“Tran and Helle”- German Propaganda Short about Listening to Foreign Radio Stations- March 1940

Tran and Helle was a popular series of propganda shorts in Nazi Germany, aired from October 1939 onwards. The shorts always followed the same basic script: Tran, played by actor Ludwig Schmitz (1884-1954) was portrayed as a gullible, easy to fool character, who would regularly believe British propaganda, while Helle was portrayed as a “good German“ who would regulary explain the “truth“ (in the Nazi propaganda sense) to Tran. The shorts were only a few minutes long and were usually played in front of newsreels or movies. The series was stopped in Autumn 1940, because it was getting extremly popular and the Nazis feared people could identify with Tran and his anti-Nazi views. This short is from March 1940 and deals with the topic of listening to foreign radio stations, which was, despite being illegal, regulalry done on a wide scale in Germany. - Subtitles made by me.