Opening scene shows some German infantry surrendering with hands raised. Next scene shows people thronging Times Square in Manhattan, New York City, celebrating VE Day, or Victory in Europe Day, on May 8, 1945, when Germany surrendered to end World War II, in Europe. Image of the first atomic explosion (Trinity) on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico, United States. Scene shifts to deck of the U.S. Battleship, USS Missouri, where Japanese foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, is seated and signing the instrument of surrender., on September 2, 1945. Closeup profile of General Douglas MacArthur. Another glimpse of Mamoru Shigemitsu signing. Next, MacArthur is seen signing the document. He turns and presents the pen to Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright , who is standing behind him alongside British Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival. Brief glimpse of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center with flag appearing to be at half staff and a long awning extending from its entrance to the sidewalk. View of representatives at the first United Nations meeting there . Views of audience in auditorium shows many notables. Closeups of Soviet Ambassador, Andrey Gromyko and Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov.. Next, President Harry S. Truman is seen broadcasting a greeting to the delegates, from the Capitol, Washington, DC, on April 25, 1945. The delegates are seen listening to the broadcast and then applauding.
German civilians in a city on the Elbe River, gather around a poster containing Law Number 5, issued by the Military Government-Germany (American Occupation forces). It announces the dissolution of the Nazi party. Next, a German Army medic talks to an American, near a huge pile of German military uniforms, military equipment, and accessories. Civilians including former German soldiers throng a town square, adding items to the pile. A woman pulls uniform items from her wash basket. An American soldier talks with a German woman as bystanders watch and listen. A man and boy look at a small rifle before the boy throws it on the pile. View from above of the square with people crowded around the pile of castoffs in its center. Women placing officers' swords on the pile. Complete change of scene shows a U.S. soldier from the 3rd Army, in a salt mine, in Merkers, Germany, on April 15, 1945. He is perusing Nazi seized and stolen jewelry, cutlery, and precious metal trinkets in a case. Another soldier looks at a bar of gold and displays it for the camera. Many wrapped gold bars are behind him. German currency bank notes are seen in the hands of a soldier. Numerous packages of currency sit in the background. American soldiers show some of the stolen art works also hidden in the salt mine. Among the seized paintings seen is "Wintergarden," by French impressionist painter Edouard Manet.
Film opens with exterior view of Nuremberg cell prison, just north of the Palace of Justice, holding war criminals for the Nuremberg Trials. Interior view showing cell bloick area and guards patrol the halls. Cell door with name Karl Doenitz on it. Views of German Admiral Doenitz and Admiral Erich Raeder, looking over war planning charts. Ships burning at sea in nighttime. Glimpse of German U Boat Captain observing through periscope. Back at Nuremberg Prison, an American soldier checks cell of Joachim von Ribbentrop. German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop seen on steps of an airplane. Scene shifts to Nazi–sponsored so-called American Rally in Madison Square Garden, New York City, on February 20, 1939. A huge picture of George Washington dominates the stage where drummers play while flag-bearing marchers fill the stage. View of audience of 20 thousand persons, rendering Nazi salutes. Someone trying to interfere with the activity is quickly subdued on stage by men in military style uniforms. Scene shifts back to Nuremberg prison, where a soldier guard passes food through cell door to Julius Streicher (unseen). Closeup of Streicher speaking to crowd of people in Germany. Views of German Paramilitary Brown shirts (Storm troopers, or Sturmabteilung) during boycott preventing people from patronizing Jewish merchants. Next, victims liberated from Nazi concentration camp are seen being sprayed in delousing powder by American soldiers. Back at Nuremberg prison, a soldier stands outside the cell of Hermann Goering. Next, Goering is shwon in a scene eating at an outdoor table with other men, at a Nazi-sponsored public feeding event before World War 2. Brief view of German Chancellor, Heinrich Bruening, who fled Germany in 1934 as the Nazis were coming to power. A Graf Zeppelin airship, bearing Nazi Swastika insignia, is seen in flight over New York City. Crew member inside the Zeppelin, looking out a window as he plots a position on a chart. The Zeppelin casts a shadow over an ocean liner at sea, as it passes overhead. Back at Nuremberg cell prison, a guard opens a door with a key. Next seen shows several prisoners walking into a prison yard at an unidentified prison. A firing squad (unseen) is heard marching into position and firing their guns. Scene shifts to Japan, where a Japanese twin engine passenger plane is seen overhead, coming in for a landing. Official buildings are seen in Tokyo and jurists who will participate in war crimes trials. Scene shifts to war crimes trials authorized in Manila, by General Douglas MacArthur. Seen are Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita and another Japanese officer on trial at the High Commissioners Residence in Manila, in 1945. Views of ordinary Japanese soldiers. A court convening.
'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.
German rocket pioneer, Gerhard Zucker, attempting to develop postal rockets in the 1930s. Location is Wadden Sea off Cuxhaven, on April 9, 1933, where Zucker follows Nazi Sturmabteilung (also called SA or Stormtroopers) carrying the mail rocket across wet sands. The rocket is set up on a launch stand. Zucker and an assistant ignite the 8 side rockets and the mail rocket takes off. It noses up and loops over backwards, falling to the sand. German Stormtroopers lift up the damaged device. Next, is seen a later, more modern, rocket trial ending in failure. Two German engineers display a model similar to the pulse-jet-powered "buzz bomb" (V-1) employed by the Nazis in World War 2. A brief glimpse of similar American machine on sand flat, as narrator states German acknowledgement of knowledge gleaned from Dr. Robert Goddard's work. A German V-1 flying bomb (aka Doodle Bug) being launched in 1944, during World War 2. View of British houses of Parliament, London, England; an air raid shelter sign in City of Westminster. Londoners waiting out a raid in the shelter. Scenes of fire and destruction during German bombing of London, as narrator speaks about the more advanced German V-2 ballistic missiles employed later in the war. Londoners trudging through debris amongst bombed out buildings. Change of scene to U.S. infantry and armor advancing deep into Germany. Narrator refers to them overrunning rocket bases and other vital war-making facilities, near the end of the war. Glimpse of large number of German prisoners of war. Documents of military surrender being signed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, in Berlin, May 8, 1945. Closeup of Keitel. Scenes of American forces operating in Pacific theater. Aerial view of atomic bomb explosion. Japanese surrender ceremony on September 2, 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri. U.S. soldiers and other service personnel return home and greeting loved ones at end of war. Aerial view of Pentagon building and surrounding area in Arlington Virginia near Washington DC. U.S. troops boarding a ship in San Francisco, bound for war again, this time in Korea (1950).
Internees at a concentration camp in Buchenwald, Germany. Otto Feuer, a Jewish internee from Hamburg states how he has been in concentration camps for past so many years. He thanks the American Army for liberating them from the concentration camp in Buchenwald, Germany on April 11, 1945. Other internees in the background.
CRITICALPAST.COM: About Us | Contact Us | FAQs - How to Order | License Agreement | My Account | My Lightboxes | Shopping Cart | Advanced Search | Featured Collections | Website Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy ©2026 CriticalPast LLC.
License Agreement |
Terms & Conditions |
Privacy Policy
©2026 CriticalPast LLC.