'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.
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.
Allied campaign against the Axis in 1944 during World War II. Exteriors of Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. Representatives of the United Nations at a meeting inside the mansion. A railroad train arrives and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gets off the train in Quebec, Canada for the Quebec Conference. Churchill confers with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt about Allied plans during the war. French FFI or Maquis groups in France. President Roosevelt, seated in front of a large celebrating crowd of people in the U.S., acknowledges them after being reelected President for a third term. People celebrate his victory and hold election victory signs as they cheer. American Civilians (mostly women war production workers) work in war production factories to produce aircraft, tanks and other equipment in the United States. Rows of aircraft engines, cockpits, and gun turrets being produced. On December 16, 1944, German forces launch a major-counter attack through the Ardennes forests, resulting in the "Battle of the Bulge" in Belgium. View of German soldiers and a German Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyer rolling by. German soldiers advance past destroyed Allied tanks and trucks.
Burial of dead U.S. Marines, from battle of Peleliu, Palau Islands against Japan in World War 2. (Location is likely, island of Bliliou near Village of Teliu.) The covered bodies of fallen Marines are set out on litters. Later, Marines, wearing arm length black rubber gloves, lower the bodies into graves. A caterpillar tractor with bulldozer attachment smooths earth over the line of grave sites each dug in a row.
Pacific Theater during World War 2. U.S. Battleships and Portland class heavy cruiser bombard Peleliu island in Palau. Two Battleships underway at sea. Flash and smoke seen as battleship fires 14 inch guns.Fire and explosions on the island. Large smoke column rises over the beach.
Wrecked trees in Marshall Island, Pacific. Wrecked Japanese landing crafts and tanks on the Island. Soldiers stand near a jeep. A soldier ascends on a tree and picks a fruit from the tree. (World War II period).
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