 The naiical urge to impose its will on others continues from generation to generation. It has cost the world more than 20 million kill, more than 60 million wounded, more than 200 million made home. It told 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 world has suffered. Due to the Germans' 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 Führer. Tastic dreams was this humorless man dreaming as he stood at Nuremberg and looked down on his fanatic followers. In the Middle Ages a plague of slavery descended on the world. Out of the wilds of Mongolia came a mighty army of fierce horsemen led by Genghis Khan. Burning, looting, pillaging. The barbarian hordes swept across Asia and Eastern Europe. Genghis Khan 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 geopolitician's job was to transform Hitler's ambition to control these elements into cold hard reality. The 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. That was Hitler's theory. 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 supercontinent, 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 Jengaskhan. Hitler's step-by-step plan for world conquest can be summarized this way. Conquer Eastern Europe and you dominate the Heartland. Conquer the Heartland and you dominate the World Island. Conquer the World Island. You dominate the World. That was a dream in Hitler's mind as he stood at Nuremberg. In pageantry, the district leaders from all over Germany swore personal allegiance to him, hypnotized with 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, the only weapon he had to fear had broken down. 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. Coming up process, he sent his agents all over the world disguised as tourists, students and commercial travelers. Pay-off men like Ribbentrop came too to bribe, threaten and form local fascist parties such as de Grel and his rexist party in Belgium, such as La Rock and his cross of fire party in France, in Czechoslovakia, Sykes-Inquart and his national socialists in Austria. In Britain, Sir Oswald Mosley offered himself to the people as a Hitler with a Knoxford. In other words, I'm told that Hitler is mad. 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. Think this is. Right in Madison Square Garden, USA. It's Cune, leader of the 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. Inside Germany, it was a different story. Here in utmost secrecy, the hardening-up process, building up Hitler's army and his industry. More 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 ours. Forget working conditions. Forget how to think. Forge the club of blood and iron. Democracies talk about freedom. No freedom here. No labor unions. No overtime. The Fuhrer tells you where to work. How long to work. We have a sacred mission. Today we also don't like it. You don't eat. Or you disappear into a concentration camp. You get this. And this is the man who gives it to you. And what of the army? Before Hitler came into power, the German army by treaty was limited to 100,000 men. But treaties to the Germans have always been something to ignore. These 100,000 men were, in reality, 100,000 highly trained officers. The men who lead the Nazi regiments today. But Hitler didn't merely ignore the treaty. He tore it up. 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. The 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. Everything else was new. Tanks, motorized equipment, and one of our own inventions, the dive bomber. 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 30 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 20 hours a day to build 22,000 fortified positions on land where, by treaty, no German soldier was supposed to set foot had his Siegfried Line. He had his equipment face his intended victims into submission. General staffs all over the world anxiously awaited the report of their military attachés. 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. Five, 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 to 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 full-scale invasion tests 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? He 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 who would conquer Europe must first hold the 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 Benish. 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 sedatin land, 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. 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 are descendants of Germans, often with no more than a drop of German blood in their veins, suddenly learned that they were godlike, 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 Timbuktu. 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 this is a lot of hogwash. 15% of any group like this. But in the Sudetenland, he found some stuges who fell for this bunk. Conrad Henlein was their bush league furor. The people of the Sudetenland were told they should be liberated. They were told Hitler was their liberator. The Nazis smuggled over their standard softening up equipment. Black Jacks. 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. To the League of Nations, Foreign Minister Maxine Litvinov announced that Russia stood ready to back concerted action against Germany. But once again, there was to be no concerted action. The Czechs mobilized and closed their borders. The leaders of France and Britain desperately striving to avoid war flew to meet the Dublin Axis leaders at Munich. On September 29, in return for Hitler's guarantee of world peace, Chamberlain and Eladje prevailed upon Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland without a fight. In Czechoslovakia, the Munich pack was greeted by riots of protest, sent to France to be greeted by cheers from a relieved French people. And in Britain, a happy Chamberlain came back to tell him 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. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. It wasn't peace. The Nazis hadn't nearly 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 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 that there could be no peace in our time. In such a way as to threaten Polish independence, by 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 spokesmen said. Democracy has no convictions for which people would be willing to stake their lives. But what about the Russians? The lights. 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 arch enemies 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 knew was coming. They'd read Hitler's book, Mein Kampf II, and knew he had his eyes on the rich Russian land. 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 in the Polish corridor or else, paired for the inevitable. Although they knew Britain and France had guaranteed their borders, they also knew those countries were a long way off. 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 unfortable 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 forwarded at almost any point, by men, trucks, and tanks. Militarily, the Vistula offered the best line of defense. However, making a stand here would have meant surrendering Warsaw in 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, aimed 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 70 divisions, many of them armored. From a military standpoint, the Poles were hopelessly outclassed by their predatory neighbor. They managed to mobilize barely 30 divisions, made up of infantry or horse cavalry. In two important respects, the difference was staggering. The Nazis, 5,000 modern tanks, Poland, 600 nondescript tanks, the German Luftwaffe, 6,000 modern planes, the Polish Air Force, less than 1,000 of inferior types. The German armies secretly made ready. The way of living for the next 1,000 years was to be decided. There, that had begun in Manchuria and spread through China and Ethiopia and Spain would now blaze around the world. This man made that decision. Nicely adorned on September 1st, without warning, the German Wehrmacht rolled over the Polish border. The invasion was 30 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, pissed over well-meaning odds and were shot out of the sky. This ranged deep into Poland, destroying communications, radio stations, power plants, highways, bridges, 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, the item of equipment. For example, advanced units of the German 4th Army and a new type of storm boat. By September 5th, the Polish retreat developed alarming tendencies. The powerful German 10th 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 toward the Vistula. The armored divisions on the German right raced ahead, circling Radon and cutting off this group, which finally surrendered. Meanwhile, further north, the main Polish mass began drifting toward Lowes. The German command, perceiving that this opened the gate toward Warsaw, sent the northern Nazi armored units racing through the gap to the Polish capital. Infantry advanced in forced marches of 35 miles a day and two days later relieved the panzers about 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. Warsaw still resisted. Strange of the Polonaise told an incredulous world that the people of Warsaw, led by Mayor Straczynski, from their city defying Hitler to do his dance. But by the city's desperate resistance, the Nazis were forced to send for heavier artillery. The only source of such artillery was Germany's western front, with great secrecy the giant 240-millimeter howitzers were towed at high speed across the highways which Hitler had built for just such purposes and set in position around Warsaw. The huge guns subjected the city to a bombardment of incredible fueling. Their fire concentrated on the densely populated residential areas. Woman and child fought to save his city. You're in stale. On September the 27th, the strange of the Polonaise died on the Warsaw radio and the Polish capital was forced to surrender. Polish resistance was at an end except here, the western plot 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 800 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, an 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 judices point out loyal Polish neighbors. We shall adhere to it. Unconditioned was the kiss of death. It destroyed. Completely, in 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. Day after Hitler crossed the Polish border, France called up her reservists. In 24 hours British planes had bombed German warships in the Kiel Canal. People had declared war, 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 as 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 footsteps, every stain of his infected and corroding fingers will be spun and purged and it 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. We'll be born again the glory of mankind.