We thus see that even in what might seem to us the most fanciful connections we can find evidence of the will to enforce Germanization and of the criminal will to strip men of the nationality which they have the right to retain.
I shall now say a few words about the cinema. The Germans, to do them justice, have never failed to understand the exceptional importance of the cinema as a means of propaganda. In France they devoted to this subject seven ordinances or decrees.
You must know that, in the first place, the Germans prohibited the showing of films of which they disapproved . . . .
THE PRESIDENT: M. Faure, don’t you think that evidence that the Germans used the cinema as a method of propaganda is really somewhat cumulative? You have shown already that they forbade a great number of books which they considered hostile to their ideology, and that they controlled the press, and is it not almost cumulative and a matter of detail that they also controlled the cinema?
Unless there is some evidence on behalf of the defendants contradicting the evidence which you have given, I think the Tribunal will be satisfied that the Germans did adopt all these methods of propaganda.
M. FAURE: When a brief is presented it sometimes does produce the impression that the arguments contained in it are cumulative, although that may not have been so apparent when the preparation was going on.
I shall not speak, then, on the subject of the cinema. I wish simply to point this out to the Tribunal. We thought that with regard to these questions of propaganda with which we are dealing in the abstract it would perhaps be as well to provide concrete illustrations of a few of the themes of German propaganda, and to this end we propose presently, with the permission of the Tribunal, to project very briefly a few of the themes of German propaganda. I wish to point out that these themes are taken from archives which we found. On the other hand, we intend to present, for one minute each, two pictures taken from a German propaganda film produced by a Frenchman at the instigation and with the financial support of the German office.
As we are now going to present these pictures, with the permission of the Tribunal, I consider it indispensable to present just one document, Document RF-1141, since it is the interrogation of the producer of the film and establishes the fact that this film was made by order of the Germans and paid for by them. I therefore present in evidence this Document Number RF-1141, which is necessary for the presentation which we are about to make. Since it seems to me that sufficient evidence has already been advanced concerning the various methods of propaganda, I shall apply the same line of reasoning to the part anticipated for broadcasting.
Here I merely wish to present a document which goes beyond the field of pure propaganda. This is Document Number RF-1146. I must point out, first of all, that as regards broadcasting, the Germans obviously encountered an obstacle which was not present to the same degree in other fields. This obstacle lay in the transmissions broadcast by the free radios which, as the Belgian witness said yesterday, were followed with the greatest enthusiasm by the inhabitants of the occupied countries. The German Command then had the idea of penalizing the persons who listened to these broadcasts. In the document which I am going to quote, the Military Command went to the length of asking the French authorities most urgently to institute the most stringent penalties, even going so far as to prescribe the death penalty for persons repeating news heard on the foreign radio service.
I think it will be useful, if I deposit in evidence this document emanating from the Military Command and signed by Stülpnagel, which demonstrates the criminal intentions of the German staff. I should like to read this document, RF-1146. I read from the beginning of the third paragraph: