Views of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, June, 1940. The hall is filled with delegates holding signs and placards, many for Senator Robert Taft. Several denounce the New Deal. The Republican presidential nominee, Wendell Wilkie, is seen. (The narrator mentions his untimely death in 1944, at age 52.) Scene shifts to cheering crowds in Times Square, New York and to Hyde Park, New York, where the Roosevelt family and associates stand as well-wishers cheer FDR's unprecedented election to a third term as President of the United States. Seen are Colonel House; President Franklin D. Roosevelt; son, John Roosevelt and his wife, Anne Clark Roosevelt; Ethel Du Pont Roosevelt and her husband, Franklin Roosevelt, Jr.; Sara Roosevelt, the President's mother; and his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt.
USAAF P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes operating at Florennes/Juzaine Airfield (A-78), Belgium, during World War 2. Identifiable units include the 411th Fighter Squadron (U9); the 373rd Fighter Group; the 387th Fighter Squadron (B4) and 388th Fighter Squadron (C4) of the 365th Fighter Group. A number of P-47s, (mostly bubble canopy D models) seen taxiing. (The second one's tail number looks like 42-26571, but that aircraft was downed in October 1944. So it is probably 26579.) Crew chiefs ride the wings of most P-47s to guide the pilots during low speed taxi when they would otherwise have to zig-zag to see ahead. Destroyed building silhouetted against the sky.Two flights of four P-38s circle overhead and peel off for landing.View through breached wall of a jeep towing a bomb cart past a parked P-47. Airmen walking across the field. Clear view of 388th Fighter Squadron P-47 taxiing. Another P-47 taxiing past a small damaged building
Internees at a concentration camp in Buchenwald, Germany. Jean Blume, leader of socialist national movement against occupation in Belgium, shares his experiences of the days spent as a prisoner at Breendonk concentration camp in Belgium. He expresses joy at being liberated by American Army from Buchenwald concentration camp. (Note: Jean Blume was a Resistance Leader during the Nazi occupation in World War 2. The Gestapo arrested him on January 19, 1943 and he was imprisoned in Breendonk. In May 1944, he and many others, were sent to Buchenwald. They were released on April 11, 1945.)
Liberation of Paris August 22, 1944. Tricolor flying from Arc de Triomphe. Crowds celebrate. Young people dance in street. Tanks firing guns. Bombs dropping on Germany. American tanks firing in Cologne, Germany. Spires of Cologne Cathedral loom above destruction and rubble in streets of Cologne. German civilian refugees on the streets. Germans in front of air raid shelters. Animated map showing Soviet advance from East.Formation of Ilyushin Il-2 aircraft. Soviet tanks in farm field. Silhouetted German soldiers surrendering. Wounded and dead German soldiers. Destroyed German military equipment. A long line of surrendered German soldiers. Allied forces driving into Germany beyond the Rhine River. Suffering German civilians and refugees including men, women, and children in desperate circumstances after the devastation of war. German refugees walking on roads, including babies in carriages or prams.
General Eisenhower confers with British Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory and British Air Chief Marshal, Sir Arthur Tedder, in front of a map of Europe on a wall. New York Post, June 6, 1944, headline reads "INVASION Smashing Inland." U.S. troops assault beach at Normandy on D-Day and several fall from enemy fire during World War II. German troops surrendering as Americans advance. Dead German soldier. Adolf Hitler sits in a room. B-24 bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, 2nd Air Division, 2nd Bomb Wing, 446th Bomb Group, in flight on mission over Germany. Bombs falling on target. View through gun camera of fighter strafing German aircraft on the ground and strafing a railroad train filled with ammunition, that explodes. Sun newspaper headline reads: 'Allies plunging deep into Reich.' U.S. troops move through grassy field. U.S. artillery crew fires M-114, 155mm Howitzer under camouflage net. New York World Telegram newspaper headline reads: 'Allies swarm across Rhine'. U.S. troops crossing the Ludendorff Bridge, at Remagen, Germany. View of dead victims at German concentration camp. Journal American newspaper headline reads: 'Mass surrender of foe underway'. German prisoners of war double-time march running along a road with hands held high in surrender. Emotion and distress show on face of very young German boy soldier as he unbuttons his coat. A German woman sits quietly in background. A mile long line of German prisoners march in a field. A Nazi Swastika flag burning on the ground.
Film opens showing devastated snow-covered remains of Peterhof Palace and its fountains, in Leningrad, after the Russians ended the siege of that city in January, 1944 of World War II. The next scenes show crowds gathered on 25 August, 1946, to celebrate the newly restored fountains, which are seen spraying water again. (Narrator notes that Russians now call the place Petrodvorets, meaning Peter's Palace.) An official speaks, at the ceremony, about the architecture of Petrodvorets and its cultural masterpieces still to be restored. Glimpse of statuary and array of fountains. Closeup of several young women holding flowers. Another shot of the fountains spraying along both sides of a central pond, with spectators crowded along the extreme sides near lines of trees.
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