Produced in 1945, this newsreel film has two segments: “By Request” in which a hostess answers questions for the troops, and a terrific segment featuring famed journalist and author William L. Shirer speaking about the Nazi Youth Movement.
“By Request” (begins about 10:55 into the film) shows a new German secret weapon, the “one man torpedo”. Germany had three types of human torpedoes during WWII. First, the Neger
that was a torpedo carrying a second torpedo underneath, which was launched at the target. The Marder and Biber were very small submarines carried two torpedoes and one or two men. There were other types that never ran into production. In July 1944 Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine introduced their human torpedoes to harass allied positions at Normandy anchorages. Although they could not submerge, they were difficult to observe at night and inflicted several losses on allied vessels.
Around the 13 minute mark are scenes shot in Manhattan and Brooklyn for troops who are overseas. The segment ends with a song sung by Lena Romay. Romay was a Mexican-American actress and singer. She was born in 1919 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the daughter of Porfirio Romay, then-attache to the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. She appeared in both photoreal and live-action form in the Droopy cartoon “Senor Droopy”.
The Hitler Youth was the youth organization of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins dated back to 1922 in form of predecessor organizations affiliated to the (at the time) Munich-based Nazi Party. From 1933 until 1945, it was the sole official youth organization in Germany and was partially a paramilitary organization; it was constituted of the Hitlerjugend proper for male youth aged 14 to 18, the Deutsches Jungvolk (German Youth) for younger boys, and the League of German Girls.
With the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the organization de facto ceased to exist. On 10 October 1945, it was officially outlawed by the Allied Control Council along with other Nazi Party organizations.
William Lawrence Shirer (February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist, war correspondent, and historian, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years. Originally a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the International News Service, Shirer was the first reporter hired by Edward R. Murrow for what would become a CBS radio team of journalists, and he became known for his broadcasts from Berlin, from the rise of the Nazi dictatorship through the first year of World War II (1940). With Murrow, he organized the first broadcast world news roundup, a format still followed by news broadcasts.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
