Last month’s Berlin premiere of the new production of All Quiet on the Western Front was a quiet affair compared to the premiere of the original US film version by Lewis Milestone in 1930. Youthful Nazi protesters heckled premiere guests then rushed into the auditorium, throwing stink bombs and white mice. The guests fled, the screening was abandoned and the film was subsequently banned in Germany for “dishonouring” the memory of German war veterans. Masterminding the protest was Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi agitator-in-chief who, three years later, would become the dictatorship’s culture and propaganda minister. All Quiet on the Western...