Film from 1965 shows scenes that span from early 1940s through mid 1960s. Film opens showing armed conflict in Laos and South America. Soldiers firing rifles in jungle areas. Armed men running across a field and in a town in Cyprus. Heavy armor engaged in conflict and buildings burning in undisclosed location. Riots in Congo with a crowd of men beating another man. Armed Republic of South Vietnam soldiers (ARVN) moving through jungle in Vietnam War. A Viet Cong fighter shot as ARVN troops attack a hut. People fleeing in streets of Cuba as government soldiers engage armed revolutionaries under Castro. A civilian woman suffering a seizure as Red Cross workers attempt to carry her. Burned body of dead tank crew soldier atop a tank. Medical corps persons moving wounded on a stretcher. Various views of ARVN with captured Viet Cong in Vietnam. Narrator discussion about Geneva Conventions and Counterinsurgency. View of the Palace of Nations building in Geneva Switzerland. Scene shifts to inside, in 1949, where delegates of 59 nations are gathered to develop new rules expanding the original 1929 Geneva Conventions, in order to better protect prisoners of war, wounded prisoners, noncombatants and others caught up such internal conflicts. View from ground of German paratroopers during World War 2, jumping from Junkers Ju-52 trimotor transport planes. Closeup of German soldiers leaping from a plane and descending in parachutes. Japanese soldiers surrendering to Americans on a Pacific Island in World War 2. Several scenes of massacre victims lying on the ground, victims of Nazi German brutality in Europe during World War II. Survivors of a Nazi concentration camp near the time of its liberation in 1945. A U.S. Army medical corpsmen help one to a stretcher. Executed prisoners of war. Courtroom of the Nuremberg trials. Seen in the front row of Nazi leaders are: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, and Julius Streicher. Seated behind them are: Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, and Konstantin von Neurath. Scene shifts to the postwar trial of Japanese Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, in the Philippines. Prisoners with hands bound, in an unidentified Asian conflict, being herded into an open truck. Views of the document constituting the 3rd Geneva Convention of 1949, addressing treatment of prisoners and of parts directed to "conflicts not of an international character." Views of a traumatized civilian driver wounded and a female passenger killed in in his car (appears to be in Cuba or Latin America). Armed gunmen have the man leave the car. A man lays the body of the woman beside the car. Scene shifts to a group of surrendered Vietcong fighters with their weapons stacked. Wounded combatants being carried on stretchers. American survivors of a Japanese prison camp receiving a good meal after being rescued - this is possibly in the Philippines in 1945. Many of the American prisoners are gaunt and emaciated and malnourished. Narrator recites list of activities prohibited by Geneva conventions, as images show these activities: A ditch filled with victims of massacre. Hostages being taken in an internal conflict in an African country. Prisoners being beaten by non-uniformed civilians in and humiliated in public. A recently liberated prison with a former prisoner in striped uniform beating a man as a group is marched away (likely a World War 2 concentration camp with a liberated prisoner beating a former Nazi guard). Death sentences being rendered without due process. A court in Cuba. A boy pointing at a lineup of prisoners. A prisoner shot.
Film showing city of Hiroshima, Japan, before and after the August 6, 1945 dropping of the atomic bomb over the city in World War 2. Sequence opens on what the narrator says is August 5, 1945, the day before the event (but the footage is likely from before that date). Camera pans over the city of Hiroshima before the atomic bomb destroyed the city. Japanese air raid lookouts are seen on watch for allied bombers. View of atomic bomb detonation as seen from aircraft high overhead (this is actually a view of the Nagasaki blast, not the Hiroshima blast despite narrator's comments). Next, the complete destruction of the city of Hiroshima is seen from camera at low altitude showing the four and one half square miles of the city flattened and burned. A Japanese hospital still functioning, with red cross flag on it. Hospital workers retrieving wounded victims of the bombing. Ambulatory victims clustered in doorways and halls. Shadow image of a large industrial valve wheel burned onto wall behind it. Similar image of a ladder burned onto a wall. The decorative pattern on a woman's dress burned onto skin of her back. Japanese physicians treating victims of thermal and radiation burns. Views of various victims, including some children, and their respective injuries. Scene shifts forward one year, to August 6, 1946. Children are lined up outside a school building, and then seen inside their classroom. Disfiguration and wounds on children resulting from injuries are still evident on the children at their desks. Sequence shifts again, this time to an early United Nations meeting with delegates grappling with the issue of controlling nuclear power and atomic weapons. Closeup view of American delegates, including James F. Byrnes (Secretary of State)and James B. Conant, President of Harvard University in the assembly. Closeups of representatives from South Asian nations. Closeup of USSR delegation, headed by Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. Signs identifying delegates from Colombia, Egypt, Iraq, Bolivia, China. Final sequence shows several U.S. atomic scientists in their respective laboratories, including Enrico Fermi and Vannevar Bush. United States representative to the UN, Warren Austin, speaking about the so-called Baruch Plan, for international control of atomic weapons. (Principal author, Bernard Baruch, is standing behind speaker's left shoulder.) USSR delegation, headed by permanent representative, Andrei Gromyko, who is seen presenting the Soviet plan. View of explosion and mushroom cloud during U.S. Operation Crossroads atomic bomb test in the Pacific.
Episode of "The Big Picture", a U.S. Army series of news release programs. U.S. Army cameraman recording Nike missile launch. Atomic cannon fires shell creating atomic explosion and classic mushroom cloud.. Army troops spill out of Sikorsky YH-19 helicopters. U.S. Army infantry soldiers ascend hill firing their rifles. Atomic experiments at Camp Desert Rock in Nevada, United States. U.S. Army Master Sergeant Stuart Queen seated at a desk in his office. He speaks about a series of atomic experiments ("Desert Rock 6") held in barren lands of Nevada at Camp Desert Rock. Celebrating victory in Europe, during World War 2, American troops parade down the Champs Elysees in Paris, France, with the Arc de Triomphe behind them. Happy Parisians watch the parade. War scenes in Japan: footage of explosion and mushroom cloud rising after atomic bomb blast over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Barren land on the ground in Hiroshima after the August 6, 1945 atomic blast there . B-29 bombers in flight. Atomic bomb test detonation. Atomic artillery gun M65, also called the Atomic Cannon or Atomic Annie, fires and creates nuclear explosion on distant target.Viking missile launch. U.S. soldiers on parade. Headquarters sign at U.S. Army atomic experiment station at Camp Desert Rock, Nevada, displaying 6-pointed star with "A" in center.. Several atomic test explosions. Soldiers on hillside witness a non-nuclear explosion. Buses carry troops along a road past a sign warning of radiation hazard. Army captain, instructor, briefing troops before the start of atomic maneuvers.. Maps of planned maneuvers. Engineer surveyors lay out ground zero target. View of the ground zero area which is the target area for testing. Signal men lay communication lines to receive and transmit teletype messages. Men operate machinery and dig trenches in which troops will take cover. Other men cover them with sand. [Note: According to the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, from February 18 to May 15, 1955, the United States conducted Operation Teapot, a nuclear test series at Yucca Flat and Frenchman Flat on the Nevada Test Site in the continental United States. During the test period 14 nuclear shots and 1 non-nuclear shot were detonated. Several thousand scientific, military (army, air force, navy, marines), and civilian contract personnel participated in the organization, planning, and execution of the test series. Military exercises undertaken during and following the shots took place under the name Desert Rock 6.]
British soldiers inspect trucks and other vehicles at checkpoint in Palestine. View from gun position and barbed wire as British Army soldier steps out of a military truck for inspection at border checkpoint. Palestinian man driving a 1945 Plymouth Special Deluxe (one of few built in 1945) is stopped behind barbed wire by British Army soldiers. He opens hood of his car in front of British soldiers. British soldiers inspect engine compartment and interior of car. British soldier lets the Palestinian sedan driver go after passing inspection.
German rocket-boosted jet engine mounted on a dolly. Number 928 is painted on the engine. This is the BMW-003 A-1 jet engine with additional liquid-rocket motor type BMW 109-178, for boosting during take-off. ( First flight was on March 26,1945, during World War 2.)
During Nuremberg trial Hans Frank describes the Nazi policies of exterminating Poles and others. Atrocities inflicted on prisoners in Ourador Sur Glane, France in Bande, Belgium in Catacombe, Italy and in Czechoslovakia. Nazi German soldiers engaged in destruction following massacre of many residents in town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia in 1942 (retaliating for the assassination of SS officer Reinhard Heydrich.) Dead bodies in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, in 1945. Bones visible in crematory ovens. Victims inside crowded barracks including women prisoners who have been liberated. Large piles of items taken from victims before their deaths, including luggage, hair locks, toothbrushes, shaving cream brushes, shoes, clothing. Bones of victims piled at a concentration camp. Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (sometimes spelled Höß or Hoess or Hess) describes concentration camps at Auschwitz in Poland during testimony. Victims in hospitals are shown, as words of Hess describe medical experiments include lowering the body temperature, injecting the body with poisons and infectious diseases and subjecting victims to high altitude pressure chambers. View of mutilated corpses. Sign that reads, "Arbeit Macht Frei" over the Auschwitz concentration camp gated entrance. Corpses of victims in the concentration camps.
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