SEX BOMB

SCRIPT

CLICK PIX TO VIEW FULL-SIZE.

Part Four

NARRATOR:
BY 1944 THE WAR HAD ENTERED ITS LAST, MOST VICIOUS STAGE. AMERICA HAD JOINED AND THE GERMANS WERE EVERYWHERE IN RETREAT.

Dr Ortwin Buchbender:
In autumn 1944, most of the German officers were convinced that the war was lost. And the political leadership knew that of course. Goebbels knew that.

NARRATOR:
YET THEY DID NOT GIVE UP. INSTEAD THE SS, DELMER'S OLD ADVERSARY TOOK OVER, UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF GUNTHER D'ALQUEN - AND THEIR ORDERS WERE CLEAR.

Dr Ortwin Buchbender:
Do all you can, by leaflets, by radio broadcasts. To win time. I asked d'Alquen, and he answered - believe it or not we thought that we needed two or three and then the new weapons would decide the war. New weapons of course - rockets with nuclear warheads. We needed urgently three-four-six weeks and all is allowed to get this time. In other words - the propagandists are the prominent victims of their own propaganda. That's quite funny isn't it.

NARRATOR:
TO PLAY FOR TIME, THE GERMAN'S UNLEASHED THE GREATEST BARRAGE OF SEX LEAFLETS EVER SEEN. AND IT WAS BASED ON A SIMPLE IF BRUTAL MESSAGE - EVEN IF YOUR SIDE IS WINNING, IF YOU ARE KILLED OR CRIPPLED, YOU HAVE LOST.

Dr Ortwin Buchbender:

Don't get killed on the battlefield! Stay where you are! It is absolutely nonsense to get killed when the war is won.

NARRATOR:
IN A DESPERATE BID TO CONVINCE THE ALLIED SOLDIER TO SLOW HIS ADVANCE OR EVEN SURRENDER THE GERMANS MIXED SEX WITH DEATH MORE DIRECTLY THAN EVER BEFORE, AND MOVED FROM MERE DRAWINGS TO PHOTOGRAPHY TO MAKE IT SEEM MORE REAL. ON ONE SIDE A SEX PARODY OF LIFE MAGAZINE. ON THE OTHER DEATH.

Herb Friedman:
The Germans towards the end of the war really produced a lot of sex leaflets Some of them very, very good. The life and death series is an excellent series. There was about sixteen of them, showing either British Tommy helmets on the girls or American which kind of showed you who they were aimed at.

NARRATOR:
GERMAN LEAFLETS AND PROPAGANDA RADIO TAUNTED THE SOLDIER SAYING IF HE DIED, HIS ALLIES, HIS OFFICERS, EVEN HIS FRIENDS SAFE, BACK HOME WOULD ENJOY WHAT HE HAD FOOLISHLY LOST.

NARRATOR:
AND FINALLY THEY USED EVERY SOLDIER'S FEAR OF MUTILATION.

Archive photos:
Gentlemen prefer Blondes leaflet.

Dr Ortwin Buchbender:
This leaflet is in my opinion quite interesting and if you turn it over - Gentlemen prefer blondes but blondes don't like cripples.

Herb Friedman:
When you talk to any man in the front line, he say, well I don't mind dying but I don't want to go back a cripple or scarred or disfigured and the Germans played on that a lot.

Dr Ortwin Buchbender:
You are sitting in a trench and you get this leaflet. I must survive. I must get out of this war. Not as a cripple but safe and sound.

NARRATOR:
WHILE THE SS WERE HAMMERING AWAY AT THE FRONT LINE SOLDIER DELMER, EVER CLEVERER AND MORE INSIDIOUS, HAD FOUND A SOFTER TARGET, THE SOLDIERS FAMILIES BACK HOME. THE SO-CALLED DEAD LETTERS MARKED ONE OF DELMER'S DARKEST PROJECTS. THESE WERE LETTERS WHICH CAME FROM GERMAN FAMILIES WHO WERE SIMPLY NOT ABLE TO ACCEPT THAT THEIR SONS OR HUSBANDS WERE DEAD AND CONTINUED TO WRITE TO THEM AS IF THEY WERE ALIVE GIVING THEM ALL THE NEWS FROM HOME.

German voice over:
Your sister Erna is married. She has a little boy now. Named Martin after you, think of it, dear Martin, you are an uncle now, do let us hear from you soon, dear boy. We think of you all the time.

Home movie Archive:
German parents reading a letter.

NARRATOR:
DELMER ASKED TO HAVE THESE LETTERS AND WROTE BACK, TELLING THEM THEIR SON WAS ALIVE.

Delmer Voice over:
He is safe and well in a neutral country with a good job. Other comrades are with him. When this terrible war Hitler caused is ended he will either return to you or send for you. He asks me to send his best greetings to you and Anna and hopes you are well.

Cross fade from Delmer Voice over to Selina.

Short silent shot of the Ink swirling

Selina Delmer Best:
Continues reading in Vis. When this terrible was Hitler caused is ended, he will either return to you or send for you. He asks me to send his best greetings to you and Anna and hopes you are well. Please tell no one about this letter. The only signature was a red circle. It was posted in Germany.

Selina looking at pictures of herself as a child with her own daughter.

Selina Delmer Best:
These were the letters that really horrified me as a child. I'd been learning about Germany at school and I'd read a book written from a child's point of view about life in Germany during the war and it horrified me to feel that my father was making their lives even sadder and I was horrified and I said yes, but the letters and the things you did were so, so wrong and he said, yes, they were wrong. But it had to be done. He was proud of the effect but he wasn't proud of what he had done.

Christy Campbell:
Oh he had a conscience, yes. Yes he had a conscience. But he was a journalist. And he both recorded the story and was the story. And in that sense you park your conscience at the door. As a bomber pilot, he was about to unleash a load of bombs on Berlin.

NARRATOR:
FOR 4 YEARS DELMER HAD GIVEN EVERYTHING TO HIS WAR WORK. THEN, JUST BEFORE D-DAY ITSELF, DELMER'S WAR TOOK ITS REVENGE. ISABELLE, HIS WIFE, LEFT HIM.

Isabelle:
I behaved normally at the office but on leaving would start crying. I knew I had to leave because I could not face his way of life for the indefinite future. I did not want to marry any one else at that time. Of these weeks I remember only a weight of misery which nearly crushed me.

Selina Delmer Best:
I think it was the war that pulled them apart. Yes, there was a huge attraction but there was also a need for each to run their own life and Isabelle was really bound up in the arts. Pa enjoyed the arts but wasn't truly bound up in it. I don't think it was, I don't like what you're doing. I think, we're doing different things. She needed to be loved, and Pa was very, very bound up with his war work.

NARRATOR:
BUT WHATEVER DELMER HAD DONE, IT WAS THE AMERICANS, WHO, AFTER STUDYING DELMER'S METHODS, HAD UNLEASHED IN THE FINAL MONTHS OF THE WAR, THE MOST APOCALYPTIC SEX PROPAGANDA.

Herb Friedman:
The very famous six Builder leaflets that was produced by the OSS in Rome were just the most terrible kind of sexual leaflets with bestiality and homosexuality and just terrible, terrible things. I talked to the fellows that drew them - very literate, very intelligent, who did those leaflets in the style of the German poetry, the old German author poetry of the time. Very classically and formerly written. And he told me - well the pictures were nothing. It was just to get them to hold it in their hand. I wanted them to think - is it possible that my son could be taken advantage of by a Hitler Youth leader. Is it possible that my wife is so lonely that she'd go to another woman. And it was curious but the sex really was meaningless to them, it just was something that they threw on there just to catch the attention.

NARRATOR:
IN 6 YEARS OF FIGHTING, THE PROPAGANDA WAR HAD ESCALATED FROM COY NUDES TO THE EXTREMES OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE, MUTILATION AND DEATH. IN A WAR WHERE EVERYTHIGN HAD BEEN ALLOWED, A TOTAL WAR, HIS WAR, DELMER HAD WON. BUT AT WHAT COST?

Delmer:
I gazed into the mirror with all the horror of Dorian Grey, confronting his tell-tale portrait. There, staring at me, was the pallid, flabby-mouthed face of a crook. Was this, I asked myself, what four years of 'black' had done to Denis Sefton Delmer?

End Credits