The Kaiser of California

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The Kaiser of California (German "Der Kaiser von Kalifornien") is a 1936 film that has the unique distinction of being the first western film made in Nazi Germany, and the only one to be set in the United States. Some exterior scenes were even shot on location in California.

The film follows the life story of John Sutter, or Johann Suter, the owner of Sutter's Mill, famous as the birthplace of the great California Gold Rush of 1848.

While the basic story of Sutter's life is retained, the producers inserted some notable changes reflecting the political environment of the film's creation: though Sutter was a Swiss-German, the film identifies him as being purely German, and though he changed his name to John Sutter when he came to the United States, throughout the film he retains the name Johann Suter. All of this meshed with the concept that all those of German blood throughout the world formed a single racial Volk.

The film also subtly takes aim at the United States, as many of the injustices and bad turns of luck that Sutter endures are portrayed as semi-official acts of the American government. The movie ends with Sutter yelling at the steps of a courthouse. The injustices supposedly suffered by Volksdeutche, that is, ethnic Germans outside Germany, at the hands of other peoples was a frequent theme in National Socialist cinema (the 1941 anti-Polish film Heimkehr is another example).

The film won the 1936 Mussolini Cup for best foreign film at the Venice Film Festival.

The film is based on the book "Der Kaiser von Kalifornien" by Luis Trenker, who also directed the film and starred as Johann Sutter.