EIN KAMPFTAG AN DER WESTFRONT : Aufnahmen aus dem Weltkrieg [Main Title]

Inspirational film combines actuality and training sequences from varied sources to create impression of a typical day's fighting on the Western Front, culminating in a German victory.

Compilation of material from the period 1916-1918, apparently shot both on training grounds and on the battlefields of the Western front, shows the following sequence of events - columns of infantry and supplies moving up during winter, soldiers resting and by roadside in summer, French, British and American gunners firing, Germans in trenches firing at advancing enemy with rifles and machine guns, "French" soldiers pretending to fall dead a few yards from the German lines. German counterattack now commences - pioneers leave their trenches, cut barbed wire, hurl stick-bombs, lay a field telephone wire while the artillery opens up. Infantry clamber from a crater and advance with flamethrowers, while a British Mark IV tank, marked with an Iron Cross and named "ERNI", wheels around. This impression of a bloodless German triumph ends with film of French prisoners, including North African forces, being marched along past a camouflage screen, and with a view of British prisoners, some of whom shield their faces from the camera.

16mm