Scenes from life and career of Dwight D Eisenhower, 34th President of United States. U.S. Air Force plane lands and the President disembarks the plane in India, in 1959. He is greeted by the Indian President Dr Rajendra Prasad and other dignitaries. Emblem of 'Panama'. Sign of 'welcome Ike Crusader'. Large crowd welcomes Eisenhower. Motorcade goes through the city's street. Milestones in General Eisenhower's life and the international esteem with which he is held. Lt Col Eisenhower concerned about U.S. isolationism in 1940 as World War 2 is underway. Explosions in Europe due to bombing by German aircraft. Eisenhower and other officers in the General Staff study a map. Eisenhower plans the strategy as the commander of Operation Torch (he is shown talking to General George C. Marshall and Winston Churchill). President Eisenhower visits 4 continents and meets several leaders. Large crowds welcome him. General Eisenhower prepares for D-Day Invasion of France during World War 2. June 5, 1944: The Allied forces including troops, artillery, equipment, ammunition, aircraft and ships prepared. June 6, 1944: The Allies invade Normandy. Troops wade through the water during D-Day Normandy beach landings, while under enemy fire. German soldiers surrender. May 7, 1945: Nazi General Alfred Jodl signs the unconditional surrender of his government. General Eisenhower returns to the U.S. He receives a hero's welcome in New York during a parade. He visits his hometown in Kansas. Pictures of his family, childhood and college days. Eisenhower on his visits to various countries as President.
View of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria. Cremation ovens used to execute the prisoners. A German guard held at gun point by the American troops. Liberated American speaks, surrounded by a group of prisoners. He is U.S. Navy Lieutenant Jack H. Taylor of Hollywood, California. Filmed by Lt. Col. George C. Stevens, he says that in October 1944 he was the first allied officer to drop into Austria. He says he was captured December 1, 1944 by the Gestapo, and severely beaten. He details his imprisonment time in Austria and then at Mauthausen. He shows insignia and dog tags of two American soldiers who were executed in a gas chamber of the camp by the Germans. He details the multiple methods used by the Germans to kill prisoners, including shooting, gas chamber, beating, exposure in the snow for 48 hours with cold water thrown on them, starvation, dogs, and pushing off a hundred foot cliff. He thanks the American 11th Armored Division for rescuing them. (World War II period).
Scenes filmed by Navy and Marine combat photographers, of the Battle for Iwo Jima, in February and March, 1944, during World War 2. View from a boat offshore, of Mount Suribachi, on the Island of Iwo Jima. Warships of the U.S. 5th Fleet attack with naval gunfire, as landing craft manuever near shore. U.S. Marines aboard Landing Vehicles Tracked (LVTs) head for the beach, with the heavy cruiser, USS Baltimore (CA-68) in the background. U.S. Carrier-based Grumman TBF Avenger aircraft drops bombs on Mount Suribachi. Landing craft arriving at a fairly level area of beach. U.S. marines moving cautiously on the beachhead. The USS Baltimore and a Fletcher class destroyer offshore in background. Marines hunkered down with smoke rising near them, and then moving forward again, through the black sands. Closeup of a marine with flame thrower. Several U.S. Chance Vought F4U Corsair aircraft fly overhead, dropping bombs on the mountain. Marines continue to move forward, under constant fire from Japanese small arms. A heavy landing craft Infantry, LCI(H) moves toward shore in background. A DUKW ("Duck") coming ashore. Marines using a crane to offload a 105mm howitzer from a landing craft. As they raise the gun, the landing craft moves away and marines Hook the howitzer to a DUKW to help move it. Next, marines are seen setting up two 105s on the beachhead and firing them. Marines with more artillery pieces stacked on the beachhead. A gunboat, LCI (G), firing from close to the shore behind them. Marines digging in sand that the narrator calls the floor of an active volcano. Smoking sulphur gases are seen rising behind them. The USS Baltimore firing her guns from close to shore. Machine gun tracer rounds crossing the beachhead, as Naval gunfire resumes from offshore. Marines crawling and then occasionally sprinting forward across the sand dunes. (One carries a stretcher.) Four marines carrying one wounded back to the beachhead, on a stretcher. Two marines carry another between them. Marines scrambling over brush and rough ground. View from hillside of marines climbing up from below, as shell bursts only a few yards away. Scene shifts to later in the battle for Iwo Jima. A catapillar tractor is parked near bodies of Japanese soldiers strewn across the landscape. (Narrator notes that more than 14 thousand such dead had been counted by March 6, 1944.) Finally, the iconic moving images of U.S. marines raising the American flag over Mount Suribachi.
'Problems of Peace in Europe' produced in 1948, depicts reconstruction problems in aftermath of World War II and includes footage from during the war and soon after the war. Scene of desperate and hungry civilian people (possibly in Germany but could be elsewhere in Europe) scrambling over each other and trying to find food on the ground among garbage or wreckage, circa 1945 or 1946. European peoples massing to reestablish political order and seek relief in post-war Europe. Montage of images of people from all walks of life. Reminders of war showing aircrews in bombers and bombs falling. Batteries of rockets being fired. A formation of U.S. B-17s and a B-26 aircraft with D-day stripes, in flight. Allied bombing of cities with devastating effect (likely 1944-1945). Aerial view of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Aerial view of a major U.S. industrial complex, with many smoke stacks and industrial pollution. Mass of workers leaving at end of shift at a U.S. manufacturing plant or factory. Views of two different streamlined locomotives pulling passenger trains at high speed, approaching camera position. Freight trains speeding on railroads. Farmers harvesting and baling hay by machine and cultivating fields with tractor. Multiple wide views of the K-25 building of the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, in Oak Ridge Tennessee, the world's largest building in 1944 when it was built, and an instrumental part of the Manhattan Project effort to develop the atomic bomb in World War 2. Huge sprawling industrial sites in America. Map of Europe. Street scene in Germany with destroyed buildings and rubble cleaned from street, but still piled up in places. Desperate, hungry, and poverty stricken German citizens rummaging through garbage piles for anything to eat or anything of value. Two very young German boys standing together on a street, with one boy smoking a cigarette. Children scrambling over trash and rubbish heaps.
The film 'The Saga of the Franklin' to honor and remember the men who served in the U.S. Navy during during World War II. A board reads USS Franklin (CV-13). The log book of the ship. An entry from the log book. The ship leaves San Francisco, California in February 1945. A U.S. flag flutters on the ship. The ship in the western Pacific Ocean. A fleet of ships underway at sea. Aircraft take off from the deck for a mission on July 4th, 1944. The target is Iwo Jima, Japan. Other ships nearby. Guns are fired. A Japanese Kamikaze aircraft crashes on a ship. An aircraft in flight. Explosions on the ground below. A Kamikaze aircraft is hit by guns fired from USS Franklin by Air Group 13. Rocket equipped aircraft struck Japanese ships. Aerial view of burning ships in water. Kamikaze aircraft in flight. A Kamikaze aircraft which has been hit, falls downwards in a mass of fire. It crashes into water. A Kamikaze aircraft crashes into water near a ship. A ball of fire rises up. A Kamikaze aircraft crashes into USS Franklin on October 30, 1944. After being repaired, USS Franklin reaches Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. A band plays to welcome the ship. U.S. Navy WAVES ( Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) on the ship. A U.S. Navy Vice Admiral decorates sailors. Air Group 75 and 35 aboard the ship. Aircraft on the deck. An aircraft takes off from the deck of the carrier. An aircraft prepares for a take off. A white diamond painted on the tail of an aircraft in flight. An aircraft comes in for a landing. An LSO ( Landing Signal Officer ) signals using flags. He makes a signal for an aircraft to cut off its engine while landing. The aircraft makes an arrested landing. An aircraft lands on its nose. Men sunbathe in Hawaii. A party abroad USS Franklin. A cake to celebrate the 9000th landing on the carrier. Ensign A. W. Graf who had made the landing cuts the cake.
Film opens with map showing lower France and Mediterranean areas. However, it shows images covering primarily the French Riviera (or Côte d'Azur) under German occupation during World War II, in 1943 or 1944. German infantry march along a road. A flight of German FW-190 Fighter airplanes flies inland from the Mediterranean Sea and crosses low above a harbor. Change of scene shows a single fighter plane buzzing the Marseille Port. (It looks like a P-47 with invasion stripes. But It does not draw any anti-aircraft fire.) Camera tracks it from vantage point at the Marseille Basilica, high above the harbor. Brief view of the Basilica as the aircraft passes. A glimpse of the Marseille Port below from the Basilica. View of the Marseille Transporter Bridge designed by Ferdinand Arnodin and built in 1905. (It was destroyed after these films were made, in 1944.) A German soldier peering through binoculars in front of a 2 cm Flak 30/38/Flakvierling, quad anti-aircraft gun position. Another one is seen in the background. Several more views of German anti-aircraft and other gun emplacements protecting the Marseille Port, including 88mm guns, heavy machine guns, and Atlantic Wall coastal defense guns. Scene shifts to German soldiers marching near the French Riviera beach and palm trees. Italian cavalry are seen riding in formation, ostensibly from Nice. Italian soldiers in trucks are being transported along the Riviera waterfront. A road sign points toward Toulon at 6.3 kilometers away. (So this location is probably near Sanary-sur-Mer.) View of the Toulon harbor, where the French battleship Provence, scuttled in 1942, is seen settled low in the water at a pier.
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