[6][7] In November 1938, Goebbels made a series of attacks against the Jews in the German media that were a factor leading to the pogrom known as Kristallnacht.

Despite the emotional satisfaction afforded the Nazis by carrying out their antisemitism with direct violence, Kristallnacht was considered by Hitler to have been a political disaster both within Germany and internationally.

[8][9] In response to Hitler's harsh reprimand, Goebbels launched a campaign to promote the antisemitic views of the Nazis to the German populace.

In the case of The Eternal Jew, Goebbels conceived of a film that would communicate to the German people the same antisemitic message that had been the theme of the 1937 Munich exhibition.

[13] As early as 1938, Goebbels had wanted to have a film crew travel to Poland to shoot the ghetto scenes; however, he was unable to gain permission from the Polish government.

In October and November 1939, almost immediately after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland, he instructed Hippler to send camera crews to Łódź, Warsaw, Kraków and Lublin to shoot footage of Polish Jews.

At the beginning of the film, animated text informs the audience that this "documentary footage" shows Jews in their original state "before they put on the mask of civilized Europeans.

"[18] In the Nazi press, Hippler expanded on this claim, asserting that his filming techniques captured Jews "in an unprejudiced manner, real to life as they live and as they react in their own surroundings.

"[19] Although Hippler advertised the film as being a factual documentary consisting of pictures of real Jews with nothing faked or simulated, his claims were complete falsehoods.

"[23] According to Stephen Fritz, Goebbels' intent was to create a film that would serve as "both a demonstration of the parasitical nature of the Jews and a justification for drastic measures against them.

"[24] Maria Tatar writes that the Nazis were able to use Hippler's film to "position the victims of their genocidal project as dangerous aggressors who had to be exterminated.

The film is complimented for "its portrayal of the Jews' vulgar methods and the brutality and all-devouring hatred they exhibit when they reach their goal and control finance."

In closing, the author states the film will be a valuable tool in the struggle to break the Jews' "power over us.

[28] The Canadian scholar Paul Coates noted that Eastern Europe was usually presented in German films in the first half of the 20th century in a negative way, being portrayed as a backward, barbaric place that was sinister and threatening.

[28] The Eternal Jew sought to channel such fears with its claims that all of the allegations made against the Ashkenazim were true in the most lucid terms possible.

[28] Richard Taylor describes the basic tenet of the film as arguing that "the Jew is an oriental barbarian who has insinuated himself cleverly into European society, and now exploits it parasitically.

[29] Following this commentary, the film provides a succession of scenes in which Jews are portrayed as an uncivilized, parasitic people with low social standing.

He describes footage shot there as showing "half-starved, unshaven creatures caught in pathetic acts of barter – a pair of socks for a scrap of food."

Unlike rats, however, the narrator continues, Jews have the uncanny ability to change their appearance and blend into their "human hosts."

The things that are valued by the creative Aryan peoples have been reduced by the Jew to the level of a mere piece of merchandise, which he buys and sells but cannot produce himself.

The occupational information is found in Germany's June 1933 census, which proves the claims made in the movie to be greatly exaggerated.

[38] Still, an exceptionally large number of successful lawsuits over equal citizenship and rights had been filed in the Weimar Republic, most of them by Jewish lawyers.

[39][40][41] Although the Creditanstalt debts were assumed in part by the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family, its bankruptcy was later used by Hitler as an example of how the Jews were responsible for all the economic and social troubles of Germany and the world.

[43] This sequence includes footage of notable figures who had earned Adolf Hitler's wrath, such as physicist and Nobel laureate Albert Einstein and Spartacist uprising leader Rosa Luxemburg (erroneously named as one and the same person as anarchist Emma Goldman) as representatives of so-called "international Jewry".

The first clip shows Mayer Rothschild, a rich man, hiding money and putting on old, shabby clothes in order to fool a corrupt tax collector.

[30] The second shows him speaking to his sons, encouraging them to start an international banking business to take advantage of nations' misfortunes in times of war.

To illustrate this point, Hippler included a scene from Fritz Lang's film M in which the child murderer Hans Beckert (played by Peter Lorre) makes an impassioned plea to the "jury" of criminals, begging for his life and disclaiming responsibility for his crimes on account of insanity.

"The film concludes with footage of Hitler's 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech in which he proclaims the well-known statement: "If international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will not be Bolshevization of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"

[56] Fritz Hippler was interviewed in the Emmy Award-winning program "The Propaganda Battle" in the PBS series Walk Through the Twentieth Century (1983–1984).

The only exception is for use in college classrooms and other academic purposes; however, exhibitors must have formal education in "media science and the history of the Holocaust",[57] and it can only be screened in a censored version with annotations.