Life of the poor in China. A few women playing cards on a side walk. A child standing beside them. Several bills which were not paid on New Year's day stuck on the door of a shop. A Chinese farmer making a pile of grains in a field. The farmer using a horse for harvesting. The horse pulling a ridge over the grains spread on the ground. A few women and child beggars on a street. A beggar woman holding a baby. A woman stretching a container in her hands for alms.
Camera pans along a portion of the "Berlin Wall" made of rough concrete blocks topped by barbed wire. Next, a large group of East German people are seen lined up along a fence topped with barbed wire. They look through the fence. More views of the rough concrete block wall. Scene shifts to Asia, where large numbers of refugees are seen moving along a dirt road. Glimpse of Soviet military on parade in Red Square. Refugees and displaced persons in various places and conditions. Some are barefoot. Huge crowds filling Red Square in Moscow,Soviet Russia. The Kremlin wall and old Russian Senate building and Senate Tower in background. Glimpse of Felix Dzerzhinsky giving empassioned speech in Soviet Russia. A baby with an angry expression throwing a tantrum. Glimpse of fallen refugees beside a road. The film displays a rotating globe of the earth and slate identifying "The Big Picture." A statue and photograph of Karl Marx, the philosopher who espoused Communism. Communists marching during early days of the Russian Revolution in Russia circa 1917. Series of One-way road signs in various languages. Large gathering of German people carrying signs reading "Frieden" (Peace). View of a person apprehended attempting to escape across the barrier separating East and West Germany. Closeup picture of East German citizen, Bernt Leuton, who was shot by East German border guards, after successfully swimming to West Germany.
U.S. propaganda piece about threats by communists against various European countries. The Czechoslovak coup and demonstrations. Czech citizens moving on a street in Czechoslovakia during a strike forcing conservative elements to resign from the cabinet. Scenes of police brutality and beatings against strikers. Communists take over the police. Czech President Edvard Benes with conservative politicians in a government building. Huge crowd on a street. Police clashing with crowd. Czech Prime Minister Klement Gottwald with officials. President Edvard Benes, facing possible civil war or invasion by the Soviet Union, accepts a Communist cabinet. He is seen signing documents to that effect on February 25, 1948. Other officials beside President Benes during the signing. View of the first President of Czechoslovakia Tomas Masaryk's son, Jan Masaryk, who remained the Foreign Minister, and did not agree to the new government. Two days later Jan Masaryk is discovered dead. The body of Jan Masaryk in a coffin. Edvard Benes, who resigned in June 1948 after refusing to sign the communist constitution, is seen walking slowly outside the Parliament using a cane. A guard saluting Benes. View of the body of Edvard Benes, who died in September 1948, laying in a coffin. Mourning citizens offering flowers and cry. Officials bearing the coffin. Shift several years later to street strikes in East Germany in 1953. People during a strike and riot in Poland in 1956. Russian tanks moving on a street and Soviet soldiers are seen. Elevated view of panic and Polish citizens fleeing soldiers. October 1956: Student demonstrators on street in Budapest Hungary during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Soviet Russian red star is toppled by crowds from a building roof in a sign of defiance. Russian troops respond with tanks on the streets in Hungary. Crowd fights back. Russians retreat. Crowd overwhelms local police. Imre Nagy, Prime Minister of Hungary, ascends steps. Hungarian crowd on streets burn communist books and papers. Russian tanks invade Hungary to crush revolt. Tanks fire guns on Hungarian street. Imre Nagy's execution announced June 17, 1958.
A trans-Atlantic cruiser in New York, United States. An outboard cruiser during a trans-Atlantic cruise from Copenhagen, Denmark to New York. The cruiser approaching a harbor in New York. The Statue of Liberty. The cruiser surging on water. The U.S. flag on the cruiser. 'Coronet Explorer' written on the cruiser. One of the men on the boat looking through binoculars. Men on the cruiser smiling. The boat reaches New York Harbor after a ten-day long cruise from Copenhagen. Several people at the harbor.
The history of the United States. Illustration: American people in the western states. A political leader speaking from a platform. People listening to the leader. People on an election day. The officials talking. A few men rejoicing. Young men, who unable to go to school, have become observers of life. Women act as the working partners of their men. Men and women moving along a path.
Events in Italy and the United States during the Great Depression. Italy, 1933: Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini at a ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of his march on Rome, Italy. Fascists gathered at the ceremony. Mussolini hugs and greets a fascist officer. United States: During the Great Depression, men of the Civilian Conservation Corps or CCC at their first training camp cut trees. Men of the CCC sit and eat food in a forest. Men and women participate in a walkathon during the days of the economic depression in 1933 (the scenes look also like those from a dance marathon, with exhausted couples clinging together late in the marathon). From a August 11, 1958 newsreel giving a retrospective look at events 25 years prior.
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