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Series: You Can't Do Business With Hitler
Show: Mass Murder
Date: circa 1940s

The following play, "Mass Murder" is an example of one of the many
thousands of government propaganda plays that were broadcast to help the
war effort during World War II. "You Can't Do Business with Hitler,"
the series to which this play belongs, is one of the series discussed in
Words at War.
Radio Section
Division of Information
Office for Emergency Management
YOU CAN'T DO BUSINESS WITH HITLER
Episode 5
"Mass Murder"

VOICE:

(FILTER -- VEHEMENT HYSTERICAL) Meine Deutschen Volksgenossen, Männer und Frauen. In Diessen Schicksalsstunde sind wir von unbeugsamen Sieges willen gefuellt. Der Reichs adler von Nordcap (FADE) pis zum Griechenland und unseren Siegesreichen Truppen verfolgen...

MILLER:

(LOW EMPHATIC) You Can't Do Business With Hitler!

MUSIC:

BUILD TO ABRUPT PEAK AND CUT SHARP

1st ANNOUNCER:

We are now at war. There are but two alternatives: Total victory, or

total defeat. There can be no such thing as a negotiated peace, or any other form of military stalemate that would result in the survival of Hitlerism. That is the opinion of a man who knows -- Douglas Miller, for 15 years commercial attaché to the American Embassy in Berlin.

2nd ANNOUNCER:

Presenting a radio series entitled, "You Can't Do Business with Hitler."

1st ANNOUNCER:

Episode five -- "Mass Murder"

MUSIC:

INTRODUCTORY AND UNDER

MILLER:

Douglas Miller speaking. Hitler's "New Order for Europe" provides for the expansion of Germany until Germans occupy all of Europe... not only for the present, but for all time. But to claim all Europe, Hitler must eliminate its present population. Thus, for Hitler and his followers, organized, systematic unemotional mass murder and depopulation have become the means of getting rid of captive peoples and dispelling forever any threat to Hitler's "New Order".

VOICE:

(ON FILTER) This is the Prague radio. It was announced in Berlin

tonight that 150 Poles have been executed for impeding the German advance in Russia.

VOICE IT:

(ON FILTER) Stavanger. It was admitted tonight in Berlin that 123 Czechs were executed last week. Among them were many prominent citizens.

ITALIAN:

Radio Italian. From Croatia comes the report that 18.0,000 Serbs have been executed since the early part of August.

GERMAN:

(ON FILTER) Rado Berlin. The Ministry of Propaganda announced today that that 1000 were executed throughout Europe during the past week for acts of rebellion and sabotage against the German Reich. This did not include 350 executed in Norway for their participation in the recent strike. Heil Hitler!

MILLER:

These are factual reports from the Capitals of Europe. But it is wrong for us to assume that these reports of executions and depopulation are isolated acts of terror to quell rebellion. I claim they go much deeper than that and I can prove it. I claim that these executions are a result of the Nazi's deliberate and fundamental policy of exterminating racial groups---a scientific plan to get rid of so-called "inferior peoples" so that German farmers and workers may occupy the conquered lands. The Nazis have developed no standard technique of depopulation; they use whatever means are available. They merely select an area that is desirable to them and ruthlessly get rid of its inhabitants either by shifting them to other localities or by executing them. The harsh extermination of the people of Abbeville in occupied France which took place in January 1941 is typical.

MUSIC:

IN...

MILLER:

Abbeville... the coast of France... January 1941,...

HUGO:

Ach! ' Tis nice to drop a hook into the water again, eh. Jacques --

JACQUES:

Even knowing the Nazis have dragged the Somme and taken every fish does not matter... a man does not need fish to fish.

HUGO:

Oui! A little line... a pole... and even if only a bent pin...

JACQUES:

Hugo!

HUGO:

Oui... --

JACQUES:

I think --

HUGO:

You have caught something. Jacques, you have caught a fish... even a little one.

JACQUES:

Non... a big one. Feel.

HUGO:

Jacques, that is not a fish.

JACQUES:

Non?

HUGO:

Look there... in the water.

JACQUES:

A log.

HUGO:

A body. Look there are many of them...

JACQUES:

Many of them. Hugo, we must leave this place. Come!

MUSIC:

BANG IN...... HOLD AND FADEOUT BEHIND

BOY:

Shall we stop on the bridge, Marie?

GIRL:

They say if you throw a sou in the Somme right at this spot any wish you make will come true. May I have a sou, Achille?

BOY:

Shall I throw it?

GIRL:

Throw it over there, Achille. (SUDDENLY) Achille!

BOY:

Something?

GIRL:

There. In the water.

BOY:

Lots of them. Corpses, non?

GIRL:

Achille what does it mean?

BOY:

I don't know. I think we are in danger. Come.

MUSIC:

BANG IN... HOLD AND FACE OUT BEHIND:

PILOT:

For the last time, Marchell, take your cart and go away... there is no room here.

MARCHELL:

The Nazi told me to bring them here. You know what will happen if I disobey.

PILOT:

What can I do with them...the morgue is packed to the rafters already.

MARCHELL:

You must take them. It will be bad for you too.

PILOT:

Very well, how many do you have?

MARCHELL:

Fourteen.

PILOT:

All from the river?

MARCHELL:

The Somme.

PILOT:

Nine hundred bodies in the Somme this month... what in the world is happening?

MUSIC:

BANG IN... HOLD AND FADE OUT BEHIND:

NAZI:

(EFFICIENT, QUIET NAZI) You will make your report please, Herr Pilot.

PILOT:

876 at my morgue, if you please.

NAZI:

Space in and 76. Gut! 876 plus 12,094. You are excused.

PILOT:

If you please, monsieur. What happened? Somme many --

NAZI:

Suicide.

PILOT:

12,000 -- suicides?

NAZI:

The French are a peculiar race. They are like sheep. When one sees another doing something -- well --

PILOT:

There must be something wrong. Those I examined had been hit on the head. Dead before they were in the water.

NAZI:

Really. Herr Pilot, perhaps you need a geography lesson. The Somme is full of rocks. If one were to jump into the river he would surely crack his head on the rocks. Come, I will show you how simple it is.

MUSIC:

BANG IN FULL... DOWN AND OUT BEHIND:

MILLER:

Conceivable? You need proof? I have proof. The German controlled newspaper Nouveaux Temps published in occupied Paris reported on the 16th of January, 1941 and I quote, "half the population of the town of Abbeville on the Channel coast has disappeared in a strange suicidal wave that caused the inhabitants of this town to throw themselves into the Somme chapter." Suicide indeed! The Germans admit that autopsies of the bodies reveal that nearly all of the so-called suicides had been hit on the head with a blunt instrument. Now why were the people of Abbeville depopulated? Because Abbeville is a channel town needed to house troops for possible invasion of Britain and because the once prosperous town is to become German.

MILLER:

But there are other ways of Nazi depopulation...less melodramatic. Just as efficient, starvation... exposure... disease... In conquered Greece, which never had enough food, starvation was the method.

NAZI:

My orders are to requisition all the food in this house, Fraulein.You will gather everything edible and place it on the table here. Hurry!

GIRL:

We have nothing to give you. We are poor.

NAZI:

Very well. I will search myself.

GIRL:

But I am telling the truth. All we have is a few potatoes.

NAZI:

Collect them at once. The German army of occupation is requisitioning all the food in Greece. You will be made no exception.

GIRL:

But it's all we have. What will we eat?

NAZI:

I am sorry, Fraulein. But you must realize that there are at present twice as many Greeks as we need here. Half must die. The rich shall become poor and the poor shall die. That is our policy.

MUSIC:

BANG IN AND OUT AGAIN :

MILLER:

Incredible? Want proof? Then see Time magazine for November 24th, 1941 p. -- -- and it's not only to Greece that starvation is being applied as an instrument of extermination...... but to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Norway as well. Yet, this is only a fragment of the story of Nazi depopulation. Scientific extermination reaches its most pitiless aspects in the Slavic and East Baltic states which Hitler has relegated to the lowest position in his hierarchy of race. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf :

HITLER:

"Our eastern policy will remain an idle dream unless a planned policy of colonization and depopulation are carried out. The great danger for the white Nordic race is the tremendous fertility of the East Baltic races, which like everything inferior, makes up for poor quality by greater quantity."

MILLER:

So Poland is to be depopulated? How?

SOUND:

RAILROAD YARD SOUNDS.

NAZI:

The freight cars are loaded, Oberlieutenant

NAZI 2:

I have orders to hold the train Our freight is increased by three hundred..

NAZI:

Very well. But where will we put them. The box cars are loaded to capacity.

2ND Nazi:

You will have to make room some place. My orders are to ship three hundred more. Why couldn't they lie on the floor and the others on top of them?

NAZI:

Nine hundred miles .. they would all be dead.

2nd NAZI:

I see no alternative. Here are the orders.

NAZI:

Very well then.. Three hundred more.

MUSIC:

QUICK BRIDGE SOUND: TRAIN MOVING... FULL AND THEN UNDER FOLLOWING:

ONE:

How are you down there ... alive?

TWO:

I am like some cherries I saw once in a bottle.

TWO:

How many are here?

THREE:

A hundred in this car.

FIVE:

A hundred in all the cars. I saw them go in.

SIX:

They took ten thousand last month.

ONE:

To the Reich?

SIX:

To the Reich.

FIVE:

Where do you come from?

FOUR:

Warsaw. I was in business there.

ONE:

I was in business too.

FIVE:

Are there any Jews here?

THREE:

I'm a Jew.

FOUR:

I thought you had all been killed.

THREE:

No. Now they are killing the Catholics.

SIX:

I am a Catholic.

TWO:

Where did you say we were going? To the Reich?

ONE:

To the Reich.

SOUND:

TRAIN NOISES UP FULL MOMENTARILY THEN BEHIND:

ONE:

I was talking to him and he choked. He's dead.

TWO:

Dies all of a sudden.

THREE:

Disease?

ONE:

He was from the Ghetto. They say there's typhus there.

THREE:

Typhus!

ONE:

Dead?

SIX:

I keep trying to get away but I can't. I don't like being with typhus.

ONE:

There's no use trying. You can't move.

TWO:

We must be going north. It's getting cold

THREE:

I'm shivering.

SIX:

It wouldn't be so cold if we had something to eat.

FOUR:

They gave me some bread when I came. I waited in the station two days. Every day they gave me bread...one piece.

FIVE:

It's worse not to have water.

SOUND:

TRAIN NOISES go to hand UP FULL AND FULL TO STOP

ONE:

We're stopping.

THREE:

Already?

SIX:

Maybe we're not going to the Reich. Maybe --

FIVE:

I was in a concentration camp once. It's better then this... you can find things to eat.

SOUND:

SLIDING BOX CAR DOOR BEING PUSHED OPEN

THREE:

They're coming.

FIVE:

What are they going to do?

NAZI:

(OFF AND SLIGHT ECHO EFFECT) Everybody stay down.. Make no move toward the doors. Now, this train stops every three hours to throw out the dead. Are there any dead here? (PAUSE, NO ANSWER) Speak..., are there any dead here?

FIVE:Just one..

NAZI:

How did he die?

THREE:

(QUICKLY... WHISPERED) Don't tell.

NAZI:

What was that?

FIVE:

I just said he just died.

NAZI:

Disease?

FIVE:

No. He fought and the others killed him.

NAZI:

Good. Throw him out.

SOUND:

TRAIN STARTS AGAIN AND TO BG AS BEFORE

ONE:

Why did you say that?

FIVE:

If he knew it was disease he would have killed us all.

FOUR:

Typhus.

THREE:

Where did you say we wore going, to the Reich?

FIVE:

(POSITIVELY) To the Reich.

MUSIC:

BANG IN AND OUT BEHIND

MILLER:

Since the beginning, the Nazi solution of the Polish and Jewish problems along the new Eastern frontier has been much the same. The greater part of Poland is to be German and is being provided with a new set of German landlords. The Germans need, however, Polish laborers to operate their estates, but this number is far smaller than the existing population, so the surplus has been hurried out of the country. There has been no adequate attempt to provide food, shelter or employment for these people. They have been dying like flies. This, of course, is what the Nazis want. It reapportions the population along lines more agreeable to them It gives the Germans slave-labor---- and if Hitler's victory is permanent, this slave labor would permit him to undersell every other country in the world. Fantastic? Unbelievable? Not at all! The best evidence of all is in the writings and speeches of Adolph Hitler himself. In Hermann Rauschning's book, The Voice of Destruction, on page 137, we find the following speech by Adolph Hitler----

ORGAN:

BASE... UNDER HITLER: (FILTER) We are obliged to depopulate as part of our mission of preserving the German population. We shall have to develop a technique of depopulation. If you ask me what I mean by depopulation, I mean the removal of entire racial units. And that is what I intend to carry out. If I can send the flower of the German nation into war without the smallest pity for this spilling of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of the inferior race that breeds like vermin."

ORGAN:

SHARP MINOR CHORD

MILLER:

You Can't Do Business with Hitler!

ORGAN:

D MINOR CHORD

ANNOUNCER:

You have been listening to the fifth broadcast in a series entitled "You Can't Do Business with Hitler," based on the experiences of Douglas Miller who was for 15 years commercial attaché to the American Embassy in Berlin. Listen for the sixth episode in this series which is entitled "The Spoils of Europe." Douglas Miller reveals the NAZI technique of plundering and looting conquered lands. This transcribed program written by Elwood Hoffman and directed by Frank tell Ford was brought to you by the Radio Section of the Office for Emergency Management in Washington.