Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1943 THESE ARE THE MEN by Dylan Thomas lis is the commentary of "'These Are The Men", a Strand film, largely compiled {'rem the German "Triumph Des Willens" — 'a record of the 1934 Reich Partj Congress (at Nuremberg) produced by order of the F'uhrer, created by Leni Rielenstahl.' "These Are The Men" has been produced for the M.O.I, for theatrical distribution and the commentary, reprinted here with official permission, is Crown Copyright. <rTVu mood of the opening sequence of the film is quiet and slow. A From a height we look down on to men baking bread, men going about their work quietly and efficiently, men of no particular nationality, just working men. We see them in the bakery, in the fields at harvest time, on the dock side, on a trawler, in an iron foundry.) "Who are we? We are the makers the workers the bakers Making and baking bread all over the earth in every town and village. In country quiet, in the ruins and the wounds of a bombed street With the wounded crying outside for the mercy of death in the city. Through war and pestilence and earthquake Baking the bread to feed the hunger of history. "We are the makers, the workers, the farmers, the sailors. The tailors, the carpenters, the colliers, the fishermen. We dig the soil and the rock, we plough the land and the sea. So that all men may eat and be warm under the common sun." (Now we see behind the workers, behind the work they are doing, the shadow of war. The men are still doing their jobs, jobs that are done all over the world, pottery, carpentry, sleeper-laying, steelmaking. This is their peace-time work, but we see too what they or their brothers all over the world are doing now — fighting on every "We are the makers, the workers, the wounded, the dying, the dead, The blind, the frostbitten, the burned, the legless, the mad Sons of the earth who are fighting and hating and killing now In snow and sand and heat and mud; In the streets of never-lost Stalingrad, In the spine-freezing cold of the Caucasus, In the jungles of Papua, In the tank-churned black slime of Tunisia. "We are the makers, the workers, the starving, the slaves In Greece and China and Poland, digging our own graves. "Who sent us to kill, to be killed, to lose what we love? Widowed ouv women, unfathered our sons, broke the hearts of our homes? Who dragged us out, out of our beds and houses and workshops Into a battle-yard of spilt blood and split bones?" (We are back in the bakery again— the camera tracks forward as one of the bakers opens the fire door— the camera still moves forward until the flames of the fire fill the screen.) "'Who set us at the throats of our comrades? Who is to blame? What men set man against man? Shout, shout, shout out their name!" (The flames dissolve into hands raised in the Na/i salute — the sound dissolves into the frenzied "sieg heil" of masses of men and women who crane their necks and push their fellows. From a great height we look down on to the mighty crowd in the Nuremberg Festival. The people stand motionless now. in two vast phalanxes, their hands raised in the Nazi salute. Between the massed robot crowds, four tiny figures walk towards the rostrum at the end of the stadium. They are Hitler, Hess. Goring. Gocbbels.) The voice says. "These are the men— these are to blame." Hitler begins to speak, to shout in German. Over the German an English voice, a would-be translator, says : "1 was born of poor parents. I grew into a discontented and neurotic child. My lungs were bad, my mother spoilt me and secured m\ exemption from military service. Consider my triumphant path to power : ( The crowd roars.) I took up art. I gave up art because I was incompetent. I became a bricklayer's labourer. A housepainter, A paperhanger, A peddler of pictures, A lance-corporal, A spy on socialists and communists. A hater of Jews and Trade Unions. A political prisoner. But my worth was known. Patriotic industrial magnates financed me. Rohm and others supported me. Later I betrayed and murdered Rohm and the others. They had fulfilled their purpose. ( The crowd roars.) 1 am a normal man. I do not like meat, drink, or women. Heil, Heil. Neurosis, charlatanism, bombast, anti-socialism. Hate of the Jews, treachery, murder, race-insanit>. I am the Leader of the German People." (The crowd stamp and cheer with joy.) Goebbels speaks : "My father was the son of a peasant, my mother a blacksmith's daughter. But I was cleverer. After Heidelberg University. I became a writer of plays, a poet, a journalist. None of my work was accepted. And this was because the editors and publishers were Jews. Unemployed. Jew-hating, crippled, frustrated and bitter. 1 joined the Nazi Party. Streicher and I founded a newspaper to propagate obscene lies against Jews and Socialists, and said that the Liberty of the Press was one of the greatest abuses of Democracy. Consequently I was appointed Propaganda leader to the whole oB Germany. (The Crowd cheers.) Goring speaks : "I began well. I was the son of a Colonial Governor. I was rich. I became an officer and the air-ace of Germany. After the war I took to drugs And twice was confined in a lunatic asylum as a drug-addict. Then I joined the Nazi movement, Helped to organise the Storm-troops, the Gestapo, and the Secret Police, And established contact between The Nazi Party and Mussolini's 1 ascists.