Just saw this film on TCM. It is clearly a propaganda film, no one can debate that.
The fun of this film is seeing just how much of it is incorporated into the later Titanic Movies, namely "A Night to Remember" and James Cameron's "Titanic"
I reference this entry from Wikipedia.org:
"Several commentators have observed archly their conviction that James Cameron must have been very familiar with the 1943 Nazi propaganda film when writing and filming his own Titanic. Several story aspects are in both films but not in any other Titanic version: e.g., the salt of the earth non-British Hero orders his girlfriend into the lifeboat, she hesitantly complies and watches her love disappear behind the railing as the lifeboat is lowered (though she doesn't jump out in the 1943 film); a young, dashing man coaches the girl he loves that she should not marry the man she does not love just because her parents ordered her so; a stolen jewelry subplot; a man is accused of a jewel theft (including a blue diamond) he did not commit; a main character gets locked up in a flooding cabin as the other character (male in this version) rescues him with an axe; etc. Additionally many of the scene compositions and camera angles are uncannily similar." from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_%281943_film%29
The fun of this film is seeing just how much of it is incorporated into the later Titanic Movies, namely "A Night to Remember" and James Cameron's "Titanic"
I reference this entry from Wikipedia.org:
"Several commentators have observed archly their conviction that James Cameron must have been very familiar with the 1943 Nazi propaganda film when writing and filming his own Titanic. Several story aspects are in both films but not in any other Titanic version: e.g., the salt of the earth non-British Hero orders his girlfriend into the lifeboat, she hesitantly complies and watches her love disappear behind the railing as the lifeboat is lowered (though she doesn't jump out in the 1943 film); a young, dashing man coaches the girl he loves that she should not marry the man she does not love just because her parents ordered her so; a stolen jewelry subplot; a man is accused of a jewel theft (including a blue diamond) he did not commit; a main character gets locked up in a flooding cabin as the other character (male in this version) rescues him with an axe; etc. Additionally many of the scene compositions and camera angles are uncannily similar." from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_%281943_film%29