Plan for Destruction (1943)

I didn’t love Lewis Stone’s narration here, not least because he kept referring to Britain/British and England/English which always strikes me as lazy writing. That said, though, it’s still quite an interesting assessment of the forward-planning skills of former Imperial general Karl Haushofer (Frank Reicher). Following his defeat in the Great War he took up an academic position that not only facilitated his planning for the future domination of the world by a revitalised Germany but that also provided him with lots of fertile young and impressionable minds to indoctrinate. His former assistant Rudolph Hess (George Lynn) suggests to him that he meet a prisoner with a small moustache and the rest is history. It mixes some dramatic elements with some news actuality to deliver to American audiences an idea of just how meticulously the Nazis had planned their “Politik” agenda and at how this could all too readily impact on the USA, however geographically detached the maps might suggest it is. There is a positive message for the audience here suggesting that by uniting against the Axis powers, there are some sunlit uplands ahead - but there is more work to be done.