Editing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (section)

===Reflection on post-World War I Germany===
Critics have suggested that ''Caligari'' highlights some of the neuroses prevalent in Germany and the Weimar Republic when the film was made,<ref name="Barlow51" /><ref name="Brockmann63">{{Harvnb|Brockmann|2010|p=63}}</ref> particularly in the shadow of World War I,<ref>{{Harvnb|Towlson|2014|p=7}}</ref> at a time when extremism was rampant, reactionaries still controlled German institutions, and citizens feared the harm the [[Treaty of Versailles]] would have on the economy.<ref name="Barlow51" /> Siegfried Kracauer wrote that the paranoia and fear portrayed in the film were signs of things to come in Germany,<ref name="Kracauer67" /><ref name="Brockmann63" /> and that the film reflected a tendency in Germans to "retreat into themselves" and away from political engagement following the war.<ref name="Kracauer67" /><ref name="LoBrutto63" /> Vincent LoBrutto wrote that the film can be seen as a social or political analogy of "the moral and physical breakdown of Germany at the time, with a madman on the loose wreaking havoc on a distorted and off-balanced society, a metaphor for a country in chaos".<ref name="LoBrutto63" />

Anton Kaes, who called ''Caligari'' "an aggressive statement about war psychiatry, murder and deception", wrote that Alan's question to Cesare, "How long have I to live?" reflected the trauma German citizens experienced during the war, as that question was often on the minds of soldiers and of family members back home concerned about their loved ones in the military. Franzis's despair after Alan's murder can likewise be compared to that of the many soldiers who survived the war but saw their friends die on the battlefield. Kaes noted other parallels between the film and war experiences, noting that Cesare attacked Alan at dawn, a common time for attacks during the war.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kaes|2006|pp=52–53}}</ref> Thomas Elsaesser called Caligari an "outstanding example of how 'fantastic' representations in German films from the early 1920s seem to bear the imprint of pressures from external events, to which they refer only through the violence with which they disguise and disfigure them".<ref name="Elsaesser63" />