17 May 2025

French Minister Henriot Speech in Berlin


Video size: 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) - 74 MB
Date: Tuesday, 6 June 1944
Place: Berlin, Germany
Cameraman: unknown

Philippe Henriot addresses French workers in Berlin. French Minister of Information enters hall and delivers speech (live) to audience of thousands, which climaxes in call for collaboration between France and Germany: "you will understand as I do how moving, pathetic and improbable it is [pointing to tricolour and swastika linked on backdrop]. In 1940 would you have thought this possible?" Henriot reportedly told French prisoners that they would have been home long ago had the treacherous generals kept their word. He thanks (live) "the head of the German nation, Adolf Hitler, who heads the European crusade against Bolshevism"; some members of audience clap, others look impassive.

Nowhere has propaganda played a more powerful role than in the theatre of war of 1939-1945, when a sustained propaganda war was fought between the Allies on the one hand, and Vichy and Berlin on the other, with radio as its principal weapon. On that stage, the most notorious and skilful French voice in the war of words belonged to Philippe Henriot, known as the 'French Goebbels'. Understanding the complexities, the methodology and the impact of Vichy's propaganda necessitates analysis and evaluation of the prominent part played by Henriot as the regime's official voice. A high-profile pro-collaboration propagandist from the early days of the Occupation, Henriot rose in January 1944 to become Minister for Information and Propaganda, just as Vichy entered its final and most disreputable stage. From then until his assassination by the Resistance on 28 June 1944, he delivered a relentless programme of 270 self-authored broadcasts on Radio Vichy, playing persistently on the fears and prejudices of a people suffering the pressures and anxieties inflicted by the events that were unfolding, and conversing in forthright terms with his broadcasting adversaries in London and Algiers. This is the role for which Henriot remains best known, on account of his mesmerising rhetoric and delivery. The broadcasts provide a valuable window on Vichy's endgame and an important insight into the themes and strategies of its propaganda. In 1944, Henriot's public presence was huge and he was a media star well before the modern concept had been developed. Whether they admired him or loathed him, the French, quite simply, could not escape him.


Source :
Die Deutsche Wochenschau No. 720 - 21 June 1944
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-DzDJmt5F8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrwDehP8bzc
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FH034072%2F1
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060004235

1944 German Football Championship Final


Video size: 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) - 39.3 MB
Date: Sunday, 18 June 1944
Place: Olympiastadion, Berlin, Germany
Cameraman: unknown

The 1944 German football championship, the 37th edition of the competition, was won by Dresdner SC, the club defending its 1943 title by defeating Luftwaffe team LSV Hamburg in the final, which were held on 18 June 1944.

The final years of the German Championship during the war saw many military teams compete in the championship, Luftwaffe teams, Luftwaffensportvereine, short LSV, and, Wehrmacht teams, Wehrmachtssportvereine, short WSV, became very competitive.

Dresden's Helmut Schön, who would later coach Germany to the 1974 FIFA World Cup, became the top scorer of the 1944 championship with 14 goals, the second-highest individual amount of any player in the history of the competition from 1903 to 1963.

It was the last edition of the tournament during the Second World War, with the competition not being held again until 1948. The thirty-one 1943–44 Gauliga champions, two more than in the previous season, competed in a single-leg knock out competition to determine the national champion.

Dresdner SC became the last club to be awarded the Viktoria, the annual trophy for the German champions from 1903 to 1944. The trophy disappeared during the final stages of the war, did not resurface until after the German reunification and was put on display at the DFB headquarters in Frankfurt until 2015, when it was moved to the new Deutsches Fußballmuseum in Dortmund.


Source :
Die Deutsche Wochenschau No. 720 - 21 June 1944
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-DzDJmt5F8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_German_football_championship