Description
Object description
Review of the Year.
Full description
I. 'REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1945.' An overview of the main military and political events of 1945. Russian stock shot footage shows Red Army T-34/76D tanks in an attack across open land with supporting artillery fire. German PzKpfw II and PzKpfw III (early captured film footage possibly taken in Poland) tanks drive through a light artillery barrage. A Russian T-34/76(B?) tank drives past a camouflaged Russian machine gun nest housing a 12.7mm DshK obr 1938g heavy machine gun. British Fourteenth Army troops wade across a watercourse in Burma. Other bare-chested troops carry supplies across a watercourse. British Fourteenth Army infantry walk past the camera carrying Lee-Enfield Mk III .303-inch rifles and Sten 9mm sub-machine guns. British Churchill tanks drive through snow covered terrain. British Eighth Army M4 Shermans and supporting infantry move along a muddy road in Italy. Churchill Firefly tanks move through snow covered terrain. Winston S Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin pose for photographs at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference (cf WPN 200). Stock shot footage shows Allied Douglas C-47 Skytrain (Dakota) overflying in tight formation during the operation to drop the 1st Allied Airborne Army on the far side of the Rhine. United States (US) General Dwight D Eisenhower tours the newly liberated concentration camp at Ohrdruf (cf WPN 210). Stock shots show elements of the US 69th Infantry Division linking up with the Russian 58th Guards Rifle Division at Torgau on the Elbe River (cf WPN 211). Stock shots show large numbers of German Waffen SS prisoners of war being marched into captivity (cf WPN 211). Brief footage shows the German signatories of the Lüneburg Heath surrender ceremony of May 4 1945 (cf WPN 211). Russian stock shots show damaged buildings on the Unter den Linden in Berlin. Brief footage shows German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signing the final ratification documents for unconditional surrender in Berlin on May 8 1945 (cf WPN 213). Massed civilians crowd outside Buckingham Palace on VE day (cf WPN 213 and 226). Stock shots show the raising of the US national flag on Iwo Jima. Brief footage shows Clement R Attlee and Ernest K Bevin at the Potsdam Conference (July 17- August 2 1945). Aerial footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki show the devastation caused by the detonations of the US uranium ("Little Boy") and plutonium ("Fat Man") atomic bombs. Stock shot footage shows the seaborne landings of US occupation troops at Yokosuka in Tokyo Bay (cf WPN 232). Brief stock shot footage shows the Japanese surrender on board USS Missouri (cf WPN 232). Brief footage shows Dr Wellington Koo (China) and the US Secretary of State, Mr Edward Stettinius signing the World Security Charter at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations held in San Francisco on June 26 1945. Stock shots show the interior of Lüneburg Courthouse, scene of the trial of the Belsen camp guards for crimes against humanity (cf WPN 232) Brief footage shows Josef Kramer, the Commandant of Belsen Concentration Camp (cf WPN 232). Interior footage of the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg shows Hermann W Goering talking to Rudolf Hess as they sit in the dock during the war crimes trials. Benito Mussolini takes leave of Adolf Hitler at a railway station. The Duce waves goodbye from the window of the train carriage, giving the Roman Salute as the train pulls away (Mussolini's visit to Wolfsschanze, Rastenburg, July 1944).
Physical description
35mm
