US National Archives
Political demagogues manufacture racial and religious prejudice to fracture public solidarity, ensuring that citizens who tolerate the persecution of any minority inevitably forfeit their own freedom.
AI-assisted summary of Don't Be a Sucker — original source. Check the original for full context.
Source published:
Key ideas
- Political demagogues use manufactured racial and religious prejudices as calculated tools to divide and conquer a nation's populace. (5:50)
- In Nazi Germany, the strategy of division ultimately backfired on its ordinary supporters, resulting in the liquidation of 104,000 small businesses and extreme labor exploitation. (17:37)
- Scientific reality refutes the concept of a "master race," as research shows no correlation between physical traits and innate human ability or character. (14:44)
- Because America is entirely composed of minorities, defending the liberty of others is framed as a matter of hard-nosed, enlightened self-interest. (21:04)
Detailed notes
## Background Published on YouTube by the US National Archives on August 22, 2017, this 1945 educational film was produced by the Department of the Army's Office of the Chief Signal Officer. According to the archival record, the film dramatizes the destructive consequences of racial and religious prejudice through street scenes, historical parallels, and the rise of Nazi Germany.
## TL;DR Framed around confidence games and rigged hustles, the film follows an ordinary American worker named Mike listening to a street-corner demagogue peddling racial and religious hatred. A Hungarian immigrant and former Berlin professor intervenes, explaining how identical divide-and-conquer tactics enabled the Nazi regime to shatter German democracy, persecute minorities, abolish free thought, and lead its own citizens into total ruin. Through historical flashbacks illustrating the broken promises made to German workers, shopkeepers, and farmers, the refugee urges Americans to recognize that the nation is fundamentally composed of minorities. He concludes that defending the civil liberties and dignity of all neighbors is an act of enlightened self-interest essential to preserving democracy.
## Atmosphere & style The presentation carries the urgent, didactic, and solemn gravity characteristic of mid-century wartime public service films, opening with gritty, cynical depictions of card sharps and rigged sporting events before shifting into a tense, street-level confrontation. It feels intensely cautionary and morally resolute, propelled by the refugee's measured, sorrowful eyewitness authority contrasted against the bombastic hysteria of fascist agitators. The emotional arc transitions from casual curiosity and gullibility to shocking realization and chilling historical dread, ultimately culminating in an impassioned civic plea for solidarity and mutual vigilance.
## Bulletin - [05:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=350s) Political demagogues use manufactured racial and religious prejudices as calculated tools to divide and conquer a nation's populace. - [17:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1057s) In Nazi Germany, the strategy of division ultimately backfired on its ordinary supporters, resulting in the liquidation of 104,000 small businesses and extreme labor exploitation. - [14:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=884s) Scientific reality refutes the concept of a "master race," as research shows no correlation between physical traits and innate human ability or character. - [21:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1264s) Because America is entirely composed of minorities, defending the liberty of others is framed as a matter of hard-nosed, enlightened self-interest.
## Key takeaways - [00:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=6s) Con games and political demagoguery both rely on targeting citizens when their guard is down, exploiting vulnerability and gullibility. - [02:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=130s) America's true strength and industrial power are built upon a diverse population cooperating freely under constitutional protections. - [03:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=212s) Demagogues stoke economic and racial grievances by scapegoating minorities, immigrants, and specific religious or fraternal groups. - [03:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=212s) Individuals often tolerate prejudice against others until they realize their own group or identity is next on the agitator's target list. - [05:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=350s) Prejudices are not natural human traits; they are manufactured social tools engineered by political grifters seeking power. - [07:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=458s) The Nazi rise to power in 1932 relied on making contradictory economic promises to different sectors while systematically driving wedges between them. - [09:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=576s) The illusion of belonging to a "master race" manipulated working-class citizens into trading away their actual liberties for empty promises of dominance. - [11:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=670s) Upon gaining power, the Nazi regime systematically dismantled independent institutions like trade unions and religious organizations to prevent organized resistance. - [12:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=742s) The suppression of truth involved massive book burnings, hounding intellectual leaders like Albert Einstein, and censoring media that contradicted state dogma. - [13:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=827s) Outspoken clergy who resisted state ideology from the pulpit were silenced using fabricated moral charges to avoid creating political martyrs. - [14:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=884s) Courageous educators defied state racial theories by teaching that science supports no biological basis for a "master race." - [17:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1057s) The division of German society left ordinary citizens defenseless, eventually subjecting even party supporters to extreme labor exploitation and business liquidation. - [19:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1160s) The myth of Aryan supremacy was decisively shattered on the battlefields of World War II by diverse, multi-ethnic Allied forces. - [21:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1264s) Because the United States is fundamentally composed of minorities, any attack on the rights of one group threatens the liberty of all citizens.
## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=6s) The Hustle and the Sucker
A rigged wrestling match plays out before an arena of cheering spectators, demonstrating how easily people can be duped by an illusion. While the match is clearly a staged fake, an unsuspecting fan in the stands is ready to risk his hard-earned cash on the outcome. The film draws an immediate parallel to everyday confidence tricks: Henry boards a passenger train carrying $200 and quickly loses it all because he sees no harm in joining a supposedly friendly card game with complete strangers. Similarly, Joe Collins, an ordinary man with a loving wife waiting at home, allows himself to be led astray by a woman he meets in a bar after a couple of drinks make her look appealing.
Such people fall prey to operators who spend their waking hours plotting how to exploit vulnerability and ignorance. The common denominator among these victims is gullibility, establishing the film's core metaphor for how easily citizens can surrender their most valuable assets when manipulated by skilled con artists.
- The film introduces the term "sucker" to describe individuals who let themselves be manipulated out of their money and peace of mind by predatory grifters. - Con games rely on targeting people when their guard is down, whether through the excitement of a staged sporting event, a casual card game on a train, or flirtation at a bar.
---
[02:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=130s) The American Inheritance
The narrative shifts to an average young working man named Mike, who seemingly has every advantage. Mike is healthy, employed, and lives as an equal citizen in the United States. America is described as a land of boundless opportunity, blessed with fertile fields to produce abundant food, massive industrial plants producing consumer goods, and bustling cities driving enterprise. Its true strength, however, lies in its diverse population—people from varied ethnic origins, religious faiths, and skin colors working collectively to operate the farms, mines, and factories that keep the nation thriving.
Because Americans enjoy constitutional liberties—the freedom to vote, speak their minds, worship in churches of their choosing, and select their occupations—they are capable of living and building a united society together. Yet just as petty swindlers scheme to take a gambler's money on a train, political operators work tirelessly behind closed doors to strip citizens like Mike of their democratic birthright.
- America's power is framed as being built on unity across differences, where people from diverse backgrounds freely cooperate. - Fundamental democratic freedoms highlighted include voting, free speech, freedom of worship, and the autonomy to choose one's own trade.
---
[03:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=212s) The Soapbox Demagogue
Standing on an American street corner, a soapbox orator whips up a crowd under the guise of revealing the hidden truth about why ordinary citizens are struggling. Claiming he is merely an average "American American" rather than a politician, the agitator stokes economic and racial grievances. He claims his blood boils at the sight of immigrants with foreign accents making money and Black workers taking jobs that he insists rightfully belong to native white citizens. Passing around free pamphlets attacking Black Americans, foreign-born residents, and the Catholic Church, he claims the literature was generously funded by "real Americans."
Mike stands in the crowd, intrigued and receptive to the demagogue's message. A middle-aged man standing beside him with a foreign accent notices Mike's approval and questions whether he actually intends to read such material. Mike defends the speaker, remarking that the rhetoric sounds like solid common sense to him. But the orator pushes further, demanding a nation purged of its supposed enemies. When Mike asks what the country must be without, the speaker lists Black people, foreign immigrants, and Catholics, before finally adding Freemasons to his enemies list. The proclamation shocks Mike, an active Mason, forcing him to abruptly realize he is now among the targeted scapegoats:
> “Hey, that guy was talking about me!”
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: The Agitator's Wedge Strategy accDescr: A diagram showing how an agitator successively targets distinct groups to peel them away. A["Agitator's Appeal: 'Real Americans'"] --> B["Targets: Foreigners & Minorities"] B --> C["Targets: Catholics"] C --> D["Targets: Freemasons"] D --> E["Audience Member Realizes: 'He means me'"] ```
---
[05:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=350s) The Hungarian Immigrant's Lesson
The older gentleman beside Mike smiles wryly at Mike's sudden change of heart, observing that Mike was completely ready to endorse the speaker's hatred until his own fraternal order was mentioned. Mike tries to justify his initial reaction by claiming the agitator was originally attacking "those other people," but his companion stops him, insisting that in the United States there are no "other people"—everyone is an American. The older man reveals that he was born in Hungary but is now a naturalized American citizen, having fled Berlin, where he had been a university professor.
The professor explains that he witnessed firsthand how identical street rabble-rousers destroyed German democracy. When the Nazis first began soapbox preaching in Berlin, the professor dismissed them as harmless lunatics and foolish fanatics. He quickly discovered his mistake: Nazi leaders understood that they could never defeat a unified nation, so they intentionally turned prejudice into a calculated political weapon to fracture the populace into competing, hostile factions. As the professor warns Mike, bigotry does not occur naturally in human nature:
> “You see, we human beings are not born with prejudices, they are made for us, made by someone who wants something.”
- The professor cautions that whenever anyone begins peddling hatred against fellow citizens, someone is positioning themselves to profit, and that beneficiary will never be the ordinary listener. - Prejudices are described as manufactured social tools engineered by political grifters seeking power at the public's expense.
---
[07:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=458s) Berlin, 1932: Fracturing the Crowd
The professor recounts seeing this tactic unfold on a Berlin street in 1932. Standing in the gathering were five young acquaintances, all fellow Germans: Eric, a devout Catholic; Anton, a Jewish university student; Heinrich, a small hardware store proprietor; Carl, an agricultural laborer; and Hans, an unemployed industrial metal worker. A Nazi agitator stepped forward to address them, using flattery to tell the crowd that as true Aryans, the glorious destiny of Greater Germany belonged to them alone. The speaker promised jobs for workers, fertile land for farmers, and retail profits for small shopkeepers.
The Nazi speaker then methodically drove wedges between the listeners by inventing scapegoats for Germany's economic ruin. He claimed the Jews had stolen their national birthright, controlled the nation's wealth, and occupied their jobs, demanding that Jews be ostracized and eliminated. He turned next to the Catholic Church, labeling it a foreign institution whose influence had to be destroyed, before outlawing Freemasons and all independent fraternal societies, declaring that the Nazi Party must be the sole organization permitted to exist. Within minutes, five men who had gathered as fellow countrymen were transformed into bitter, suspicious adversaries.
- The Nazi platform made lavish, contradictory promises to every economic sector: employment for laborers, protected profits for shopkeepers, and free land for farmers. - By targeting minorities one by one—first Jews, then Catholics, then secret fraternal societies like Freemasons—the speaker dismantled common civic bonds among the crowd.
---
[09:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=576s) The Con of the Master Race
While everyone in the crowd was being deceived, the professor notes that Hans, the jobless metal worker, was the easiest mark of all. Because Hans fit the physical profile of an "Aryan," Nazi organizers flattered him by claiming he was part of a divine master race destined to dominate Germany and rule the world. Hans took the bait completely. They gave him a Storm Trooper uniform, transforming him from a penniless laborer into an arrogant self-proclaimed "superman."
Yet the illusion did not put bread on the table. When Hans returned home dressed in his uniform, his practical wife asked how they were going to feed their family. Hans angrily dismissed her worries, confident that the party would provide jobs, high wages, new homes, and limitless prosperity for their children. He even found her quiet skepticism offensive and dangerous, convincing himself that anyone voicing doubts about the party ought to be locked in prison. As the film notes, the party leaders had no intention of sharing power with working-class men like Hans:
> “They would merely use Hans to help them get there.”
- Hans allowed his vanity and ego to be manipulated by party symbols and uniform regalia despite facing actual starvation at home. - Ordinary citizens traded away their own liberties and the freedom of their neighbors in exchange for worthless promises of racial dominance.
---
[11:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=670s) The Destruction of German Institutions
Once the Nazi leadership secured control through the help of gullible supporters like Hans, they initiated a campaign to annihilate every independent pillar of civil society that could mount organized resistance. They dissolved trade unions, confiscated union assets, and banned rival political organizations, enforcing total political conformity under a single party apparatus.
To satisfy the mob and enrich party members, Jewish citizens were singled out as scapegoats for the country's economic hardships. Jewish businesses were attacked, looted, and seized, while business owners were beaten in the streets. At the same time, Catholic institutions were targeted; hundreds of Catholic priests and lay leaders were thrown into prisons because the moral influence and institutional independence of the Church posed a direct threat to total state obedience. By fracturing the population into dozens of squabbling, isolated groups, the regime conquered each faction individually until all power was consolidated.
- The destruction of trade unions was prioritized because labor organizations possessed the structure and numbers to resist fascist control. - Anti-Semitic assaults served both as an emotional distraction for the public's economic grievances and as a mechanism for party members to expropriate private property.
---
[12:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=742s) The Campaign to Abolish Truth
Having taken absolute political command, the Nazi regime faced an enduring adversary: the truth. Recognizing that factual reality contradicted their ideology, party officials resolved to systematically suppress free inquiry and open debate. The regime launched nationwide book burnings, destroying roughly 20 million literary and scientific works judged incompatible with Nazi doctrine. Scholars, writers, educators, and scientists who refused to compromise their integrity were either sent to concentration camps or forced into foreign exile.
The intellectual life of the nation deteriorated rapidly, with university attendance plunging by 53 percent within five years. Independent media was completely silenced; listening to British radio broadcasts or reading American periodicals was declared a serious crime. The public was forced to consume only information approved by Joseph Goebbels' propaganda ministry. Films and music were heavily censored, and the regime even banned footage of African American heavyweight champion Joe Louis, because his athletic triumphs shattered their pseudoscientific assertions of Nordic racial superiority.
- Albert Einstein, recognized globally as one of humanity's foremost scientific thinkers, was hounded out of the country because his non-Aryan heritage exposed the falsehood of Nazi racial hierarchy. - The state clamped down on culture, refusing to permit public viewing of any art, science, or sports news that undermined party dogma.
---
[13:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=827s) Pulpit Resistance and Repression
Religious institutions represented the final public platforms in Germany capable of openly challenging state lies. Courageous Catholic and Protestant clergy spoke out against the state's pagan racial doctrines from their pulpits, warning their congregations of the spiritual catastrophe overtaking the country. Delivering a sermon directly confronting the regime's ideology, one Catholic priest declared to his parishioners:
> “The aim of this battle is to dislodge Christianity from our Fatherland.”
The following morning, the priest was arrested by state authorities on trumped-up charges of immorality, a standard Nazi tactic to discredit moral leaders without directly debating their theological critiques. Protestant leaders likewise took up the fight to defend personal liberty and human dignity against state tyranny, refusing to remain silent as the regime crushed religious conscience across Germany.
- The regime employed smear tactics, framing outspoken clergy on fabricated moral infractions to silence them without turning them into immediate political martyrs. - Both Catholic and Protestant churches provided the final organized resistance to the regime's efforts to extinguish religious freedom and individual rights.
[14:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=884s) The Courage of Educators and the Myth of the Aryan Race
The Hungarian refugee recalls how truth was systematically silenced in Germany, with dissenters hauled off to concentration camps. Yet even under growing terror, there were brave men who refused to capitulate, among whom educators held a place of honor. In a German classroom, a university professor addresses his students on the regime's core doctrine, posing a fundamental question: what actually is an Aryan? Acknowledging with wry irony that he does not know himself, he writes the regime's official description on the blackboard—tall, slender, blue-eyed, and blonde.
Turning to face his lecture hall, the professor methodically dismantles the state-sponsored ideology. He declares plainly that there is no Aryan race and no master race, pointing out that while such myths may be politically convenient, science offers them no support whatsoever. True scientific inquiry finds no correlation between outward physical traits and innate ability or moral character; every racial group contains the exact same spectrum of potential, from idiots to geniuses, criminals to philanthropists. As SS officers and soldiers enter the classroom and stand threateningly at the door, the professor remains composed. He invites them to make themselves comfortable, using their presence to demonstrate to his students that differences between human beings—differences in capabilities, backgrounds, and convictions of right and wrong—are rooted in thought, not blood.
> “Remember that and to remember that there is no master race that is a scientific truth anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.”
- **Scientific reality vs. ideology**: The professor emphasizes that individuals must be judged on their own character and abilities, not by skin color, eye color, or the shape of their nose. - **The arrest**: Defying the state's racial dogma in front of the arriving authorities leads directly to the teacher being silenced and taken away.
---
[17:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1057s) How Division Destroyed Germany: The Broken Promises to Ordinary Citizens
Following the arrest of dissenting voices, truth was functionally abolished throughout Germany. Ordinary Germans soon found themselves bewildered, asking how the disaster had overtaken them and where it all began. The refugee explains that the collapse began the moment citizens allowed themselves to be split into hostile factions. Had the people stood united to protect one another, they could have mounted an immovable resistance against the Nazi menace; divided, they became entirely defenseless. In their eagerness to improve their own lots by backing persecution, everyday Germans made the fatal mistake of gambling with other people's liberties, only to discover that when the first minority fell, everyone lost.
The narrator examines how those cynical bets paid off for the average supporters who had swallowed the bait. Karl the farmer, who had gambled on gaining a better life, received only crushing labor—working as much as a hundred hours a week, legally forbidden to leave his land, and forced to produce whatever the state demanded for Hitler's war machine. Heinrich, the hardware store proprietor who cheered the ruin of Jewish shopkeepers, saw small businesses wiped out on a massive scale. Meanwhile, Hans, the unemployed worker who had donned the stormtrooper uniform, found himself chained to a munitions factory job with long hours, terrible conditions, low wages, and no right to quit, while his family faced constant food shortages because the regime chose guns over butter.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: The Mechanism of Nazi Division and Exploitation accDescr: Diagram showing how social division led to state control and mutual ruin for ordinary citizens.
subgraph Phase1["Strategy of Division"] A["Citizens Split by Prejudice"] --> B["First Minorities Attacked"] B --> C["Collective Resistance Collapses"] end
subgraph Phase2["The False Promises"] C --> D["State Consolidation"] D --> E1["Karl the Farmer:<br/>100-hour work weeks"] D --> E2["Heinrich the Shopkeeper:<br/>104,000 businesses closed"] D --> E3["Hans the Worker:<br/>Munitions labor & rations"] end
subgraph Phase3["Ultimate Consequence"] E1 & E2 & E3 --> F["Catastrophic Total War"] end ```
- **Business destruction**: In just two years, 104,000 small businesses were liquidated across Germany. - **Labor subjugation**: Workers were bound to state war industries, stripped of the freedom to change jobs, and subjected to worsening deprivation under the doctrine that armaments took precedence over food.
> “When that first minority lost out everybody lost.”
---
[19:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1160s) The Crucible of War and the Fall of the "Supermen"
When Adolf Hitler felt fully prepared, he launched Germany into war through coordinated sneak attacks, once again deploying brutalized men like Hans to crush neighboring peoples across Europe—the Czechs, Poles, French, and Russians. Yet on the actual battlefields, the doctrine of racial supremacy fell completely apart. The supposed pure-blooded "supermen" were decisively shattered by the very diverse forces Hitler had mocked as degenerate and mongrel: Montgomery's British troops at El Alamein, the Soviet Red Army at Stalingrad, and the multi-ethnic Allied armada on D-Day.
On June 6, 1944, American soldiers representing every color, heritage, and religious faith stormed the beaches of Normandy and drove relentlessly into the heart of Germany. For the German populace that had traded their neighbors' freedom for dreams of dominion, the payoff was absolute devastation. The European continent was left blanketed with the corpses of millions of German soldiers. The promises of empire ended in anonymous graves across the war zones: Karl the farmer lay frozen in the snows outside Moscow, Heinrich was buried at Salerno in Italy, and Hans, who had dreamed of ruling the world as a conqueror, ended up with nothing more than a tiny plot of French soil in Normandy.
> “Hitler said you couldn't have butter and cannon so Hans couldn't have button and when Hitler decided the time was right Germany went to war not by declaring war but by a carefully prepared sneak attack.”
- **The myth shattered**: Nazi forces were broken at decisive turning points including El Alamein in North Africa, Stalingrad on the Volga, and the Normandy landings in France. - **The cost of compliance**: The millions of soldiers killed in action served as grim proof that trading civil liberty for fascist promises brought only mutual destruction.
---
[21:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1264s) America Is Minorities: Guarding Liberty and Refusing to Be Suckers
Turning back to the American street corner, the Hungarian refugee warns his listener that the United States must never allow itself to be fractured along racial, ethnic, or religious lines. He reminds his companion that in a free nation, every single citizen is part of a minority in one way or another. The narrator himself is an immigrant born in Hungary; his listener is a Mason, a farmer, a blue-eyed man, and an attendee of the Methodist Church. Belonging to these varied groups, speaking one's mind, and living freely are not empty abstractions, but the core of an indispensable and practical way of life that demands continuous defense.
Liberty, the narrator insists, is fragile: whenever any minority is allowed to be persecuted or stripped of its rights through prejudice, the freedom of every citizen is endangered. Protecting the neighbor is not mere idealism; it is hard-nosed, enlightened self-interest. In America, tolerating minorities is not a charitable concession made by an imaginary majority, because America is fundamentally composed of minorities. He concludes with an urgent plea for citizens to recognize street corner agitators for what they are, refuse to play the role of the sucker, and realize that any attack on another group's dignity is an attack on the survival of the whole country.
> “America is minorities and that means you and me.”
> “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 pay let's think about us.”
## Notable quotes > [05:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=350s) You see, we human beings are not born with prejudices, they are made for us, made by someone who wants something. — Hungarian professor
> [21:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&t=1264s) America is minorities and that means you and me. — Hungarian professor
## Mentioned Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Albert Einstein, Joe Louis, Bernard Montgomery, Storm Troops, SS, Nazi Party, Catholic Church, Freemasons, Soviet Red Army
## Video description National Archives Identifier: 24376 Local Identifier: 111-EF-6 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/24376
Creator(s): Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. (9/18/1947 - 3/1/1964) (Most Recent)
From: Series: Educational Films, 1942 - 1947
Record Group 111: Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, 1860 - 1985
This item was produced or created: 1945
Other Title(s):Educational Film, no. 6
Scope & Content: Dramatizes the destructive effects of racial and religious prejudice. Reel 1 shows a fake wrestling match and "crooked" gambling games. An agitator addresses a street crowd; he almost convinces one man in the audience until the man begins to talk to a Hungarian refugee from Germany. A Nazi speaker harangues a crowd in Germany denouncing Jews, Catholics, and Freemasons. Reel 2, a German unemployed worker joins Hitler's Storm Troops. SS men attack Jewish and Catholic headquarters in Germany, and beat up a Jewish storekeeper. A German teacher explains Nazi racial theories; the teacher is dragged away by German soldiers.
Contact(s): National Archives at College Park - Motion Pictures (RDSM) National Archives at College Park 8601 Adelphi Road College Park, MD 20740-6001 Phone: 301-837-3540 Email: mopix@nara.gov
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4)