World War II film footage - Classic clips and the latest discoveries.
Latest WWII news. See also: Documentaries, WW2 Movies, Hitler Films.
Video: Focke-Wulf Fw 190 takes to the sky at Breitscheid Airshow
Video of Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (a German fighter aircraft designed by Kurt Tank) at 2010 Breitscheid Airshow. Fw 190 Würger was a World War II "workhorse", used in a variety of roles by the Luftwaffe. First appearing in 1941 the Fw 190 seized air superiority away from the RAF until the introduction of the Spitfire Mk. IX in July 1942. (clipwings.com)
Flying over the ruins - Warsaw's 1944 destruction revealed in 5-minute 3D video (includes trailer)
The Warsaw Rising Museum, which documents the 1944 uprising, has created a 3D film to show the destruction of the city. It took 2 years of research by historians and 40 special effects experts to create the 5-minute film. The team used historic photographs and maps to create a simulation of a 3D flight over the city, revealing piles of rubble and nearly every building in ruins. The film, "Miasto Ruin "(City in Ruins), will help teach Polish history. "Young people do not understand what it means that Warsaw was in ruins. they think it was just a few collapsed houses," said Museum director Jan Oldakowski. (cbc.ca)
Postwar footage shows how Red Army soldiers and Czech militiamen execute German civilians
It is well known that German civilians fell victim to Czech atrocities after the Nazi surrender. But a newly discovered video shows one such massacre in brutal detail. The footage - 7 minutes of film, shot with an 8mm camera on May 10, 1945 - was taken in the Prague district of Borislavka. Amateur filmmaker Jirí Chmelnicek documented the city's liberation. His camera also filmed groups of Germans, driven into Kladenska Street by Red Army soldiers and Czech militia. The camera then pans to the side of the street, where 40 men and at least 1 woman stand. Shots ring out and, one after another, they slump and fall. (spiegel.de)
Historical footage: Japanese sign final surrender
News reel of the surrender ceremony on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. (youtube.com)
Der Krieg: New footage allows Germans to watch World War II in colour
WWII series Der Krieg (The War) uses previously unseen film footage and photos, colourised using the latest technology. The series was originally a film shown in France under the title of Apocalypse. It has now been split into three 45-min parts: Hitler's Attack In Europe, The World In Flames, and Victory and Defeat. Material from 100 archives was used to piece together World War II as it was seen by the front-line soldier and the civilians in the Nazi occupied area. Colour photos include British Home Guard units training, ships being sunk by U-Boats, Russian cities aflame and Adolf Hitler in Berghof. (dailymail.co.uk)
Documentary: A Film Unfinished - Nazi cameras filmed inside the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942
Just months before the Nazis emptied the Warsaw Ghetto they sent camera crew to capture the Jewish community within the ghetto walls. After 30 days of filming in May 1942, the soldiers packed up their cameras - their 62min film would forever go unfinished. The story of this footage - Nazi propaganda that has been widely used to illustrate ghetto life - is the subject of Yael Hersonski's documentary: "A Film Unfinished." The sources include 5 Warsaw Ghetto survivors who watched the camera crew, personal diaries dug up after the war, and the description of the filmmaking from one of the cameramen. (forward.com)
World War II veteran's color war films discovered
WW2 veteran Herman Graebner recalls every detail of his 4 years in the U.S. Army. What he didn't reveal until recently was that he had shot 2 reels of 8mm color movie film of the action he saw. He says he placed the film into a box after the war ended in 1945. 60 years later the re-discovered rare WW2 color films are part of a History Channel documentary series. The 38-min film show Graebner's experiences as he travelled across Europe 1944-1945 with 5th Armored Division. "There's one ... where our observation planes shot down a German observation plane, a Storch, a short takeoff and landing plane, and I got pictures of that and a video." (wkyc.com)
The Hiroshima cover-up: How US hide American, Japanese footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
After the atomic attacks on Japan - and then for decades afterwards - the United States suppressed all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This included footage shot by American military crews and Japanese newsreel teams - and all but a handful of newspaper pictures were seized. The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the American military film stayed hidden for 4 decades. Newsreels might have disappeared forever if the Japanese filmmakers had not hidden one print from the Americans. The color U.S. footage remained hidden until the 1980s, and has never been fully aired - so Americans have not seen the damage wreaked by the bombs. (editorandpublisher.com)
Footage of Fraser Island's World War II commando school discovered
Secret footage of Fraser Island's WW2 commando school has turned up. The historical colour film, shot in 1944, includes footage of Australia's Z Special Unit in training. The commandos are seen handling foldboats, demolitions, weapons, parachuting and exercising jungle craft. "I've been working on restoring this rare footage over 18 months. The Z Special Unit film is now complete and we've put it on to a DVD that runs for more than an hour," said Craig Brown, senior research analyst with the Australian Bunker and Military Museum. The museum's director Daniel Hultgren said WW2 maps of the Fraser Commando School and training manuals had also been showed up. (frasercoastchronicle.com.au)
Documentary film Swastika shown in Germany after 36 year ban, includes color footage filmed by Eva Braun
Philippe Mora's and Lutz Becker's 1973 WW2 documentary film about how Nazis penetrated German lives was banned from showing in Germany after fights erupted at its first screening in Cannes. Now it will premiere in Germany: at the Biberach Film Festival. Mora discovered Eva Braun's home movies - rare color footage filmed by Adolf Hitler's mistress Eva Braun - in the National Archives in 1972, and combining it with other Nazi-era footage by the Nazi Party, created a film that reveals how Hitler seized the imagination of a state. "The film was made to show that Hitler was a human being. If we don't recognize that fact, we won't see the next monster coming." (wehonews.com)
Secret footage shows American troops practising D-Day invasion [video clip, still pics]
A Sherman tank rolls ashore while behind it soldiers step through the waves holding their rifles. But for the seaside guesthouses in the distance it could be a view from the D-Day landings. In fact, the pictures show American troops practicing for the amphibious invasion of Normandy on beaches in North Devon. They are stills from footage (shot October 1943 - June 1944) that has not been seen since WW2. The film also shows Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower visiting the troops in 1944, a few weeks before the D-Day. The collection of 10-minute reels have collected dust in a National Archive in Baltimore since the end of the world war 2. (dailymail.co.uk)
Almost 600 video testimonials of Nazi forced labourers online
Video testimony of 600 survivors of Nazi forced labour programmes was posted online for historians and history buffs. The project is an offshoot of a compensation fund set up by the German government and companies in 2001. The programme saw 12 million people rounded up to work during World War II. The 341 men and 249 women featured in the videos tell of working in Nazi camps or munitions plants under harsh conditions for little or no pay. "Their suffering should not be forgotten," said Guenther Saathoff, of the "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" foundation handling the 4.4-billion-euro fund. Project site. (afp)
Navy Web TV Online for history buffs
An online tv network at www.navytv.org is luring its part of history buffs with its vast collection of vintage and present-day footage. Co-sponsored by the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., NAVY TV is set up like a traditional broadcast network with channels and episodes. The site also includes a forum. "There's no doubt that our Navy film library is a key draw. Our footage is extensive and increasing daily. For military history enthusiasts, we're a one-stop treasure trove of top quality, classic Navy films," says Jim Franco. (thenorthcountyvoice.com)
Adolf Hitler planned Big Brother style tv-show to broadcast Nazi propaganda
Adolf Hitler was on the verge of setting up a cable TV system to broadcast Nazi propaganda around Third Reich. Screens would have been set up in public places, claims a Russian documentary citing files and tapes found in the ruins of Berlin. When the Allies overran Nazi Germany, engineers were on the point of a breakthrough to allow TV pictures to be transmitted to screens. Prototype programs included Family Chronicles: An Evening With Hans And Gelli, a reality TV show showing the wholesome Aryan life of a German couple. A SS officer, Curt Schulmeitser, told how Hermann Fegelein, a relative of Hitler's mistress Eva Braun, was filmed being shot for trying to flee Berlin. (dailymail.co.uk)
Television Under the Swastika - DVD documentary review
Television Under the Swastika: Unseen Footage from the Third Reich (1999) is a documentary about the medium's development under Nazi Germany from 1935-1944. Though WWII documentaries from time to time mention pre-war Germany's toying with tv technology, Michael Kloft's film (released to German tv as Das Fernsehen unter dem Haken kreuz) makes clear they produced the first regular tv broadcasts in the world, up to 4 hours a day. Technically they were ahead of every other country, trying to make tv a practical reality and by the late-1930s made tremendous technical advances, which American TV achieved 10-15 years later. (dvdtalk.com)
Rare war films to show how war bond drives helped finance WWII (Article no longer available from the original source)
It will be an opportunity to experience how the Second World War was financed by the American people, thanks to films so powerful they were ordered for destruction after the war was over. They were saved by Tom Masters and 7 of them will be shown in Jonesborough. Masters gave the films to Charlie Mauk's father, and then Mauk inherited these rare footages. "Masters worked for the office of Civil Defense, where the war bond films were returned, and he couldn`t bear to see them all destroyed. They were shot on 35mm stock for showing in theaters, and on 16mm for showings in ... other public places. Every other film has an in-your-face message to buy war bonds at the end." (johnsoncitypress)
Famous World War II Battlefields Today - Part 1
This is a collection of pictures of buildings and places in Europe today and what they looked like during world war two. This includes pictures of soldiers, cities, and battles. (youtube)
HBO Airs Atomic-Bomb Footage Kept from Media for Decades
On the 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima - widely ignored elsewhere in the media - HBO aired a documentary "White Light/Black Rain" by Steven Okazaki. It mainly focuses on a few survivors of the attack in 1945, which took at least 150,000 lives. The film also features extremely graphic footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings by an American military film crew - and then kept from the press and public for decades. The footage was used in the film "Original Child Bomb." Here is a report on how the footage came to exist and then hidden from all. (truthout.org)
The Negro Soldier - 1944 propaganda film created by the U.S. Army
During WWII, the American military effort was disfigured due to the nation`s cruel policies regarding racial segregation. African-Americans who responded to the defense of their country found themselves in violent situations. Contrary to popular belief, they did not passively accept their situation. Despite censorship designed to squash inklings of a fragmented home front, civil rights leaders and the troops angrily pressed for fair treatment and a greater level of participation in the actual battles. The sensitivity of the matter caused the War Department to create a documentary designed to boost the value of the African-American contribution. (filmthreat)
Never-before-seen Adolf Hitler footage to air on US tv on Sept 3
Recently discovered rare film footage of Adolf Hitler, which reveals a charismatic side of the Nazi leader, is all set to air on tv. The film shows the leader of the Nazi Party at a Richard Wagner music festival. The 16-mm film reel was discovered in 1945 by an American GI in Bayreuth. The film is valuable because it shows Hitler as a charismatic politician. "You get an insight into his world ... He`s not a monster in this. Instead, you see something that is so human; something that could very easily be appealing almost anywhere," said Gwendolyn Wright. The History Detectives episode featuring the Hitler footage will debut on Sept 3. (zeenews.com)
York historians focus on royal film footage 1918-1939
York historians and staff at Yorkshire film archive are to join forces to study changing attitudes to the Royal family in the region 1918-1939. "Between the wars, the monarchy's political power had begun to decline and they enlisted the help of newsreel companies to promote their popularity." The project will examine footage of the inter-war period when the Royal Family made several visits to Yorkshire. These will include King George V's Silver Jubilee tour in 1935 and King George VI's visit in 1937. The film archive at York St John University holds more than 14,000 reels of film and video tape of Yorkshire. (yorkpress)
Online Video Portal to Archive WWII Resistance Fighters
The EU has launched the first online history project that collects videotaped stories of resistance fighters, who stood up against Nazism and Fascism. There have been numerous efforts to document the histories of Nazi camp survivors, trying to make sure their collective history is not lost. Similarly, concerned that the last living resistance fighters were dying out, the EU launched a pilot project in 2006 to preserve their stories and make them available to the public. On May 7, 9 months after it began, The European Resistance Archive (ERA) video portal went online, also offering maps, images, texts and transcriptions of all the interviews. (dw-world)
Blokade: The Siege of Leningrad - The first Hero City
In 1945, near the end of "The Great Patriotic War" the Soviet Union designated Leningrad Russia's first "Hero City." Though running a close second to the Siege of Stalingrad in death toll, Leningrad's ordeal was more than twice as long. The home of the Winter Palace and a repository of a fortune in pre-revolutionary art, Leningrad was considered Soviet Russia's head. Nevertheless the city endured nearly 3 years of the German Army's efforts to bomb and starve it. Now the definitive film on the Siege of Leningrad has arrived. But it is neither a war epic nor an personal reminiscence. Blockade is an hour-long compilation of footage photographed during the siege. (nysun.com)
New technology catches Adolf Hitler off guard in his home movies
New technology that can read lips has helped make sense of Adolf Hitler's home movies, many of them made by Eva Braun at the Berghof. Hitler can be heard encouraging children towards a life in the military, criticising his closest henchmen and flirting with Eva Braun: "What are you filming an old man for? I should be filming you."
The footage forms part of a documentary, Hitler's Private World: Revealed. It has languished in archives since the war after being found by the OSS in the Berghof cellars. The film shows very different Hitler at ease among his guests, he cracks jokes and talks about his love for cinema. (telegraph.co.uk)
They Filmed the War in Color - France Is Free
Some of the most important moments of World War II in full color. The footage "They Filmed the War in Color: France is Free!" is eye-opening. I realized that I had never seen Adolph Hitler in color. This footage, culled from national archives and private collections, brought aspects of the war to me in new ways. There are many joyous images of the liberation of Paris, and scenes of everyday life in Vichy France, but there are also moments of horror. In one moment, Adolf Hitler stares into the camera during his only trip to Paris. He smirks slightly, and the narrator informs us that Eva Braun is running the camera. (digitallyobsessed)
A 10-minute Nazi SS home movie by Nazi officers found
A 10-minute home movie made by Nazi officers during World War II has been found in a church in Devon. It shows members of the SS running a slave labour camp in southern Russia. In the footage, troops force prisoners to work and officers are seen relaxing. The film, possible taken by a senior SS officer, shows several scenes. Another shows Nazi officers laughing on a veranda, enjoying coffee and cake with their secretaries. The Imperial War Museum agreed the images were unique. The footage is very different from the usual slick Nazi propaganda films, showing a side of the Third Reich never seen before. (bbc)
WWII Footage of Mussolini's death found?
Representative for Guido Mussolini said footage of the death of his grandfather, dictator Benito Mussolini, has been found in the United States. The footage will be in Italy soon. Luciano Randazzo said the two-and-a-half minute film, kept in Washington as part of a private archive, shows "the last seconds" of the lives of Mussolini and Claretta Petacci, before partisans shot them April 28, 1945. The footage did not make clear who specifically shot Mussolini. (upi)
A Nazi propaganda film: Denmark didn't resist Nazi occupation (Article no longer available from the original source)
An unknown German propaganda film depicts Danish resistance during the WWII as nearly non-existent in comparison with the fight Nazi forces encountered in Norway. The film 'Kampf um Norwegen' (The Fight for Norway), describes the both Denmark's and Norway's resistance to occupation. While the resistance in Norway is presented as a fierce campaign, it suggests that Denmark had been taken with relative ease. Kay Hoffman, film historian and expert in German Second World War documentaries, called the find a minor sensation. Denmark's lack of armed resistance against the German invasion in 1940 has been a controversial issue for Danes. (cphpost)
World War II film Overlord gets D-Day U.S. release
The critically hailed but rarely seen Second World War film Overlord gets U.S. launch. Made in 1975 by director Stuart Cooper with the help of the Imperial War Museum in London, the film has been hailed for combining a story with military footage from the D-Day invasion. Cooper watched more than 3,000 hours of the museum's 20,000 hours of raw World War II footage. Soldiers' letters and diaries gave him the basis for a story about an ordinary soldier. He persuaded museum officials to let him make the dramatic film rather than a documentary. (usatoday)
Unknown Documentary of German invasion found
Professor Jostein Saakvitne has found a previously unknown German documentary of the invasion of Norway by Germany during World War II. He stumbled across the film "Kampf um Norwegen" -- or "Struggle for Norway" -- at a German Internet auction. The 80-minute documentary of the invasion of Norway in 1940 was commissioned by the German Armed Forces High Command. "The film contains both known footage, but longer than we have previously seen, and a range of new scenes that have probably never been made public before." (upi.com)
Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels - The Man Behind Hitler documentary (Article no longer available from the original source)
In May 1945, as the Russian army descended on Berlin, Joseph and Magda Goebbels carried out a morbid footnote to World War II. They subdued their 6 children with morphine, then crushed a capsule of cyanide in their mouths. Afterward, the parents committed suicide, their bodies falling not far from the man who led them to rise and ruin: Adolf Hitler. He was educated (a Ph.D. in philosophy), well-versed in the arts and a skilled orator. Goebbels was instrumental in feeding the Nazi machine and kept the German people on a diet of falsehoods. He set up the "burning of the books" -event in 1933. (tbo)
Triumph of the Will: Special Edition
"One people! One leader! One Reich! Germany!" - crowd during the Reich Labor Service review. Leni Reifenstahl's 1934 Triumph of the Will, is considered a propaganda masterpiece. Featuring powerful cinematography and editing, the film builds an image of a charismatic leader contradictory to his later actions. We see the adoration of his public, the respect by his subordinates, and the strength with which he would lead Germany into their future. The techniques and imagery would serve as example, and her influence can be found in many modern productions, from political campaign ads to the closing ceremonial scenes in Star Wars. (digitallyobsessed)
Battle for the Desert - footage from the frontlines of WWII
Some of the most famous battle footage from the frontlines of WWII is included in this five-hour marathon of newsreel and documentary film. The highlight of the first disc is Roy Boulting`s Oscar-winning 1943 morale-booster Desert Victory. Using footage shot in North Africa by cameramen of the Army Film and Photographic Unit (4 of whom were killed during the campaign), it tells the story of the Allied defeat of Rommel's Afrika Korps and climaxes with the Battle of El Alamein. (smh)
3 Leni Riefenstahl Alpine fantasies: S.O.S. Iceberg, White Hell of Pitz Palu, Storm Over Mont Blanc
Kino has released 3 Alpine fantasies, all directed by Dr. Arnold Fanck and starring Leni Riefenstahl. S.O.S. Iceberg (1933) was Leni's final acting part, before she filmed Triumph of the Will. This mountaineering epic is filled with calamity and tireless rescue, with Riefenstahl's heroine tromping up real glaciers herself. The stories may be stock, but the real-time grappling between actors and real icebergs, crevices and polar bears can be amazing. The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929) and Storm Over Mont Blanc (1930) fill out the mold as well. Extras include a rare Fanck-directed short and a 2002 interview with Riefenstahl. (villagevoice)
Art of Justice: The Filmmakers At Nuremberg
Years before he wrote "On the Waterfront," and before he earned the ire of many colleagues by testifying during the Hollywood communist witch hunt, writer Budd Schulberg had the distinct honor of arresting Leni Riefenstahl. He was in Germany, assembling a film to be used at the Nuremberg trials as evidence against the Nazis. Riefenstahl, the legendary director and propagandist for Hitler, knew where the skeletons were. So Schulberg, dressed in his military uniform, drove to her chalet on a lake in Bavaria, knocked on her door, and told the panicked artist that she was coming with him. (washingtonpost)
Hitler sister - Paula Wolf - footage to be shown
A rare TV interview with Adolf Hitler's sister will be screened for the first time since 1959, having been found in a hunt for missing shows. Paula Wolf was filmed talking about her brother for hour-long ITV documentary Tyranny: The Years of Adolf Hitler, which also interviewed his chauffeur. (BBC)
Hitler in Colour - Newly discovered WWII colour footage
Adolf Hitler stands before the Nazi faithful at Nuremberg, exhorting them to realise the destiny of the thousand-year Reich. A familiar image in black and white, this time the scene is played out in full colour, a legion of swastikas set on blood-red banners. But this is not a clip from the film Downfall - it is newly discovered, colour footage which renders him more real than ever before. One of the discoveries was film shot by Hitler's pilot, Hans Baur, unearthed at a Hamburg film library which was always assumed to possess only newsreels made after 1945. Hitler maybe was the most filmed person in the world up to his death. (guardian)
A nation shamed - Extent of French collaboration with the Nazis
The Sorrow and the Pity is one of the greatest films about the Nazi occupation of France. But when director Marcel Ophüls submitted the completed over 4-hour documentary in 1969, the station refused to screen it. Not because of its length, but because of its disturbing content. Network head told a government committee that the film "destroys myths that the people of France still need". The documentary painfully showed the extent of French collaboration with the Nazis. (guardian)
See also:
Documentaries
WW2 Movies
Hitler Films.