Film begins showing a U.S. Army Air Forces C-47 transport plane in flight over the city of Cairo and Pyramids, in Egypt during World War 2. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's voice is heard speaking in his 1943 Christmas report to the Armed Forces. He states that following the Cairo Conference, he and Prime Minister Winston Churchill flew to Teheran, Iran. View of city of Teheran from an airplane overhead. View of front of the Soviet Embassy building there. Wider view showing conference principals on the porch with reporters and photographers below the steps. Next, a closer look with Soviet Marshal Stalin, President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill, seated on chairs, conversing. Closeup of the Big Three with their military commanders standing behind them. Views of ongoing Soviet operations on the Eastern Front. Russian troops firing field artillery from a snowy field. (A transport airplane is in the far background.) Shells bursting on snowy hillside. Soviet soldiers training in white arctic clothing rush through toward tanks and lie down in the snow. Three Soviet aircraft buzz a snow covered field. A huge explosion is seen and then Soviet cavalry charge across snow. View shifts to U.S. Army troops operating in Italy. A jeep filled with soldiers tows an artillery field piece across a shallow river. U.S. soldiers ride across a stream in a truck. Rear view of artillery piece being towed toward an italian town. Glimpses of aerial combat between Allied and German aircraft. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General Mark Clark are seen riding in a jeep across a bridge in Italy. Glimpse of Italian people trying to clean up destroyed section of a town. Portrait of Benito Mussolini in the debris. General Eisenhower walking with a local British commanding officer and General Mark Clark, in Italy. Eisenhower and Clark at an outdoor briefing by British officers. Eisenhower pinning the Legion of Merit medal on U.S. Army Air Forces Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, deputy commander of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces who President Roosevelt says has been selected to be commander of Strategic Air Forces in Europe. Glimpse of B-24 Liberator bombers dropping bombs in Europe. Film shifts back to Teheran and the Big Three Leaders sitting in chairs. Closeups of them. Then their foreign secretaries step being them (Molotov, Hull, and Eden.) Nazi swastika flag. German armed forces marching on parade. German boys playing on artillery pieces under watchful eyes of German soldiers. Children at a playground. European farmers harvesting grain by hand. German troops in black parading. Glimpse of Adolf Hitler giving impassioned speech. Several views of Teheran conferees. President Roosevelt holding a ceremonial sword. Scenes of good will with hand shakes among conferees. Glimpses of British, Soviet, and Chinese troops attacking. Massed flags of the Allies.
Rally of communists and youth in East Berlin. Small socialist flag on table. A boy reads during a rally. Historical view of parade by German soldiers in 1930's Berlin Germany. Russian tanks repel people on streets during anti-Communist protest of 1953. Aerial view of Brandenburg Gate area and refugees fleeing in thousands from East Berlin to West Berlin. Revitalized West Berlin, with new construction. A building in construction and another new building seen. Modern stores with show windows displaying abundant goods including cameras and foods. People at a a busy food or deli counter and in sidewalk cafes and restaurants. Busy streets of West Berlin with early 1960s automobiles. Enduring flame monument in West Berlin Inscription on the pedestal reads 'Freiheit Recht Freide' meaning Freedom, Rights, Peace. At a conference with allies including Britain in 1960 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev walks down steps and gets into car. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan with others walks down steps. Animated Khrushchev addresses gathering in Russian, forcefully and defiantly. MacMillan responds encouraging peaceful negotiations and no force. Newly elected Mayor Willy Brandt of West Berlin addresses people. United States President John F Kennedy with Premier Khrushchev, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and others at meeting in Vienna Austria. British flag at Headquarters of Berlin British Sector. Military police jeep stops near a sign. Soldier looks through binoculars at East West border of Berlin before Berlin Wall was substantial. During free elections in West Berlin people put their vote in ballot box. Box opened and counting of votes progresses. People see results on board. Nearly empty streets of East Berlin. Destroyed buildings of East Berlin still not repaired after World War II. The Spittelmarkt area, formerly a busy shopping market, now deserted and desolate. Mayor Brandt meets refugees and speaks over the microphone.
British Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter ace, Group Captain Douglas Bader, visits the stall of the Ford Motors Company at a car show (likely the British International Motor Show at Earl's Court in London). Sign in background, "Ford British Built Cars and Trucks". He observes a new model of a car and takes a look at the stall of other car manufacturers including an MG TD series automobile.
A sign identifies the village of Bande, in Belgium, during World War 2. View of snow-covered village rooftops from a distance. Closeup of a cafe in the village. Bodies of 34 young men from the village are seen lying in the cellar of the cafe. All had been executed on Christmas Eve, by a unit of the Nazi SD (Sicherheitsdienst) affiliated with the SS (Schutzstaffel) in retribution for the deaths of three German soldiers killed by Belgian maquis (Resistance fighters) on September 5, 1944. (Bande had been occupied by U.S. forces soon thereafter, but was retaken by German forces in the December Ardennes offensive, setting the stage for the massacre.) British troops that re-occupied the village on January 10th, 1945, are seen removing the bodies from the cellar and placing them on the snow-covered street. Wooden coffins are stacked up at the side of the building. Some closeups of the victims are seen. Scene shifts to a snowy field where the bodies are on the ground and men wrap them in sheets and place them in coffins. Closeup of British soldiers placing cover on a coffin and affixing an identification tag on it. Next, the Village Priest presides over a mass funeral for the victims, as villagers stand along the line of coffins. Women in black grieve over the victims. British soldiers carry the coffins to army trucks.The villagers follow behind the trucks as they proceed to the graveyard for burial. The coffins are placed on the ground at the cemetery.
Allied military forces in Japan after World War II. The Commanding General of British Occupation Forces in Japan reviews a parade of Cameron Highlanders in kilts. The troops march on streets of a Japanese town with houses along them. Reviewing officers include Major General D.J. Cowan (Commander of British and Indian Forces in Japan), Brigadier General R.S. McNaught (DSO Commander of British Brigade), Lieutenant John Slim (Aide-de-Campe to General Cowan), Lieutenant Colonel J. Harrington, Lieutenant Colonel Alasdair Mac Lean (Commanding General of Queen's Own Highlanders in Japan). The band of the 8th Gurkha Rifles Infantry of India marches past the reviewing stand.
Fall of Hong Kong to the hands of Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) troops during World War II. A map of Hong Kong and Guangzhou province, China. Artillery fires and warships in sea fire at British bases in Hong Kong. Japanese soldiers inside a ship wait for landing on shore at dawn. Japanese airplanes in formation to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. A British oil tanker destroyed by a Japanese bomber. Japanese soldier fires machine gun. Immense smoke and flames off a bombed oil tank. Infantrymen and snipers fight in Kowloon peninsula. Snipers fire from inside a house. Anti-aircraft gunners fire at planes.
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