1943 WWII WAR DEPT. ANTI-FASCIST, ANTI-PREJUDICE FILM

[Music] henry here got on the train with 200 he couldn't see any harm in a friendly game of cards the men were strangers and take joe collins he's got a nice wife at home but he met this girl at the bar and she looked kinda cute after the first couple of drinks [Music] there's a good old-fashioned word for people like this we call them suckers and there are other people people who stay up nights figuring out how to take away what they've got [Music] there are all kinds of games and all kinds of suckers take mike here for instance he's got everything he might say he's young he's healthy he's got a job and he's got a country called america it's a wonderful thing to have america lots of room room enough to raise plenty of food big factories to make things a man can use big cities to do the business of a big country and people lots of people enough to work the farm and build the factories dig the mines run the business all kinds of people people from different countries with different religions different colored skins free people they can live together and work together and build america together because they're free free to vote to say what they pleased go to their own churches to pick their own jobs yeah mike's got something all right he's got america but there are guys who stay up nights figuring out how to take that away from him i happen to know the facts my friends i'm just an average american but i'm an american american and some of the things i see in this country of ours make my blood boil i see people with foreign accents making all the money i see negroes holding jobs that belong to me and you now i ask you if we allow this thing to go on what's going to become of us real americans i've heard this kind of talk before but i never expected to hear it in america that's what saint general is talking about what are we real americans gonna do about it you'll find it right here in this little pamphlet the truth about negroes and foreigners the truth about the catholic church if you believe in that kind of talk that all makes pretty good sense to me and i tell you friends we'll never be able to call this country our own until it's a country without without what yeah without what without negroes without alien foreigners without catholics without freemasons what's wrong with the masons i'm amazing hey that fella's talking about me and that makes a difference doesn't it these are your enemies these are the people who are trying to take over our country now you know them you know what they stand for and it's up to you and me to fight them fight them and destroy them before they destroy us thank you before he said mason you were ready to agree with him yes but he was talking about what about those other people but in this country we have no other people we are american people all of us what about sure you an american are you i was born in hungary but now i am an american citizen and i have seen what this kind of talk can do i saw it in berlin what were you doing there i was a professor at the university i heard the same words we have heard today but i was a fool then i thought nazis were crazy people stupid fanatics but unfortunately it was not so you see they knew that they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country so they split germany into small groups they used prejudice as a practical weapon to [ __ ] the nation of course that was not easy to do they had to work hard to do it you see we human beings are not born with prejudices always they are made for us made by someone who wants something remember that when you hear this kind of talk somebody's going to get something out of it and it isn't going to be you this is not classroom theory i saw it happen i saw it first in berlin in 1932. five young men that i knew were standing in the crowd listening to the nazi speaker eric was a catholic anton a student of mine was a jew heinrich owned a small hardware store carl was a farmer and hunts was an unemployed metal worker to all true aryan germans i say at this time you inherited the nation which rightfully belongs to you to you alone belongs the glorious destiny of the greater germany the nazi party will provide land for the farmer work for the worker and profits for the small businessman who is getting these things now the jew the jew who has stolen our nation and our birthright who makes all the money and takes all our jobs the jew he must be shunned he must be ostracized he must be eliminated and the catholics we don't want our great nation run by a foreign church we just do with these people when the time comes they and their faith must be destroyed then they are the freemasons in germany we have no place for secret societies there may be only one society and that isn't a party there will be no secrecy about that in the new greater germany one by one he attacked each minority and he split them off one from the other these men were all fellow germans when they came here today now they were split into rival groups suspicious of each other hating each other they were being swindled all of them but the man who was really being fooled was huns he was pure german according to nazi standards to him they promised everything and he fell for it [Music] that's how hans became a superman they gave him a uniform and they pumped up his ego he wasn't just a little fellow out of work anymore he was a member of the master race tons and thousands of others like all playing a sucker's game they gambled with other people's liberty and of course they lost their own a nation of suckers hitler needed these people there was lots of work to be done there were trade unions to be smashed because unions were organized and might offer resistance there were many political parties in germany these the nazis destroyed they were determined to smash every organization where people might bend together and resist them there were jews to be beaten and killed the jews were not powerful but they were a convenient excuse for all the nation's ills and besides a nazi party member could not take over this man's stone hundreds of catholics were put in jail because the catholic church had strength and could resist the nazi driver powers they had split the nation into a hundred pieces and then one by one they had destroyed the pieces over these broken pieces the nazis rode into power one party one nation one religion these men had won their struggle for power they now ruled all of germany but still they had trouble with their oldest and most persistent enemy the truth they found that truth does not die easily and so they decided to abolish truth one great source of truth is literature so they burned books 20 million of them many great men in germany who were spokesman for truth were jailed or driven from their country teachers writers scientists education was discouraged in five years college attendance dropped 53 it was forbidden to listen to a british radio program or read an american newspaper in nazi germany you had to get your information from dr goebbels he knew what was best for you the church was one forcing german is still strong enough to proclaim the truth in public this catholic priest was arrested the following day on charges of immorality the protestant church also continued to try and fight for truth the nazis put this man in a concentration camp there were others who spoke for truth and i am proud to say that educators were among them and what may i ask is an ariel i don't know myself but let us see what our present so-called authorities have to say about it they say he is tall slender blue eyed and blonde there is no aryan race and more important there is no master race there are people who may find these ideas convenient but science cannot support them there is no scientific proof that there is any correlation between a man's racial characteristics and his native ability or character in all racial groups we find the same range of potentialities we find idiots and geniuses we find criminals and philanthropists we must judge each man as an individual and not by the color of his skin or his eyes or by the length of his nose come in gentlemen make yourselves comfortable and remember that there is no master race that is a scientific truth anyone who tells you otherwise is lying and so for all practical purposes truth had been abolished in germany a lot of my german friends wondered what had hit them how did it happen where did it start it started right here and this was where it could have been stopped if those people had stood together if they had protected each other they could have resisted the nazi threat together they would have been strong but once they allowed themselves to be split apart they were helpless when that first minority lost out everybody lost them they made the mistake of gambling with other people's freedom now let's see how those bets paid off carl the farmer was gambling on a better life for himself what he got was extra hours of back-breaking work as much as a hundred hours a week he was forced to stay on his land and produce what he was told to produce because now hitler was preparing for war for heinrich who owned a hardware store the bet didn't pay off either 104 000 small businesses were closed in two years and for hunts conditions hadn't improved any he had a job now in the munitions factory but he worked long hours for little the working conditions blew increasingly bad and even though he didn't like the job he wasn't permitted to leave it and when hitler decided the time was right germany went to war not by declaring war but by a carefully prepared sneak attack once again hitler needed hunts to do his dirty work hunts was an expert at brutality by this time and hitler had decided to use hunts and his brutality against other peoples the czechs the poles the french the russians but in the crucial test of war hitler's race theories didn't pay off his pure-blooded supermen were defeated by the mongrel armies he despised by the british of el alamein [Music] by the russians at stalingrad [Music] and then on d-day by american soldiers of every color and religion who smashed across the normandy beaches and drove on through to the heart of germany for the misguided germans who had swallowed the nazi bait the nazi game did not pay off the continent of europe was thrown with millions of german bodies pure aryan bodies carl the farmer was left in the snow outside of moscow heinrich stayed in italy at salerno and hans who was going to rule the world got only a little patch of normandy that he could call his own we must never let that happen to us or to our country we must never let ourselves be divided by race or color or religion because in this country we all belong to minority groups i was born in hungary you are a mason these are minorities and then you belong to other minority groups too you are a farmer you have blue eyes you go to the methodist church your right to belong to these minorities is a precious thing you have a right to be what you are and say what you think because here we have personal freedom we have liberty and these are not just fancy words this is a practical and priceless way of living but we must work at it we must guard everyone's liberty or we can lose our own if we allow any minority to lose its freedom by persecution or by prejudice we are threatening our own freedom and this is not simply an idea this is good hard common sense you see here in america is not a question whether we tolerate minorities america is minorities and that means you and me [Music] so let's not be suckers we must not allow the freedom or dignity of any men to be threatened by any act or word let's be selfish about it let's forget about we and they let's think about us you