on September 1, 1939, the Fatherland calls them to the flags again.

It is no ordinary feature film that we have before us. It is a film that lets twenty years of contemporary events pass us by and, in an unvarnished form that is true to the facts, brings this time back to life for all those who can otherwise so quickly forget it can forget.

In pictures of rare impressiveness we are shown once again the criminal injustice of Versailles, we experience scenes from inflationary Germany of such scornful cruelty that we would hardly believe it possible, and yet we all experienced it ourselves not so long ago. Philipp Lothar Mayring, who also directed this film, wrote this sequence of overwhelmingly powerful scenes. He is one of our best-known film script authors. We need only recall his book for the Karl Ritter film "Patriots" and the Terra film "Escape into Darkness", and everyone will recognize that this man, who experienced the war and the post-war period with open eyes and an alert consciousness, is called upon like hardly anyone else to create such a film, which turns years of history into a twenty-year event.