General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin, President Franklin D Roosevelt of the U.S. and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the UK seated on porch of Soviet Embassy building in Tehran, Iran, 28 November 1943, during World War 2. Scene shifts to group of Yugoslav Partisans and closeup of their leader, Marshal Tito, at their mountain headquarters. Yugoslavian Marshal Tito smoking a pipe while standing on the porch of his headquarters with American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Officer, Army Major Linn M. Farish, U.S. Liaison to the Partisans, and British Brigadier General Fitzroy Maclean, Winston Churchill's special envoy to the Yugoslavia leader. Next scene shows French resistance fighters with their flag on a mountaineer's pick. It reads,""Vaincre ou Mourir"" and displays a cross of Lorraine. Closeups of French resistance fighters at attention and also relaxed, smiling, and singing. Scenes of various such groups joining in the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion at Normandy, France. Aerial glimpse of D-day task force crossing the English Channel. Animated map shows Germany being attacked by Russian forces from the East, by the other allies from Britain in the West and from Italy, in the South. Allied forces moving across a pontoon bridge and engaging German forces in France. A U.S. M3 Gun Motor Carriage firing its 75mm gun. American troops firing machine guns, carrying wounded on stretchers and using flame throwers. Troops, including ambulatory wounded moving under enemy fire. Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division in France. One carries a wounded buddy. American troops firing a variety of artillery from under camouflage netting. French underground forces engaged in Paris. Closeup of one wearing a French Adrian helmet firing a rifle. Another throws a grenade out an apartment window. An American tank moving under the base of the Eiffel Tower as French Resistance fighters run across the area. French citizens celebrating the liberation of Paris. View from an American jeep as French people cheer. Closeups of French people. A bombed out bridge. A battlefield cemetery. Destruction and death in the wake of combat. Fallen French civilians lying on pavement. A U.S. tank slowly driving through a masonry wall. Soviet forces advancing through destroyed buildings. Chinese troops marching along the Great Wall. British troops on parade in tropics. Asian ally troops marching. Huge formation of marching U.S. soldiers. United Nations flags in the breeze.
August 1944: U.S. soldiers get off a Landing Craft on the French coast. Soldiers on U.S. battleships. U.S. officers discuss among themselves. Soldiers move across the beach. Soldiers sit outside an abandoned unfinished German pillbox. They examine German artillery. A camouflaged German gun IMPLACEMENT. A U.S. Landing Craft hit by a German radio controlled flying bomb. The charred and destroyed craft on the beach. Soldiers unload heavy equipment and vehicles including jeeps and tanks from Landing Crafts. U.S. battleships in the background. Blimps in the sky. Soldiers move across a street. Soldiers in trucks. Engineers construct an airstrip through a vineyard. Heavy machinery and equipment used to remove the rubble and bushes, as well as to level the ground. Military trucks and vehicles on the road. (World War II period).
A dramatized film entitled "Beachhead to Berlin" describes preparations for the Allied invasion of France and the drive toward Berlin. Film combines actors and actual footage. Harbor in Greenway England in July, 1944. U.S. Coast Guard Barracks. Coast Guard men playing cards. One on a bunk contemplating. Chaplain's office: Chaplain typing and smoking a pipe. Audio narration of his letter being read, describing how things transpired at the Normandy beaches during the Invasion of France. Then actual footage of wounded being transported on ships after D-Day Normandy invasion. In England, footage of LCIs, LCVPs, Coast Guard cutters, including the Flying Angel Rescue Cutter. All of these ships participating in "dry run" practices for the actual Normandy landing. Coast Guard crews on decks of ships. Infantry loading landing crafts in England for dry runs. Landing craft arriving on English beaches during dry runs. A jeep drives off a landing craft and gets stuck on metal mesh on the beach. A tank is driven off a landing craft. Men maintaining ships. Scraping rust from the deck, painting identifications on ships, repairing rope ladders, and welding. (World War II period).
Several American school children, including one in a Boy Scouts of America uniform, recite the pledge of allegiance during World War 2. Scene broadens to encompass a school yard filled with elementary school students reciting the pledge in front of an American flag flying high on a pole. As scene fades images appear of battleships firing guns; an F4F airplane taking off from an aircraft carrier; landing craft approaching a beach; American soldiers fighting with small arms and a flame thrower, in jungles of New Guinea; a U.S. gun crew firing heavy artillery; and a U.S. P-38 aircraft on a rainy runway, spraying water as it takes off, in the Aleutian Islands. U.S. troops firing automatic weapons on a Pacific Island. A B-17 pilot wearing an oxygen mask in his cockpit, flying in a formation creating contrails at high altitude over Germany. Waist gunner firing at an attacking German fighter plane that explodes in air. U.S. troops in jeeps moving over jungle road. U.S. ski troops on snow in Iceland heading downhill toward their tents in the snow. American troops during amphibious landing in the Philippines. U.S. troops aboard army halftracks on desert in Iran. American paratroopers dropping from C-47 aircraft over France. U.S. soldiers marching through two large gates with cadre of Chinese soldiers in China. American troops fighting in Italy and firing a 155mm howitzer. U.S. infantry following a sherman tank over a war-torn landscape with shells bursting nearby. Crowded, busy street scenes of traffic and pedestrians in Manhattan, New York City, and Chicago, Illinois. Army tanks being manufactured by war production workers in a Detroit war production plant or factory. A Los Angeles shipyard filled with workers at shift change. Closeups of individual American soldiers in combat helmets. U.S. troops descending rope nets from transport ships to board landing craft, and approaching the beaches of Normandy, France, under fire, on D-day, June 6, 1944. Views of the Statue of Liberty, including closeups.
American paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division, boarding hired British commercial buses that take them to a marshaling point, in preparation for the invasion of Normandy, France, in World War 2. Views from below of U.S. Army Air Forces C-47 transport aircraft in formation, carrying paratroopers toward Normandy, France, on June 5, 1944. Aerial view of British and American invasion ships en route to rendezvous off the Isle of Wight. U.S. Army Air Forces B-26 and B-17 bombers in flight. B-17 dropping bombs on lines of communications in Normandy, to hinder German movements of reinforcements. Allied warships and transports beginning their move toward the coast of Normandy. British landing craft underway under cover of barrage balloons.
Montage of war scenes related to World War 2 Allied invasion of France. German sentry looking though binoculars. German coastal rail gun. Field Marshal Hermann Goering with Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of German High Command, inspecting Atlantic Wall coastal defenses on French coast. Allied D-day forces boarding ships in England. Troops loaded and waiting for orders to depart. Barrage balloons aloft. British and American troops, Coast Guard men, and sailors being briefed and studying aerial photographs and maps of the coast of France in the Normandy beach landing region. General James Gavin briefing American Airborne troops. American and British aircrews being briefed for missions. British King George VI visiting Royal Navy sailors aboard British warship. Sailors use light signals; ships weigh anchors,cast lines. Task force convoys underway. General Eisenhower visiting US Army paratroopers of 101st Airborne Division. U.S. paratroopers boarding C-47 airplanes the night of June 5, 1944. A C-47 named: "That's All Brother."C-47s with D-Day paint stripes taking off at nightfall.