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"No, I never saw that one."

In fact, while Triumph Of The Will was quite popular during its release, the Nazi film industry mostly released light-hearted comedies as the war went on. It turns out being relentlessly bombed by enemy aircraft diminishes your desire to watch war flicks. Go figure.

We asked Horst what Nazi propaganda efforts had the biggest impact on him as a kid, and the answer was surprising:

"There were a lot of poor people, and in the wintertime they held state collections for the poor people, and the way they did that is they had little objects -- pins you put on your lapel -- and you had a series of pins for the Hitler Youth, or the BBM, which was the female equivalent." Horst felt that these charity drives were the regime's most effective method of winning young hearts and minds. "There was a special Sunday they turned out and it was announced in the newspaper where they would be. And they came out with their family and people could talk to them. We [the Hitler Youth] were, they said bodyguards, but you just had your hand in the belt of the next one and you made a live chain."

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That's right: Sweet flair, cool pin collections, plain old charity, and the Nazi Germany version of Hands Across America were the most effective propaganda to Horst. That's how you get children to commit to evil: Be nice to them. Make them feel important. Even decades later, he still considers meeting Erwin Rommel during a charity drive to be one of the highlights of his life.

"I asked him a question about that time [he] was in Africa -- how he misled the British, who had a whole tank division, and all he had were some motorized carriers, and he put bedsheets on them, so there was a big cloud, and they thought there were tanks." Horst doesn't think any film could have had as much of an impact on a young boy's imagination as meeting a war hero like Erwin Rommel in the flesh, and getting to talk to him about his exploits.