United States and Soviet Union soldiers celebrate their victory as world War 2 comes to an end in Germany. "Elbe Day": Soviet and American soldiers meet at the River Elbe on 25-26 April, 1945. View of Nazi swastika being blown up at Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg Germany in 1945. Scenes of celebration in the streets of Paris with French civilians cheering American and French soldiers and celebrating the end of World War 2. French women kiss soldiers. Crowd gathered in Times Square in New York celebrating VE-Day (Victory in Europe Day). Foreign Ministers of fifty nations arrive at San Francisco to sign the United Nations Charter. United States President Harry S. Truman addresses the delegates at the closing ceremony of the conference on June 26, 1946. Ships bring American soldiers back home, including some wounded, after World War 2. Women and families on dock at harbor wave and smile at arriving troop ship with American soldiers returning home. Also seen are soldiers of other countries including Soviet Russian soldiers returning to their families at a train station, with smiling and tearful family reunions. Cemeteries with headstones honoring soldiers who died in the war. Military hardware being scrapped to make peacetime goods. Views of explosive charges being set and military aircraft being blown up for scrap. Piles of scrapped military vehicles. A woman in a factory organizes newly manufactured clothes irons. Workers in a factory perform final assembly on newly manufactured ovens and stoves for homes.
Men carry injured U.S. Army Air Force Jungle Rescue Pilot Captain James Green from hospital tent to completed MEDEVAC landing zone in Shingbwiyang, Burma during World War II. Green had been injured in a crash of his helicopter. Dr. Underwood talks on hand radio as men sight an incoming Sikorsky YR-4 helicopter. Engineer sets off smoke flare. Helicopter lands and men hold it. Men carry Captain Green on litter to the helicopter and he shakes hands with Pilot Lieutenant Raymond Murdock. Dr. Underwood gives Green an injection in his arm. Men put Captain Green in the helicopter and it takes off. Men cheer and shake hands with Dr. Underwood. This is an early example of one of the first helicopter MEDEVAC (Medical Evacuation) flights in a combat zone. Prior to this MEDEVAC flight, this particular helicopter, a Sikorsky YR-4, had been dismantled at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio on January 17, 1945, loaded on a C-54 transport, and flown to the North Burma theater of operations. It was reassembled and flown by Capt. Frank Peterson, USAAF, on January 26, 1945 to evacuate wounded weather observer Private Howard Ross from a 4,700 foot mountain ridge in the Naga hills of Burma.
Allied 9th Army advancing beyond Munich, Germany, during World War II. U.S. soldiers firing mortars from a street and a cemetery. Allied troops crossing a pontoon bridge across a river. U.S.soldier, from 102nd Infantry Division, leads line of German civilians to safety, as troops and vehicles enter the town of Erkelenz. U.S. troops fill the streets and sidewalks of the town as they pass through. Prisoners of war and forced laborers are freed by advancing Allied forces. Group is seen wearing berets. One wears a fez. Boxes of Red Cross foods intended for American prisoners are found opened and used by Germans in Eppendorf, Germany. On February 28th, 1945, soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 413th Regiment, 104th Infantry Division,find the boxes in German military billets and throughout the town. Views of boxes with "American Red Cross Prisoner of War Food Package," written on them. Units of the 1st Allied Army are seen driving directly toward Cologne, Germany. A Sherman tank is seen completely covered by U.S. infantrymen, riding on top. U.S. infantrymen cross stream on makeshift steel bridge. Infantrymen take cover in railroad culvert as tanks of U.S. 3rd Armored Division move forward to deal with intense German resistance. Incoming artillery shell squeals overhead and explodes nearby out of camera view. U.S. troops take shelter behind brick wall. U.S. troops occupy abandoned German trenches. A commanding defensive view from one of the trenches. On March 2, 1945, troops of the 83rd Infantry Division, advancing toward Cologne, pass through town of Neusse. Sign on wall reads: "Mit Hitler zum Sieg." Another reads: "Wir kapitulieren nie!" U.S. troops reach the Rhein River. Telephoto lense view shows city of Dusseldorf and its bridges, spanning the Rhein (Rhine) River.
U.S. military trucks, part of a convoy of 113 vehicles, led by Brigadier General Lewis Andrew Pick, are seen traversing the Ledo Road (aka the Stilwell Road) approaching their final destination of Kunming, China, on February 4, 1945, during World War 2. (They departed Ledo, India, on January 12, 1945, traveling a distance of 1,079 miles.) (Narrator gives distance as 1,044 miles.) View from an overflying airplane shows the long column of trucks on the road below. View from the ground, of the convoy reaching the city gates, where it halts as General Pick and his staff proceed through the gates to a speaker's platform set up in a covered pavilion displaying American and Chinese flags, and pictures of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. General Pick and staff are introduced by Chinese General J.L. Wong who, speaking in English, celebrates this first convoy over the Ledo Road, and points to a banner containing four Chinese characters that spell out "The Road to Victory." General Pick takes the podium, shakes hands with General Wong, and accepts the banner from him. Camera shows the area completely filled with Chinese troops, witnessing the ceremony, including many sitting atop a nearby roof. General Pick speaks briefly, accepting the banner on behalf of the convoy members. He then leaves accompanied by the Governor of Yunnan Province, China. Officers cut a ceremonial ribbon across the road at the West Gate of the city, and the convoy is led into the city by two Chinese soldiers on motorcycles. Chinese spectators line the way and celebrate with firecrackers and cheers, as General Pick passes, standing in a jeep, displaying the Amercan flag and with the Chinese "Road to Victory" banner in its back seat. views of the convoy trucks proceeding through the city. Closeup of one, with a painting of the road, and snow capped mountains, and "First Convoy over the Ledo Road" and "Pick's Pike Life Line from India to China" painted on its canvas cover. A sign over one of the shops along the road reads in Chinese and English, "Welcome First Stilwell Highway Convoy." Views of troops waving from the trucks and Chinese citizen spectators crowding the sides of the road to watch.
American troops in their drive toward Manila, in 1945, during World War 2, pass several knocked out and burning Japanese Type 89 Chi-Ro tanks. A dead Japanese soldier, shot dead while trying to commit suicide, lies on the ground with an undetonated hand grenade in his mouth. U.S. M4A2 sherman III tanks and infantry of the XIV Corps moving on the Lingayen Plains Philippines, leading to the capital, Manila. U.S. armor towing artillery ford a stream, as they pass beneath framework of an apparently unusable bridge. A battery of U.S. M101 105mm Howitzer artillery pieces is set up and bombards the Clark Field area. One striking shell produces an explosion, fire and column of black smoke. U.S. troops ride forward atop tanks. Glimpse of one soldier with flamethrower tanks on his back. American tanks firing their guns. Destroyed Japanese aircraft on the ground. A soldier using a mine detector to sweep the area. He signals to another soldier who comes to probe the area with a long knife. Next a soldier is seen standing in a hole dug around a bomb Placed nose up under the ground by the Japanese. Soldiers pull it from the hole, using a rope. U.S. soldiers walk in area full of similar holes and bombs pulled from them. General Douglas MacArthur is seen, on January 26, 1945, walking among remains of Japanese aircraft at Clark Field. He visits the Filipino cemetery at Camp O'Donnell, which was a prisoner of war camp, considered the terminating point of the Bataan Death March, where some 20 thousand Filipinos and almost 2 thousand Americans died during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. MacArthur is seen standing by a large Christian Cross monument, and walks among untended graves marked with small wooden crosses. The Mount Pinatubo volcano is seen on the horizon in the background. MacArthur and those accompanying him walk around a large monument containing a placard written in tagolog. U.S. soldiers start a mortar barrage against Japanese forces dug in on "Hill 70." Infantrymen move through trees and brush to flush out the entrenched enemy. Glimpse of type of improvised device made of explosives and gasoline, that U.S. soldiers are using to drive Japanese troops out of their fortifications. As a soldier watches with binoculars, the camera records several of these devices exploding with great force. Glimpse of a dead Japanese soldier on the ground. U.S. troops ride atop an M18 Gun motor carriage of the 637th Tank Destroyer Battalion, as it crosses a river. American tanks and infantry moving cautiously across a bridge as shells explode ahead of them. Tanks firing at Japanese troops entrenched in hillside above a road. Large numbers of American infantry marching along a road accompanied by tanks. Areas around them burning from fires set by retreating Japanese forces.
Liberated United States prisoners (mostly military airmen) at POW camp called Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager (Stalag) VII A, located just North of Moosburg, Germany during World War II. The airmen cook food. Several are seen sunning themselves. Airmen seen shaving, shining shoes and cleaning clothes. A group of airmen around sign 'I Wanted Wings' and 'Luft 3'. These are some of the prisoners who were originally held at Stalag Luft III, in German Province of Lower Silesia, near the town of Sagan (now in Poland). (Note: Stalag Luft III is famous because the "Great Escape" took place there in March, 1944. Prisoners were forced to march from Sagan to Spremburg during the coldest winter in Germany in 50 years. There, they boarded a train of boxcars for a 3 day trip to Moosburg in January 1945, because the Russians were closing in. The addition of these prisoners to Stalag 7A, at Moosburg, led to serious overcrowding of the camp. On May 1, 1945, the New York Times reported that "The Fourteenth Armored Division liberated 110,000 Allied prisoners of war at Stalag 7A at Moosburg." This corrected an earlier report that 27,000 prisoners had been liberated.)