Highlights the military career of U.S. General Dwight D Eisenhower from 1945 to 1952. Depicts notable World War II scenes and events starting on D-Day as Allied Forces invade France. Allied planes drop bombs on the enemy positions. Allied troops in Higgins boats land on the beaches of Normandy France. U.S. tanks move forward. Allied soldiers advance towards Saint Lo. Battle in St Lo area. General Patton Forces move forward. French troops and the soldiers of the U.S. 5th Corps march through Paris. The civilians cheer. Allied soldiers move towards the German border fighting on their way. Battle of the Bulge - when the Germans turned counter offensive. The bridge at Remagen on the river Rhine. Allied troops cross the bridge. Allied troops on the offensive, west of the Rhine. The enemy surrenders. Rubble on the streets. General Eisenhower with the troops. Military officers sign documents of German surrender on May 7 1945 in Reims at SHAEF headquarters. Eisenhower makes a speech at the end of the war. Eisenhower, in Paris, waves at the people from an open carriage. People welcome him in his homeland with a ticker tape parade in New York City. Eisenhower waves at the people gathered at the side of the streets from an open car of a motorcade. Eisenhower swears in as the 1st post war Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. He visited troops in various parts of the world. He salutes and moves towards a car with his wife as he leaves active military life. Pictures of Eisenhower as he becomes the president of the Columbia University. He reviews the troops as he becomes the Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Eisenhower on European soil. He enters a car. He assumes supreme command of the land, the sea and the air force. Against the threat from the USSR he prepares the European Armies. Soldiers enter into a train. He reviews troops. General Eisenhower and General Matthew Ridgway salute. He enters into a plane with his wife. Painting of Eisenhower being sworn in as President of the United States. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, two boys leaving the Library.
The Malta Conference in Malta, January - February 1945. The Malta fortification, building and towers. A plane taxis on the Luqa Airport on the island. General Woods, Smith, Marshall and Brehon B. Somervell deplane in Malta. Major General C.P. Woods shakes hands. Lt. General Walter B. Smith met by British Air Commander Whitney Strait. Ambassador W. Abel Hellemen with Major General F. M. Andersen. Arrival of Admiral Ernest J.King at the airport. Field Marshall Sir Harold Alexander, Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean Theater. Admiral Andrew and B. Cunningham greet each other. General George C. Marshall steps off a plane. General Brehon B. Somervell greets England's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. On February 2, 1945 an American warship arrives with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He is saluted by the British Prime Minister Churchill. Sailors on deck. View of the Montgomery House. Combined meeting of U.S. and British Chiefs of Staff at the Montgomery House. The chiefs are seated around a table, military plans agreed upon. A wall map in the background. Delegates leave for another conference. Policemen control the crowds on either sides of a street. A Russian airport near Yalta in the Crimea. A transport plane lands at the airport. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov greets Allied leaders outside a tent. Edward Stettinius U.S. Secretary of State gets off the plane. UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. The flags of three countries fly over the field: US, UK and Soviet Union. Secretary of State outside the tent. Harry Hopkins arrives. Prime Minister Churchill gets off a UK plane. Kremlin Guards form the guard of honor. Franklin D Roosevelt greeted by Russian reception committee. Daughters of Roosevelt and Churchill talk All the delegates around the transport plane. Delegates salute during the national anthem. British Prime Minister and U.S. President inspect the guard of honor after the national anthem. Kremlin Guards march past in review. (World War II period).
View of first atomic explosion (Trinity) on July 16, 1945, at New Mexico, United States. View of the battleship, USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay, Japan, with entire ship's company on deck in dress whites, Japanese military high command and several formally dressed Japanese diplomats standing on the ship's deck. Brief closeup of General Douglas MacArthur. Japanese foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, bending to sign the instrument of surrender ending World War 2, on September 2, 1945. Supreme Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, seated, signing the document. Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright and British Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival stand behind MacArthur. General Hsu Yung-chang signs for China. View of sailors observing the historic moment from every possible place aboard the ship. Large numbers of aircraft flying over the ship. Scene shifts in flashback to Manila, Philippines, where dead bodies of civilians litter the streets in silent witness of Japanese wartime atrocities. Some have hands tied behind their backs. Views of destitute Filipino mothers and children wandering through the rubble. A sign identifies the 98th Evacuation Hospital. Inside, a doctor and a nurse stand over the bed of Japanese Prime Minister, Hideki Tōjō, who attempted suicide by pistol, when apprehended, but was taken for treatment and is seen resting in his bed. View of Japanese Adrmiral Shigetarō Shimada, Minister of the Navy, behind bars in prison. Also seen in prison are Japanese general of the Japanese Imperial Army and Governor-General of the Philippines, Shigenori Kuroda;. General Masaharu Homma; and militarist Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto. Scene shifts to bodies of numerous victims of German death camps. American Army medics attend to some survivors rescued from the camps.
Men carry injured U.S. Army Air Force Jungle Rescue Pilot Captain James Green from hospital tent to completed MEDEVAC landing zone in Shingbwiyang, Burma during World War II. Green had been injured in a crash of his helicopter. Dr. Underwood talks on hand radio as men sight an incoming Sikorsky YR-4 helicopter. Engineer sets off smoke flare. Helicopter lands and men hold it. Men carry Captain Green on litter to the helicopter and he shakes hands with Pilot Lieutenant Raymond Murdock. Dr. Underwood gives Green an injection in his arm. Men put Captain Green in the helicopter and it takes off. Men cheer and shake hands with Dr. Underwood. This is an early example of one of the first helicopter MEDEVAC (Medical Evacuation) flights in a combat zone. Prior to this MEDEVAC flight, this particular helicopter, a Sikorsky YR-4, had been dismantled at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio on January 17, 1945, loaded on a C-54 transport, and flown to the North Burma theater of operations. It was reassembled and flown by Capt. Frank Peterson, USAAF, on January 26, 1945 to evacuate wounded weather observer Private Howard Ross from a 4,700 foot mountain ridge in the Naga hills of Burma.
U.S. military trucks, part of a convoy of 113 vehicles, led by Brigadier General Lewis Andrew Pick, are seen traversing the Ledo Road (aka the Stilwell Road) approaching their final destination of Kunming, China, on February 4, 1945, during World War 2. (They departed Ledo, India, on January 12, 1945, traveling a distance of 1,079 miles.) (Narrator gives distance as 1,044 miles.) View from an overflying airplane shows the long column of trucks on the road below. View from the ground, of the convoy reaching the city gates, where it halts as General Pick and his staff proceed through the gates to a speaker's platform set up in a covered pavilion displaying American and Chinese flags, and pictures of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. General Pick and staff are introduced by Chinese General J.L. Wong who, speaking in English, celebrates this first convoy over the Ledo Road, and points to a banner containing four Chinese characters that spell out "The Road to Victory." General Pick takes the podium, shakes hands with General Wong, and accepts the banner from him. Camera shows the area completely filled with Chinese troops, witnessing the ceremony, including many sitting atop a nearby roof. General Pick speaks briefly, accepting the banner on behalf of the convoy members. He then leaves accompanied by the Governor of Yunnan Province, China. Officers cut a ceremonial ribbon across the road at the West Gate of the city, and the convoy is led into the city by two Chinese soldiers on motorcycles. Chinese spectators line the way and celebrate with firecrackers and cheers, as General Pick passes, standing in a jeep, displaying the Amercan flag and with the Chinese "Road to Victory" banner in its back seat. views of the convoy trucks proceeding through the city. Closeup of one, with a painting of the road, and snow capped mountains, and "First Convoy over the Ledo Road" and "Pick's Pike Life Line from India to China" painted on its canvas cover. A sign over one of the shops along the road reads in Chinese and English, "Welcome First Stilwell Highway Convoy." Views of troops waving from the trucks and Chinese citizen spectators crowding the sides of the road to watch.
American troops in their drive toward Manila, in 1945, during World War 2, pass several knocked out and burning Japanese Type 89 Chi-Ro tanks. A dead Japanese soldier, shot dead while trying to commit suicide, lies on the ground with an undetonated hand grenade in his mouth. U.S. M4A2 sherman III tanks and infantry of the XIV Corps moving on the Lingayen Plains Philippines, leading to the capital, Manila. U.S. armor towing artillery ford a stream, as they pass beneath framework of an apparently unusable bridge. A battery of U.S. M101 105mm Howitzer artillery pieces is set up and bombards the Clark Field area. One striking shell produces an explosion, fire and column of black smoke. U.S. troops ride forward atop tanks. Glimpse of one soldier with flamethrower tanks on his back. American tanks firing their guns. Destroyed Japanese aircraft on the ground. A soldier using a mine detector to sweep the area. He signals to another soldier who comes to probe the area with a long knife. Next a soldier is seen standing in a hole dug around a bomb Placed nose up under the ground by the Japanese. Soldiers pull it from the hole, using a rope. U.S. soldiers walk in area full of similar holes and bombs pulled from them. General Douglas MacArthur is seen, on January 26, 1945, walking among remains of Japanese aircraft at Clark Field. He visits the Filipino cemetery at Camp O'Donnell, which was a prisoner of war camp, considered the terminating point of the Bataan Death March, where some 20 thousand Filipinos and almost 2 thousand Americans died during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. MacArthur is seen standing by a large Christian Cross monument, and walks among untended graves marked with small wooden crosses. The Mount Pinatubo volcano is seen on the horizon in the background. MacArthur and those accompanying him walk around a large monument containing a placard written in tagolog. U.S. soldiers start a mortar barrage against Japanese forces dug in on "Hill 70." Infantrymen move through trees and brush to flush out the entrenched enemy. Glimpse of type of improvised device made of explosives and gasoline, that U.S. soldiers are using to drive Japanese troops out of their fortifications. As a soldier watches with binoculars, the camera records several of these devices exploding with great force. Glimpse of a dead Japanese soldier on the ground. U.S. troops ride atop an M18 Gun motor carriage of the 637th Tank Destroyer Battalion, as it crosses a river. American tanks and infantry moving cautiously across a bridge as shells explode ahead of them. Tanks firing at Japanese troops entrenched in hillside above a road. Large numbers of American infantry marching along a road accompanied by tanks. Areas around them burning from fires set by retreating Japanese forces.
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