Went the day well?

This is a 1942 Ealing propaganda film starting with the premise that there is a memorial to dead German troops in a churchyard in England, and that this was kept quiet until after Hitler was defeated. The idea was that these Germans, initially disguised as British troops, had attempted to occupy a village in the Home Counties to aid the invasion of Britain. It’s interesting that this in fact could be a propaganda film in favour of the Germans. In the film they are not depicted as being at least one step up from the baby eating monsters that had been the image de jour in the First World War; no, these were troops that were urbane and helpful in the home until they revealed their true identity and began to kill the villagers. I suppose though that their helping in the home, in the film, was a means to an end, they were appearing to be like British soldiers. Their true colours came through in the end when they shot the vicar in cold blood and then shot the cheeky cockney young boy as he ran to the next village. The important elements were that that ordinary people were seen to be defeating the enemy, that Hitler was talked about as being defeated, even though that was three years away. It’s maybe that this renewed optimism had come about with the involvement of the USA in the war. There was the public information element to the film as well, watch out for people that cross their sevens, I’d better hand myself in.