How the World leaders reacted to Jean Renoir's "La Grande Illusion" (1937) upon its release:
After watching the movie, Joseph Goebbels called it "Cinematic Public Enemy No.1" and ordered the prints to be confiscated and destroyed, with Vichy French authorities banning the film in 1940. When the German Army marched into France in 1940, Goebbels ordered the film's prints and negative to be the first things seized by the Nazis.
Benito Mussolini called it an "anti-heroic" film and banned the movie Italy.
Paul-Henri Spaak, then foreign minister of Belgium, who was also the brother of the movie's co-writer Charles Spaak, banned the movie in Belgium.
In France, the Vichy government labelled the movie "demoralizing" & banned it.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, then US President who knew the social and political importance of the movie, supported it and declared, "All the democracies of the world must see this film".
("The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir", Christopher Faulkner, 1986)
P.S: On this day, 89 years ago, "La Grande Illusion" (1937) premiered in Paris, France.