Description
Object description
Unedited record film of advancing US Army units being greeted with delight by liberated women prisoners from the Polish Home Army near Chemnitz and Leipzig on 16 April 1945. Views of the Leine forest and an airfield on 19 April 1945, where the Germans had deliberately destroyed many parked Luftwaffe aircraft. Liberated women, some Hungarian Jews and some of Muslim appearance at the Langenleuba-Oberhain camp are given what rations can be spared by the advancing US Army soldiers on 16 April 1945. The US Army 15th Division parade before Major-General Wade H Haislip and Lieutenant-General Alexander M Patch in captured Nuremberg on 21 April 1945.
Full description
FOREST OF LEINE, LANGERBOUBRE OBERBAIN (sic) [Actually Langenleuba-Oberhain] [Dope sheet title] Scenes shot from a convoy of US Army 6th Division vehicles speeding along a dusty, country road into a village square with German bystanders watching their passing, a roadsign points to Leipzig 45k ahead and Narsdorf 8k behind. At Langenleuba-Oberhain camp Hungarian-Jewish women have been liberated; two fit, smiling young women are seen carrying a bucket of potatoes and some bottles, there are some very emaciated and distressed women, some wearing muslim head coverings and long skirts. There is an argument between the women over the allocation of the food which is settled by a US soldier.
Full description
A liberated camp of women soldiers from the Polish Home Army greet the US soldiers with flowers. One soldier is reloading and winding on his 35mm camera as girls laughingly decorate him with polyanthus and blossom from the trees. Women are filmed smoking a cigarette, wearing a US helmet, smiling at the camera in front of long single storey camp huts, posed against the blossoming trees holding flowers, and four in uniform bouncing playfully on a low fence post. They polish their boots and comb their long hair; their uniforms of breeches, gaiters, shirts and ties are smart, they wear jewellery and are clearly fit and energetic as they wave farewell to the soldiers, who continue on their way.
Full description
A woodland area full of three hundred wrecked German aircraft is being examined by US Army personnel. The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A4 fighters appear to have been disabled by having a grenade tossed into the cockpit. An airfield has piles of crated but damaged equipment strewn about, with a disabled Junkers Ju 388K-1 (or Ju 188K-1 ?) outside a hangar and a disabled Messerschmitt Bf 109 at a dispersal point.
Full description
A woman in a muslim head covering watches as a US Army soldier hands out rations from a carton to an assorted group of women who dispute over the division of the food. US soldiers look at and feel with gloved hands the once electrified wire enclosing the camp. A woman cries as she shows some marks on her arm and is comforted by a US soldier. A German soldier is shown, a camp guard (?).
Full description
NURNBERG FALLS [Dope sheet title] Three tiny figures of US soldiers stand below the swastika and massive back wall on the vast Nuremberg stadium podium, which is draped in several large dark nets. They wave and clasp fisted hands in the air to the camera which then pans across the deserted acres of the parade ground. About one hundred German Army prisoners of war have been assembled at a railway siding, and stand waiting in ranks. Damaged buildings, some still smoking, filmed from a church tower, seem deserted until the camera descends to rubble filled streets with an equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I, when people are seen walking and wheeling bicycles where the fallen masonry makes riding impossible. The camera travels through the ruins with US Army Sherman tanks and jeeps, whose soldiers have their rifles at the ready, and are chased by small boys. The roofless interior of a baroque church (Egidienkirche?) has "Ag(nus) Dei Domine" round the inside of a circular roofspace. A large parade of units of the 15th Corps, 7th US Army is drawn up in Adolf Hitler Platz, the Stars and Stripes is raised and the men are addressed by Major-General Wade H Haislip, with Lieutenant-General Alexander N Patch at his side. US personnel not taking part are seen watching from the piles of rubble around the edge.
Physical description
35mm