From a series of clips on the making of the modern magazine called the "Dearborn Independent." Scenes of cities all over the world from which reports come in for the magazine. View of railroad station in Europe, possibly France. Palm trees and foliage somewhere in Africa. In Sendai, Japan, view of men, women, and children along street. Japanese family eats, joined by several anglo men. View in South America of a river bank with huts. Somewhere in the American south: A city street with horse-drawn carriage and people walking beside grand homes. View of editorial page of the magazine and close up of 'Mr Ford's Page' (referring to Henry Ford).
Film begins showing location of New York City on a world globe, at the mouth of the Hudson River on the East Coast of the United States. It transitions to an aerial view of the Southern tip of Manhattan Island at the junction of the Hudson and East Rivers and slowly shows views moving Northward along the Hudson River. Piers along the Hudson are visible. Scene shifts to above those piers, looking South at the cluster of Manhattan skyscraper buildings, and beyond to New York Harbor, the borough of Queens, and Brooklyn, and beyond to Long Island in the misty distance. Next the skyscrapers are seen from Queens,across the East River. A large ocean liner is seen underway in New York Harbor, among ferry boats, barges, and tugboats. The Statue of Liberty is seen in the background. An animated map shows regions around New York and traces the Hudson and Mohawk valleys into the Great Lakes. The map is then overlaid with numerous lines representing transportation routes by lend, water, and air. View of Brooklyn Bridge, wharfs, and Manhattan skyline in hazy background. Seagoing freighters loading and unloading at New York's piers. A truck and other cargoes being moved by cranes. Passenger trains moving in the New York city area. View of the famous Beaux-Arts style Penn Station by architects McKim, Mead, and White, at West 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, in Manhattan. Train station interior crowded with travelers and commuters. Commercial aircraft taxiing at a New York area airport. Closeup of two young children watching the planes. Passengers deplaning from a large aircraft. Sign for Peruvian International Airways atop an airport building. A Swissair passenger plane being serviced. Passengers boarding a TWA Lockheed Constellation airplane. A family watching airplanes from an airport observation deck. The Lockheed Constellation starting its engines. A Douglas DC-4 aircraft taxis out and takes off, as several boys watch from the observation deck. Closeup of another group of boys watching planes from the observation deck. Aerial view of Manhattan skyscraper buildings from an overflying airplane. Traffic on streets at Times Square. The Astor Hotel at the left and the Times building straight ahead. Several other street scenes in Manhattan, crowded with pedestrians. A view residential apartment houses along Park Avenue. Views of African Americans crowding the sidewalks in Harlem. Views of "Little Italy" in the lower East side of Manhattan, where Italian restaurants and other businesses are seen. Chinatown is seen with some of the business signs in Chinese. A man of Chinese heritage reading a letter. Asian American children playing together in a neighborhood. New high rise apartment buildings are seen replacing older homes in parts of Manhattan. Mothers wheeling their children on sidewalks in one of the new neighborhoods.
Director of the U.S Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J.Edgar Hoover, addresses Americans in military service in 1940. He speaks about enemy agents sent to the United States to undermine the war effort. Scene shifts to a 1940 nighttime view of New York City with lights on in its buildings. Sound of Benny Goodman's orchestra in background. Glimpse of water displays at the New York World's Fair. Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball team playing a game at Ebbets Field. A large field of wheat being harvested by a mechanical reaper, in an American western state. American soldiers putting on civilian clothes for weekend passes. Views of various American cities and towns with cars driving on parkways, shoppers and pedestrians walking in business districts. Closeup of a German agent, ostensibly being apprehended while beaming information to Germany via shortwave radio. German documents are on his desk. A submarine periscope tracks across surface of water. A torpedo races through the water leaving a trail of bubbles. An American ship, ostensibly being torpedoed in the Caribbean. Letters being mailed to so-called "mail drops" in Spain and South America. An intercepted letter with military information being highlighted. A brick house, outside Los Angeles, where an unidentified man is seen, whom narrator (J.Edgar Hoover) describes as " This self-appointed Dictator, who set himself up in the business of promoting Nazism." A picture of Adolf Hitler is seen on his wall. Near Chicago, a wooden sign reads, "Camp Hindenburg., Two miles." American Nazi youth are seen parading there. A newspaper shows a picture of Nazi youth at Camp Nordland, in New Jersey where young American Nazi girls are seen parading. In Yaphank, on long Island, New York, American Nazis are seen parading. The head of the German-American Bund, Fritz Kuhn, is seen at an outdoor podium giving a speech, while surrounded and guarded by uniformed Bund members. He is enthusiastically applauded by members of the audience. Several women with babies in carriages, cross at a corner in New York City. Some receive notices being passed out by a young man, announcing a "Mass Demonstration for true Americans" (to be held at Madison Square Garden). A swastika appears on each notice. View from a high point overlooking a crowd of 22 thousand American Nazis gathered in Madison Square Garden, on Feb. 20, 1939. An honor guard parades as drummers play from the stage. A mass of men holding American flags, and one holding a banner showing a swastika and words in German. Audience members all render the Nazi salute and shout "Heil." Files in the FBI offices labeled "German Agents." The file of Walter Kappe, one of the leaders of the Chicago Free Society of Teutonia and German American Bund is shown. Narrator, Hoover, says, " he was a Lieutenant in the German Army and the Leader of German sabotage in the United States." View of a vast array of desks and files in the FBI where men and women work on fingerprints. A man projects fingerprints on a screen, as Hoover speaks of the files revealing that "innocent appearing persons, applying for work in United States war plants, had been convicted of espionage in the last world war."Two men look over an FBI chart showing the location of every key spy and mail drop in North and South America
World War 2 activities of the British in Great Britain. Industrial areas in Britain with opening shot of steel mill area, heaps of coal, and smoke pollution pouring from industrial stacks. An advertisement shows old country towns in Southern England. Other advertisements show Dunkeld Cathedral and a country vacation in Southern California. The countryside with bucolic fields and pasture scenes in view. Cattle grazing in a field. Exterior wide view of steel mills of Sheffield. A village with a flowing stream. Old castles in England. A shipyard on the River Clyde with ships anchored. Old cathedrals. Industrial cities of Birmingham, Glasgow, and Manchester are shown with aerial and elevated views of industrial stacks and smoke pollution from industry. A train passes by an industrial plant in Leeds. Interior views of a war materiel munitions factory in Great Britain in which British men and women war prodution workers are making war ammunition, shells, and ordnance.
Riots and uneasy conditions in South Africa and Congo during the year 1960. South African natives demonstrate against apartheid racial discrimination and passbook requirements. Protestors at Sharpeville shown burning passbooks. Policemen fire at peaceful demonstrators in what became the Sharpeville massacre of May 31, 1960. Next scene shows attempted assassination of Premier Verwoerd by a white farmer. A photographer takes photos as an aide holds Verwoerd after he is shot. Next scene shows riots in Congo, Africa after elections. Rioters dispersed by local police forces. The United Nations peace keeping forces arrive in Congo. Premiere Patrice Lumumba arrested and policeman ties his hands with ropes. View of Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko in military uniform.
U.S. President Richard M. Nixon returns from Camp David at Andrew's Air Force Base to the White House, Washington DC. Ground controller standing below South Portico of White House speaks into a microphone as the presidential helicopter prepares for landing. The helicopter lands in the South Lawn of the White House. President Nixon debarks from the plane and walks inside the White House. Pilots in the cockpit of the helicopter as it takes off and flies in the air. An assistant arranges the landing pads of the helicopter.