This 1932 newsreel clip highlighted the dire economic circumstances in the sparsely populated Bavarian Forest, a region that depended almost entirely on timber, quarrying, and glass manufacturing for its livelihood. When the Great Depression hit Germany after the 1929 Wall Street crash, this rural stretch felt its impact with particular intensity. In Zwiesel, a hub of glass production, for instance, the unemployment had soared to a staggering 75 percent by 1932, and in the nearby town of Viechtach, 350 children depended on publicly provided meals. The region’s location along the Czech border compounded its economic woes, and the clip feared that these communities might “succumb to foreign influences” from the newly founded Republic of Czechoslovakia immediately to the east. Until 1918, goods and people had moved much more freely across the border, thanks to the close relationship between Germany and Austria-Hungary, to which the Czech lands then belonged. After the hardening of the national border in 1918, trade and migration slowed dramatically in the region, and this newsreel clearly urged greater financial support for the Bavarian Forest for nationalist reasons as well as economic ones.