From : The Triumph of Propaganda: Film and National Socialism 1933-1945
http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HoffmannTriumph
The 40-minute report titled Feldzug in Polen (Campaign in Poland) that was compiled from several newsreels is a good example of trends in propaganda at this time. Through the demagogic use of words and pictures, Hippler tries to justify the invasion of Poland. The very much expanded newsreel movie begins with the ob1igatory omissions when it talks about the "urdeutsch character of the city of Danzig” that the "Polish robber state" had gobbled up. "With an ice-cold mind" the Polish govemment had pushed forward in order to "etemalize the injustice of Versailles." And: "It was Poland’s task permanently to threaten Germany from the East. It is the proclaimed objective of Britain to uphold this threat."
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A single buming hut was sufficient proof for Hippler that "the Poles are burning and devastating farmsteads of ethnic Germans.” Looking from a very different perspective at the trigger that the Nazis had set up to justify their invasion of Poland, Giinther Anders wrote after the war: "Following the ignominious farce at the Gleiwitz” radio station in Silesia where German agents provocateurs had been put in Polish unifomis to fake a Polish attack, Hitler "assaulted the East, razed villages and towns to the ground and murdered millions upon millions of people.” The newsreel commentary by contrast, reads as follows: "After Poland had taken up arms against German vital rights in a threatening manner, German troopsmarched across the German-Polish border on 1 September 1939."
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Since the film was unable to provide realistic pictures to demonstrate the alleged threat-except for the buming hut that has been mentioned-Hippler relied on the persuasive power of a faded-in map. On it, Polish expansionist designs toward Germany's eastem provinces can be seen in the shape of giant tentacles. In this way Hippler enables the viewer to witness the work of the general staff and its ingenuity Having been incited to become accomplices to these policies, the population, it is hoped, will give support to its leaders. As to the border lines that appear on the map, the commentator offers a retrospective justification for Germany' s alleged need to conduct a preventive war against Poland: “Excessive annexationist aims are proclaimed [by the Poles]” The latter “have visions of the Polish frontier running along the Oder river or even along the Elbe."
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The panzer units that overrun Poland with the speed of a "lightning war" are shown without commentary. Only euphoric music by Herbert Wmdt accompanies the rolling commandos for about ten minutes. Unencumbered by distracting words, the viewer was supposed to be able to visualize the precision with which the general staff did its work at all stages. ln this way, the German attack on Poland came to be extolled as a historic moment. The moviegoer on the home front was to be its witness. Overjoyed by the swift victory that even Hitler had not thought possible, the regime compiled two full-length documentaries from newsreel material. Both tried to outdo each other in their overestimation of the German armed forces and of the air force in particular. After Feldzug im Palen by the party hack Hippler, there followed Feuertaufe by the professional Hans Bertram. Many film histories, even those by Kracauer and Courtarde/Cadars, erroneously list both movies as one and the same.
