This black and white documentary by Wolfgang Kiepenheuser for Ikaros-Film with a script advised by Dr. Kurt Zenter offers a German perspective on the tumultuous period immediately following the defeat of the Nazi Party and collapse of the Third Reich at the end of World War II in 1945. (TRT: 14:24).
Opening titles: “Institut für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht” (Institute for Film and Image in Science and Education) “Filmdokumente Zur Neuesten Deutschen Geschichte” (Documentary Film on the Latest German History), “Deutschland Nach Dem Zusammenbruch 1945” (Germany After the Collapse) (0:13). Germans drive crude horse-drawn wagons. Soldiers return home. Civilian refugees (0:41). A map illustrates the influx of displaced peoples from Poland and Czechoslovakia in Eastern Europe with population figures (1:14). Refugees travel with few possessions. Rows of quonset huts. A mother and children in a makeshift barracks (1:45). Contrasting footage of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. Some wear badges or armbands. An overcrowded women’s barracks. Men huddled behind barbed wire. A tattooed arm (2:04). White flags of surrender. The Hotel Adlon. A burning building. Soldiers hold their hands overhead in surrender to a tank. Russian and American troops. A passing jeep (2:37). A pile of surrendered weapons. German field marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov sign the ratification of unconditional surrender (3:09). Four occupied zones are demarcated on a map of Germany with British, French, Soviet, U.S. flags (3:40). A Soviet woman directs traffic near the Brandenburg gate in Berlin. Looting of a trainyard. Water scarcity. Gleaning produce (4:00). People scramble to retrieve food dropped off the back of a passing truck. A child saws a stump. Crowded train platforms and overstuffed cars with passengers riding on the roof and running boards (4:37). Urban debris and destruction after bombing. Wrecked ships. Marching Soviet and U.S. troops. A U.S. flag is raised (5:13). A map: “Berlin.” The Potsdam Conference brings the meeting of the “Big Three,” Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, and Joseph Stalin, represented by murals and monumental pillars. Bernard Montgomery arrives at a victory parade. Prime Minister Churchill salutes (6:06). President Truman. Stalin (7:15). The men leave the conference, and smile, posing for a photo (7:29). Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, as shot by Sergeant Bill Genaust. The Atomic Bomb and subsequent devastation of Japan. Emperor Hirohito bows and surrenders (7:47). General Douglas MacArthur on the USS Missouri. A “Victory over Japan” celebration (8:20). Allied flags over Berlin. Montgomery and Dwight Eisenhower. The San Francisco Conference, aka the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO). Signatures from China, Iran, Ethiopia, Liberia, Turkey (8:49). Nuremberg trials at the International Military Tribunal. Hitler’s senior staff sit in the dock. Ten men are sentenced to hanging. Keitel’s final address (9:48). A municipal election poster: “Gemeindewahl 1946.” Voters cast ballots. Refugees receive rations. U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes’ “Restatement of Policy on Germany” in Stuttgart, 1946 (11:29). The speech concludes to applause from the assembled audience. The logo of the FWU (14:03).
