During World War 2, African American women soldiers of the Women's Army Corps (WACS) stand in formation at a parade ground in Birmingham, England, United Kingdom, during a formal military review on February 15, 1945. The women are from the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, nicknamed “Six Triple Eight, which had just arrived in Birmingham. The WACS' commanding officer, Major Charity Adams, stands beside General John C.H. Lee. The African-American female soldiers of the WACS march in a column, eight deep, passing by General John CH Lee and Major Charity Adams, who salute the soldiers. Other male officers stand on the review stand behind officers Lee and Adams. Note: Major Charity Adams (Charity Edna Adams; later Charity Adams Earley) was the first African-American woman officer in the WACS, and, at the end of the war, then Lieutenant Colonel Adams was the highest ranking African-American woman in the United States military.
Enola Gay atomic bomb mission over Hiroshima, Japan during World War 2. The Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, prepares to leave for the Hiroshima mission. Army Armed Forces maintenance men and Enola Gay crew prepare the Enola Gay in Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, checking their watches as the glance at the horizon. Maintenance men check bomb bay doors before closing. Pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets looks out of cockpit window of Enola Gay. Nose art of Enola Gay is seen. Close up of controls with hand show "starter" and "engine primer." Enola Gay engine starts and one of it propellers turns. The Enola Gay takes off from North Field, in the Northern Mariana Islands. Point of view through B-29 cockpit window as plane speeds down runway. Motion picture cameraman films the take off. The Enola Gay seen overhead as it leaves for Japan. Aerial View of Iwo Jima Island in Japan. The Enola Gay begins slow climb to bombing altitude over Iwo Jima. Crew member, possibly Tibbets, uses a pair of binoculars. Aerial view of Hiroshima. Enola Gay crew check instruments last time before dropping. The Enola Gay begins its bomb run. Crew bombardier turning a dial on a bomb site. View of Enola Gay with bomb bay doors open. Moving gauge pointer as bomb is dropped and seen exiting bomb bay. The Enola Gay banks away from Hiroshima at high speed. Aerial view in color of mushroom cloud forming over Hiroshima after the atomic bomb detonates in the city. (This actually shows the Nagasaki bomb blast from August 9, 1945, not the Hiroshima blast, despite the statements of the narrator in this edited film). Gigantic mushroom cloud from atomic bombing.
Opens with bell tolling Victory against Germany in World War II. Next, a slate reads: "Victory Leads to Peace," and a farmer is seen with cattle pulling a plow. But narrator says "the problem now is future peace," and a map of Germany is shown overlaid with "Your Job in Germany." A cartoon of a soldier is superimposed on the map, along with one of a World War 1 American soldier and a figure of possible future soldier with similar mission. Camera focuses on parts of German aircraft in a jumbled heap. Closeups of weary defeated German soldiers at end ot World War II. Glimpse of Adolf Hitler speaking and haranguing an audience from a podium in an animated and forceful way. Swastika flags displayed from houses in a quaint German town. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda, at a microphone. Glimpse of a German concentration camp. But as they appear, each of the Nazi elements promptly disappears, showing the scenes without such Nazi symbols and persons. Skeleton remains of bombed buildings. Flower displays. Bucolic German rural countryside and quaint old villages in peaceful settings. Camera focuses on a book titled "German History." Chapter I, titled "Blood and Iron," shows Image of Otto von Bismarck. German troops march in a parade. Narrator states that "under Bismarck, the German empire was built." (He formed the German Empire in 1871, unifying Germany with himself as Imperial Chancellor, while retaining control of Prussia at the same time.) The film shows mounted German lancers as it alludes to Bismarck's campaigns against Denmark in 1867; Austria in 1866; and France, in 1870. Germany's leaders celebrating its status, in 1871, as the mightiest power in Europe. Troops marching and girls dancing nearby. Farmers plowing field with a horse and cow. Classic peaceful rural alpine scenes with local people in agricultural pursuits. A group of local German musicians playing folk music as village people dance outdoors. Back to the book, Kaiser Wilhelm II is shown on Chapter 2, entitled: "Deutschland über Alles." Gathering of German soldiers in Pickelhaube (spiked helmets). A German Big Bertha howitzer firing. German troops marching against Serbia; Russia; and France (with view of war damaged French cathedral). German invasion of Belgium in 1940 (with view of clock tower resting in rubble). German troops seen in Italy, walking past battle-damaged buildings. German Zeppelin dropping bombs on British targets and view of bombed out London neighborhood. Next scene shows a capsized ship with survivors running across its hull. Film slate labels the scene as United States, as if it is a U.S. ship attacked by Germany. (Actually, it is the Austro-Hungarian Battleship, SMS Szent Istvan, torpedoed, by Italian torpedo boats, during World War I.) Next, American soldiers in trench are seen going "over the top" and into "no man's land" on the western front of World War 1. Glimpse through a window of Kaiser Wilhelm II, after defeat of Germany, in 1918. View of Germans in a Beer Garden. Picturesque view of German town. A German orchestra performing. American soldiers marching out of Germany, with flags waving. Back to the history book,as chapter III is revealed, entitled "Today Germany, tomorrow, the world," and featuring Adolf Hitler. German troops invading Austria (where a civilian lies dead on the ground). German troops entering Czechoslovakia (where local people in tears render the Nazi salute). They march into Poland (where a girl weeps over someone, not seen, on the ground). They march into France (where a wounded, bandaged child cries in a bed). Next, is a scene from England, where a British child victim of bombing lies dead in the remains of a shelter. German troops invading Norway, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg and Russia (where a woman tries to rouse a dead woman). They invade Yugoslavia (where women sit near coffins of children) and Greece (where a woman rescues a naked child). A U.S. merchant ship explodes after being torpedoed by a German submarine (unseen). Scenes of destruction with people plucking dead victims from rubble of buildings. American troops invading Normandy, France on D-day, June 6, 1944. Several American soldiers fall to German gunfire on the beach. Wounded American soldiers being transported in jeeps on the battlefield and being placed on landing craft for evacuation. Americans walking past huge piles of destroyed aircraft parts. A landing craft filled with wounded American soldiers. American wounded and dead on a battlefield. Sailors abandoning a burning American ship by jumping into the sea. A sailor picked up in a life boat. A wounded American soldier being dragged from the beachhead at Normandy. Various wounds being treated by U.S. Medical Corps personnel. More scenes of American wounded being moved on stretchers. Scene shifts abruptly to German people folk dancing. Film concludes with question marks about the future.
This film contains numerous views of citizens in postwar Germany interposed with flashbacks of Nazi activities seen in Germany during the war. At start, film shows drawing of U.S. soldier superimposed on map of Germany. Armed U.S. troops, early in the occupation of Germany, proceed with caution along an alleyway, when an explosion occurs in a nearby building. German citizens going about their daily affairs in a village. Many patronize an outdoor market. Flashback to Germany during World War 2, with view from a high overlooking building, of troops marching along a street below. Closeup of German SS Guards marching in abbreviated goose step along a street. Glimpse of civilians in German city. German storm troopers marching at the Nazi Rally grounds in Nuremberg. More views of citizens on the streets of a city in postwar Germany. Glimpse of several German Nazi officials meeting together. A group of German civilian men relaxing in a courtyard. A town decorated with Nazi flags and banners. Views of ordinary Germans: a doctor, a technician, a clock maker, a postman, a farmer, a woman housekeeper, women toy makers, barbers, cooks, and dockworkers, all at work during the Nazi wartime era. A gathering of Hitler Youth at a rally. Closeups of young boys playing band instruments, then, marching through a gateway labeled: "Nordmarch Lager 1935," and parading through the streets of a town. A different group, dressed in black uniforms, and carrying backpacks, as they march in a town. Members of the Reich Labor Service marching with shovels on streets and during a rally at the Nazi grounds in Nuremberg. Several cartoon drawings accompany messages for U.S. troops on postwar occupation duty in Germany. They remind the soldiers that they are standing guard, but they must obey local laws, respect local customs and respect property rights. Also that they are not to ridicule or argue with local people. They are cautioned not to make friends with German citizens, but to be cautious and suspicious. Views of German people socializing, and gathering at outdoor markets. Views of German men, women and children in various activities, in their homes and outside. Narrator tells U.S. soldiers not to fraternize with the German people.
U.S. 3rd infantry troops advance in a valley of Germany during World War II. U.S. military tanks advance. German prisoners, hunched over to avoid fire from their own troops, are rushed to safer areas. 1500 German prisoners of war captured by the 3rd Army in Germany. Military trucks arrive. Dead bodies of German troops and horses lying on the ground. Rocket attacks on the European front. Multi-banked firing units give support to artillery. The rockets are fired from a remote-control box. Troops fire guns. U.S. forces uses mobile rocket projectors into German towns.
Unrest in Germany in 1930's during crisis of unemployment and inflation that had followed after World War I. A closed and boarded-up German factory. Two barefooted, jobless German men sleep in a park. During Great Depression in the United States, a weary woman is seen walking through an alley and looking in garbage cans. Sign for Los Angeles California Leather Company seen on building behind her. Children play in streets of a slum area. In Germany, scene of boys in training in Hitler Youth and carrying shovels, then carrying rifles and learning low crawling and military attack techniques. German farmers plowing on farms. Several night scenes including Nazis and brownshirts on the march, burning of books. Secret police or Gestapo and soldiers escort a church priest or clergy out of a church. During time of rising anti-Jewish sentiment in Nazi-led Germany, scenes of abuse and Gestapo arrests of some German citizens such as Jewish people, suspected Communists, political foes, and others critical of the Nazi party. A group of people attack and beat Jewish people in streets. A parade by the Wehrmacht German troops. Rearmament of Germany in 1930's. Scenes from busy German munitions factories. A Junkers Stuka aircraft factory filled with planes being built. A German artillery factory. German Luftwaffe and Panzer attack. German tanks roll over landscape. Scenes at end of war of burning German cities. Women run through bomb-wrecked streets of devastated Berlin during an aerial bombing raid by Allied aircraft. One woman falls as she runs. A woman and children race for the doors of a bomb shelter in Germany. The bomb wrecked streets of Berlin heaped with rubble and wreckage. Elderly German man walks through ruins. Small locomotive train running carrying cars of cleared rubble. German civilian dig potatoes in gardens. German women stand atop a collapsed building pile and clear rubble with shovels. German man waters a newly planted garden with empty shells of wrecked buildings in background. Newspapers produced by M.G. seen in newspaper printing press and rolling off presses. Binding of booklets and magazines from a German printing press. Sculptured bust of Goethe superimposed over books written by Goethe and Schiller. A montage shows in contrast the peaceful life in Germany before war, and scenes again of war, with alternating, juxtaposed scenes: German police officer escorts children across a street, book burning by Nazis, Gestapo violent arrest of a German citizen who is being pushed and hauled away. A German football (soccer) match in a stadium. Cook serves food to a man. A man in a concentration camp tips a bowl to his mouth. German children playing in a pool. Then juxtaposed scene with German women and children racing for a shelter during an air raid in World War 2. Scenes of bomb explosions. A peaceful waterfall.
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