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[ Military Music ]

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The symbols and the leaders change,

but Germany's maniacal urge

to impose its will on others continues

from generation to generation.

[ Military Music ]

In the last seventy five years,

this madness has cost the world more than twenty million killed,

more than sixty million wounded,

more than two hundred million made homeless.

This does not include the untold millions that died of disease

resulting from war.

Or, the billions upon billions of dollars worth of property destroyed.

Nor, does this include the grief, the anguish,

the misery, the terror that the world has suffered,

due to the German's insane passion to

enforce their rule upon their neighbors.

This passion for conquest reached its hysterical climax

when Adolf Hitler enthroned himself as God, and the German Fuhrer.

[ Music ]

What fantastic dreams was this humorless man dreaming,

as he stood at Nuremberg, and looked

down at his fanatic followers?

In the Middle Ages, a plague of slavery descended on the world.

Out of the wild's of Mongolia, came a mighty army of fierce horseman,

led by Genghis Kahn.

Burning, looting, pillaging,

the barbarian horde swept across Asia and Eastern Europe.

Genghis Kahn conquered most of the world of the 13th century.

Adolf Hitler was determined to outdo him,

and conquer all of the world of the 20th.

Set up at Munich, was an institute devoted

to the little-known science of geopolitics,

vaguely defined as the military control of space.

Germany's leading geopolitician,

a former general, Karl Haushofer, was head man.

Here, was gathered together more information about your hometown

than you yourself know.

To the German geopolitician,

the world is not made up of men, and women, and children

who live, and love, and dream of better things.

It is made up of only two elements: labor and raw materials.

The geopoliticians' job

was to transform Hitler's ambition to control these elements

into cold hard reality.

On their map, our planet is neatly divided into land and water.

Water forms three quarters of the Earth's surface.

Land, only one quarter.

And in that one quarter of the Earth's surface,

lies the world's wealth. All its natural resources.

[ Thrilling Music ]

And, the world's manpower.

Control the land, and you control the world.

That was Hitler's theory.

This all important land, the geopoliticians

now break up into two areas.

One, the Western Hemisphere.

Which, together with Australia,

and all the islands of the world, including Japan,

comprises one third of the land area.

The other area, which consists of Europe, Asia and Africa,

makes up the other two thirds.

This super continent, which they call the "world island",

is not only twice as large as the rest of the land area,

but also includes seven eighths of the world's population.

The heart of this world island comprises

Eastern Europe and most of Asia.

This, they call the heartland,

which just about coincides with the old empire of Genghis Kahn.

Hitler's step by step plan for world

conquest, can be summarized this way.

Conquer Eastern Europe, N and you dominate the heartland.

Conquer the heartland, and you dominate the world island.

Conquer the world island, and you dominate the world.

That was the dream in Hitler's mind as he stood at Nuremberg.

[ Speaking German ]

With pig and pageantry, the district leaders from all over Germany

swore personal allegiance to him.

Hypnotized in the belief that they were members of a master race.

This film will deal with act one of the Nazi bid for world power,

the most fantastic play in all recorded history.

Hitler had seen Hirohito grab off Manchuria

and other territory from the Chinese.

He had watched Mussolini get away with the rape of Ethiopia.

He had seen the democratic world look the other way,

while these illegal aggressions were going on.

And he smiled,

for collective action to enforce peace,

It was time now, for the Nazis to start crossing borders.

It was time for Hitler to put his plan into action.

And what was he waiting for?

He was waiting to soften up his victims,

keep them from uniting.

[ Menacing Music ]

For the softening up process, he sent his agents

all over the world disguised as tourists,

students, and commercial travelers.

Payoff men like Ribbentrop came too.

To bribe, threaten, and form local fascist parties,

such as Degrelle and his Rexist party in Belgium.

Such as la Rocque and his Croix de Feu party in France.

Henlein in Czechoslovakia.

Seyss-lnquart and his National Socialists in Austria.

In Britain, Sir Oswald Mosley offered

himself to the people as a Hitler

with an Oxford accent.

"In other words, I'm told that Hitler is mad.

Well, I've got another view myself."

Until the day, when they would make easy Hitler's actual invasion.

These subversive fascist organizations

provoked riots and rebellions,

creating scenes like these in France.

Scenes like these in Belgium.

And where do you think this is? Right in Madison Square Garden, USA.

And this is Fritz Kuhn, leader of a German American Bund,

hiding behind the American flag.

But taking his orders from Berlin,

and copying the methods of Berlin.

That was the softening up process outside Germany.

But, inside Germany it was a different story.

Here, in utmost secrecy, the hardening up process.

Bulding up Hitler's army, and his industry.

"Tell the world we have no raw materials,

and never let them see what goes on.

Day after day, night after night, month after month, year after year.

We must have the world's most powerful club.

Forget hours. Forget working conditions. Forget how to think.

Forge the club of blood and iron.

Let the democracies talk about freedom.

No freedom here, no labor unions, no overtime.

The Fuhrer tells you where to work, when to work,

how long to work, how much your work is worth.

Forge the club of blood and iron. We have a sacred mission.

Today we rule Germany, tomorrow the world."

[ German crowd giving Nazi salute ]

And for those who don't like it, you don't eat.

Or, you disappear into a concentration camp.

Or, you get this.

[ Gunfire ]

And this is the man who gives it to you.

[ Gunfire ]

And what of the army?

Before Hitler came into power,

the German army, by treaty,

was limited to one hundred thousand men.

But treaties, to the Germans, have always been something to ignore.

These one hundred thousand men were, in reality,

a hundred thousand highly trained officers.

The men who lead the Nazi regiments today.

But Hitler didn't merely ignore the treaty, he tore it up.

And in 1935, ordered national conscription.

Simultaneously, he ordered German youth to become air minded.

Toy gliders filled the air.

But as the boys grew bigger, so did the gliders.

Soon, these same youths were trained pilots,

flying the new planes the factories were producing.

The Luftwaffe was being assembled.

[ Thrilling Music ]

The only thing old about this new army was the goose step,

and even Hitler couldn't improve on that ancient German form of torture,

designed to make man stop thinking,

and blindly obey.

Goose step them until they become as insensible as weapons.

[ Military Music ]

Everything else was new.

Tanks, motorized equipment, and one of

our own inventions: the dive bomber.

[ Airplane Engine ]

All this rearmament was strictly illegal,

according to the Versailles Treaty.

And the next illegal step Hitler took,

was to march his troops into the Rhineland.

A strip of land between Germany and France,

demilitarized after the last war,

as a precaution against future German aggression.

But Hitler's plan of eastern conquest

demanded a barrier against democratic action in the west.

So Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland,

and began building the formidable Siegfried Line...

A chain of forts and defenses 450 miles long,

and in some places, thirty miles wide.

Germany had fought one, two-front war,

and didn't want another.

As many as half a million men worked as much as twenty hours a day,

to build 22,000 fortified positions on land.

Where, by treaty, no German soldier was supposed to set foot.

Hitler had his Siegfried Line. He had his equipment.

He had his army.

Now, to unveil the German might and terrorize

his intended victims into submission.

General staffs all over the world,

anxiously awaited the report of their military attaches.

A would-be peaceful world,

learned that a vast military power had materialized out of nowhere.

A power controlled by one man who tore up treaties,

as we tear up ticker tape.

[ Menacing Music ]

Satisfied they had created the right sense of fear in the world,

the Nazi leaders were now ready to strike.

The hour had come.

It was time to start conquering Eastern Europe,

according the the plan of Hitler's geopoliticians.

It was time to win the domination of the heartland.

Who would the first victim be?

Naturally the softest: Austria.

Bite off just enough, not to set the world against you.

On March the 12th, 1938, without warning,

the German armies marched over the Austrian border.

It was really only a full scale invasion test,

and Hitler rode in triumph, into Vienna.

Even the very name of Austria disappeared from the map.

Though Hitler had promised earlier to the world,

"The assertion that it is the intention

of the German Reich to coerce the Austrian state, is absurd."

Why was Austria important to Hitler?

It put him on the southern flank of Czechoslovakia.

And Czechoslovakia was the key to the control of Eastern Europe.

The German chancellor Bismarck

explained that years ago when he said,

he would conquer Europe,

and must first told of bastions of Bohemia.

And Bohemia was now part of Czechoslovakia.

But, Czechoslovakia was tough.

It had a good army. It had good equipment.

It had one of the finest munition plants in the world.

The Skoda Works,

which Hitler wanted very badly.

It had incorruptible President Benes,

it had a military alliance with France,

and France had a military alliance with Britain.

Hitler had to move carefully.

Find excuses to take Czechoslovakia, one piece at a time.

He found his excuse in the Sudetenland.

The portion of Czechoslovakia bordering Germany.

Here lived some people of German origin,

although they had never been a part of Germany itself.

That was Hitler's cue. [ German ]

Completely ignoring the fact that most people who left Germany,

had done so to get away from things like Hitler,

he sprang his pet theory.

That every person of German blood,

no matter where he lived, belonged to the Nazi Reich.

Germans or descendants of Germans,

often with no more than a drop of German blood in their veins,

suddenly learned that they were God-like.

Not subject to the laws of the land in which they live,

and to which they owe their allegiance.

Whether it be Czechoslovakia,

Norway,

Sweden,

China,

the United States or Timbuktoo.

According to the Nazis,

the German was a special creature who remained forever German,

to the sixth and seventh generation,

and must take his orders from Berlin.

Some people we know of German descent,

think is a lot of hogwash.

[ Evocative Music ]

Including fifteen percent of any group like this.

But in the Sudetenland, he found some stooges who fell for this bunk.

Konrad Henlein was their bush league Fuhrer.

The people of the Sudetenland were told they should be liberated.

[ German ]

They were told Hitler was their liberator.

The Nazi's smuggled over their standard softening up equipment,

blackjacks.

And when the Czechs were beaten up

trying to combat his fifth columnists,

Hitler screamed the Germans were being persecuted,

and threatened war unless he got the Sudetenland.

"It is the last territorial claim I have to make in Europe.

I have assured Mr. Chamberlain, and I repeat it here,

that when this problem is solved,

there is for Germany no further territorial problem in Europe.

We want no Czechs."

[ Applauses ]

To the League of Nations, Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov,

announced that Russia stood ready to back

concerted action against Germany.

But once again, there was to be no concerted action.

The Czech's mobilized and closed their borders.

The leaders of France and Britain,

desperately striving to avoid war,

flew to meet the jubilant Axis leaders at Munich.

On September 29th,

in return for Hitler's guarantee of world peace,

Chamberlain and Daladier

prevailed upon Czechoslovakia

to give up the Sudetenland without a fight.

In Czechoslovakia, the Munich pact was greeted by riots of protest.

But Daladier returned to France to be greeted by cheers,

from a relieved French people.

And in Britain, a happy Chamberlain came back declaring he had achieved

peace,

"peace in our time."

One of the most tragic and ironic scenes in all history.

"This morning, I had another talk with

the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler.

And here is the paper

which bears

his name upon it as well as mine.

[ Cheering ]

We regard the agreement signed last night,

and the Anglo-German naval agreement,

as symbolic as the desire of our two peoples

never to go to war with one another again."

Peace? It wasn't peace.

The Nazis hadn't merely got three million more souls

under the German flag.

By taking the Sudetenland,

they had made Czechoslovakia defenseless.

For, in this territory, lay the natural defenses,

the mountain ranges.

And a defensive line of forts,

considered even stronger than the Maginot Line.

Without these fortifications, Czechoslovakia was disarmed.

A ripe plum ready to fall into Hitler's lap.

Within six months of declaring that

he wanted no more territory anywhere,

he'd violated the Munich agreement,

marched in,

and took the whole of the Czech state.

Though he had specifically promised,

"I have no further interest in the Czechoslovakian state,

that is guaranteed.

We want no Czechs."

Austria and Czechoslovakia were gone without a fight,

and Hitler was getting his control of Eastern Europe.

Poland was next on the map.

The tired old man of Munich now knew,

there could be no peace in our time.

"If an attempt were made

to change the situation by force,

in such a way as to threaten Polish independence,

why then, that would inevitably start a general conflagration,

in which this country would be involved."

But, after his success at Munich,

Hitler was sure that France and Britain would not fight.

Here's what one of his spokesman said:

"Democracy has no convictions

for which people would be willing to stake their lives."

But what about the Russians?

The lights began to burn all night in Moscow.

British and french military missions arrived

to confer with the Soviet government.

So did German representatives.

And on August 21st, 1939,

the world was set on its heels by the announcement of a treaty

between the Russians and the Germans,

in which they agreed not to fight each other.

Here were the admitted archenemies, in a state of apparent friendship.

It was too fantastic to make any sense.

It didn't.

The Germans hoped they could lull

Russia into a false sense of security,

and the Russians needed time to prepare

for the fight they new was coming.

They'd read Hitler's book Mein Kampf too,

and knew he had his eyes on the rich Russian land.

[ Expecting Music ]

Confident that Russia was safely pigeonholed,

and that the democracies would not fight,

the Nazis started singing their favorite theme song,

that all people of German blood belong to them,

and picked Danzig as their excuse for the gobbling up of Poland.

Danzig, a free city.

Self governing under the League of Nations,

was an important seaport at the head of the Polish corridor.

Poland's access to the sea.

The same old softening up process had gone on here.

Local stooges, armed by Germany, began to terrorize the city.

Hitler demanded Danzig and the Polish corridor, or else.

[ Expecting Music ]

The people of Poland prepared for the inevitable.

Although they knew Britain and France had guaranteed their borders,

they also knew those countries were a long way off.

[ Expecting Music ]

Germany's theft of Czechoslovakia

had made Poland's strategic position even worse.

Except for the Carpathian mountains,

Poland is relatively flat and low lying.

The Vistula is the Mississippi of Poland.

It is broad, muddy, and unfordable for most of its length.

Its tributaries are formidable streams during certain seasons.

But there was a drought,

and the streams were so low during the campaign,

that they could be forded at almost any point

by men, trucks, and tanks.

Militarily, the Vistula offered the best line of defense.

However, making a stand here,

would've meant surrendering Warsaw and the richest part of the country.

The alternative was to accept battle on the border.

That was the Polish decision.

The Nazi plan was an enormous pincer movement,

almed at encircling the mass of the Polish armies.

Secondary pincer movements were to encircle any Polish groups

which escaped the main trap.

During the last two weeks in august,

the German armies moved toward the Polish border,

where they assembled seventy divisions,

many of them armored.

From a military standpoint, the Poles were hopelessly outclassed

by their predatory neighbor.

They managed to mobilize barely thirty divisions,

made up of infantry or horse cavalry.

In two important respects the difference was staggering.

The Nazi's: five thousand modern tanks.

Poland: six hundred non-descript tanks.

The German Luftwaffe: six thousand modern planes.

The Polish air force: less than one thousand of inferior types.

The German army secretly made ready.

The way of living for the next thousand years was to be decided.

The fire that had begun in Manchuria,

and spread through China and Ethiopia, and Spain,

would now blaze around the world.

This man made that decision:

[ Explosions ]

war.

Precisely at dawn on September 1st,

without warning, the German Wehrmacht

rode over the Polish border.

Before the invasion was thirty minutes old,

the planes of the Luftwaffe were over Poland.

Wiping out the Polish air force,

most of it caught flat-footed on the ground.

[ Airplane Engines ]

Those planes that did get off,

faced overwhelming odds and were shot out of the sky.

[ Thrilling Music ] [ Explosions ]

Far flying Nazi squadrons ranged deep into Poland.

Destroying communications,

radio stations, power plants, highways. Bridges, rail roads.

[ Explosions ]

[ Explosions ]

The Polish army was disorganized by the loss of its air force,

and the disruption of communications.

The mass ground units of the Nazi army continued their advance.

Occasionally, they unveiled a new technique or item of equipment.

For example,

advanced units of the German fourth army crossed the Vistula

in a new type of storm boat.

By September the 5th,

the Polish retreat developed alarming tendencies.

The powerful German Tenth Army,

which was to form the southern claw of the great Nazi pincers,

was advancing with its five armored divisions on either flank.

On September 6th, the opposing poles

began splitting into two groups,

the southern one falling back towards the Vistula.

The armored divisions on the German right,

raced ahead circling Radom, and cutting off this group,

which finally surrendered.

Meanwhile, further north, the main

polish mass began drifting toward Lodz.

The German command, perceiving that this opened the gate towards Warsaw,

sent the northern Nazi armored units

racing through the gap to the Polish capital.

The infantry advanced in forced marches

of thirty five miles a day,

and two days later, relieved the Panzers above Warsaw.

The city was now cut off.

West of Warsaw, the main Polish armies were encircled.

Under terrific pressure on the ground,

and pounded ceaselessly from the air,

they began to disintegrate.

They fought on with high personal courage.

But without airplanes, without communications,

cut off from their general staff,

the isolated Polish groups were forced to surrender,

one by one.

But Warsaw still resisted.

[ Piano Music ]

The heroic strains of the Polonaise told an incredulous world

that the people of Warsaw, led by Mayor Starzynski,

had erected a wall of courage around their city,

defying Hitler to do his damndest.

[ Explosions ]

Stopped cold by the city's desperate resistance,

the Nazi's were forced to send for heavier artillery.

The only source of such artillery was Germany's western front.

With great secrecy, the giant 240mm Howitzer's,

were towed at high speed across the highways,

which Hitler had built for just such purposes,

and set in position around Warsaw.

The huge gun subjected the city to a bombardment of incredible fury.

Their fire concentrated on the densely populated residential areas.

[ Explosions ]

For twenty days of death and horror,

every man, woman, and child fought to save his city.

[ Explosions ]

But without food or water,

human endurance failed.

On September the 27th,

the strains of the Polonaise died on the Warsaw radio,

and the Polish capital was forced to capitulate.

Now all Polish resistance was at an end, except here,

the Westerplatte of forts opposite Danzig.

This small island of stubborn defiance

had stood up under the fire of German warships from the first day.

Its guns silenced, its forts shattered,

it still refused to surrender.

Even under point blank fire at eight hundred yards range.

It was an exhibition of Polish valor that will go down in history.

But militarily, it could not avail.

On October the 1st, the garrison at last surrendered.

Surrendered, to face the fate of these men.

Polish prisoners being marched off to Nazi prison camps,

and eventual extermination.

For the Nazi master race theory calls

for the complete wiping out of so called, inferior races.

And in village after village,

local Judases point out loyal Polish neighbors.

[ Pitiful Music ]

[ Gunfire ]

These things, the Poles can never forget.

Including another one of Hitler's famous promises.

"Germany has concluded a non aggression pact with Poland.

We shall adhere to it unconditionally."

The world now knew, that a non-aggression pact with Hitler,

was the kiss of death.

[ Menacing Music ]

Poland was completely destroyed.

Completely? Not quite.

During the last days of the campaign, the

Russian army entered eastern Poland,

and took up positions along the Bug River.

The two strongest armies in Europe faced each other.

Hitler could decide now,

whether to keep on heading east, or call it quits.

He called it quits.

Why did Hitler quit here? He had to.

To continue a drive to the east,

would leave Germany facing the threat he had always sworn to avoid:

a two front war.

How he met that threat, you will see in the next film.

What Hitler thought impossible was anything but.

The day after Hitler crossed the Polish border,

France called up her reserves.

Within twenty-four hours, British planes had bombed German warships

in the Kiel Canal.

[ Explosions ]

Britain, not merely the British government,

but the British people had declared war.

War on Hitler and everything he stood for.

The democracies did have convictions

for which people were willing to stake their lives.

Unprepared, yes.

But that didn't matter.

For they finally realized, that what was being threatened

wasn't just the integrity of Poland,

but the integrity of free men everywhere in the world.

"What tragedies. What horrors.

What crimes has Hitler,

and all that Hitler stands for,

brought upon Europe and the world.

It is upon this foundation,

that Hitler pretends to build out of hatred,

a new order for Europe.

But nothing is more certain,

than that every trace of Hitler's footstep,

every stain purged and if need be blasted,

from the surface of the earth.

Lift up your hearts,

all will come right.

Out of the depths of sorrow

and of sacrifice will be born again, the glory of mankind."

[ Evocative Music ]