Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought-provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

WW2 category: WW2 Footage  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Documentaries', 'WW2 Movies', 'Hitler Films'.

World War II veteran's color war films discovered     wkyc.com :: 2009-10-21
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 two reels of 8mm color movie film of the action he saw. He says he palced the film into a box after the war ended in 1945. 3 daughters and 60 years later the re-discovered rare WW2 color films will become part of a History Channel documentary series. The 38 minutes of 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."    

The Hiroshima cover-up: How US hide American, Japanese footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki     editorandpublisher.com :: 2009-08-09
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.    

Footage of Fraser Island's World War II commando school discovered     frasercoastchronicle.com.au :: 2009-05-02
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.    

Documentary film Swastika shown in Germany after 36 year ban     wehonews.com :: 2009-04-21
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 together with other Nazi-era footage by the Nazi Party, created a film that reveals how Hitler seized the imagination of a state. Mora: "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."    

Secret footage shows American troops practising D-Day invasion [video clip, still pics]     dailymail.co.uk :: 2009-02-24
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.    

Almost 600 video testimonials of Nazi forced labourers online     afp :: 2009-01-23
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.    

YouTube condemned for showing video footage which appear to glorify Nazi troops     telegraph.co.uk :: 2008-12-31
The scenes, accompanied by military songs, have drawn millions of hits on YouTube, which, for example, has 2,880 videos on the Waffen SS. The entries have a string of "Sieg Heil" comments and praise for the fighting skills of the Waffen SS. The videos, some from Nazi propaganda news reels, have provoked the anger of Jewish groups.The clips feature high-profile SS figures like Joachim Peiper. One video is a 5-minute compilation of Waffen SS soliders in action, while another clip has pulled 652,000 views along with nearly 2000, mainly adoring, comments. One viewer has simply posted a giant swastika made from 134 smaller swastikas.    

Navy Web TV Online for history buffs     thenorthcountyvoice.com :: 2008-12-25
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.    

Adolf Hitler planned Big Brother style tv-show to broadcast Nazi propaganda     dailymail.co.uk :: 2008-10-22
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.     [Third Reich: Culture ]

Television Under the Swastika - DVD documentary review     dvdtalk.com :: 2008-08-12
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.     [WW2 Footage]

Rare war films to show how war bond drives helped finance WWII     johnsoncitypress :: 2008-01-24
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."    

Famous World War II Battlefields Today - Part 1     youtube :: 2007-09-03
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.    

Action against YouTube clips which promote racial hatred, glorify war     dw-world :: 2007-08-28
Germany's Central Council of Jews is considering charges against YouTube for hosting videos that promote racial hatred and glorify war. The clips include an anti-Semitic film "The Jew Süss" released by the Nazis during World War II and a video of the song "KuKluxKlan" by the neo-Nazi rock group Kommando Freisler which contains racial slurs. Video clip "Sturmführer in the SS" which contains original Nazi war footage set to the song of Landser, a neo-Nazi group, has been viewed over 400,000 times in 8 months. "The fact that YouTube freely offers Nazi propaganda that hundreds of thousands click on is a crime against young people," sociologist Hajo Funke said.    

German Expert Gerd Albrecht on Nazi-era Films and Propaganda     dw-world.de :: 2007-08-12
Gerd Albrecht, author of "National Socialist Film Policy", was one of the first film historians to write about film policy during the Nazi regime. In 1945, the allies banned the showing of films made during the Nazi era. Harmless films were soon released, but in the 1950s they still had 250 films under lock and key. The main aim of National Socialist films was to entertain: They were intended to be escapist and offer reassurance in the face of hardships. Propaganda Minister Goebbels wanted 50% of the film output to be propaganda, but only 15% were. People like Leni Riefenstahl, Zarah Leander and Veit Harlan would have become famous without the Nazis.    

HBO Airs Atomic-Bomb Footage Kept from Media for Decades     truthout.org :: 2007-08-07
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.    

The Negro Soldier - 1944 propaganda film created by the U.S. Army     filmthreat :: 2007-07-07
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.    

Never-before-seen Adolf Hitler footage to air on US tv on Sept 3     zeenews.com :: 2007-07-02
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.    

York historians focus on royal film footage 1918-1939     yorkpress :: 2007-05-19
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.    

Online Video Portal to Archive WWII Resistance Fighters     dw-world :: 2007-05-10
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.    

Blokade: The Siege of Leningrad - The first Hero City     nysun.com :: 2007-03-14
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.     [Siege & Battle of Leningrad]

New technology catches Adolf Hitler off guard in his home movies     telegraph.co.uk :: 2006-11-22
New software 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.     [Hitler Movies]

They Filmed the War in Color - France Is Free     digitallyobsessed :: 2006-11-15
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.     [WW2 Footage]

A 10-minute Nazi SS home movie by Nazi officers found     bbc :: 2006-10-25
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.    

WWII Footage of Mussolini's death found?     upi :: 2006-09-09
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.    

A Nazi propaganda film: Denmark didn't resist Nazi occupation     cphpost :: 2006-09-05
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.    

Rare 1942 color propaganda film of the U.S. internment camp     eastvalleytribune :: 2006-07-30
Arizona Historical Foundation found the 1942 film documenting the building and receiving first inhabitants of the Poston internment camp. The history of the U.S.' relocation centers - where more than 100,000 people were forced to live during World War II - has been documented in reports and photographs. But, until now, it is not believed to have been seen in moving color. The foundation is working to share this unique footage of a dark period in the U.S. history. The 25-minute-long propaganda film has been copied into a digital file and shown to a select group, and the foundation is in talks to post the footage online for everyone.    

World War II film Overlord gets D-Day U.S. release     usatoday :: 2006-06-26
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.    

Unknown Documentary of German invasion found     upi.com :: 2006-06-22
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."     [Nazi documentary films]

Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels - The Man Behind Hitler documentary     tbo :: 2006-05-22
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.     [Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks]

Triumph of the Will: Special Edition     digitallyobsessed :: 2006-03-29
"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.     [Leni Riefenstahl: Nazi Propaganda Films]

Battle for the Desert - footage from the frontlines of WWII     smh :: 2006-03-04
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.     [WW2 Footage]

Internee who filmed WW II camps dies at 92     seattletimes :: 2006-02-20
Dave Tatsuno used a smuggled Bell and Howell camera to film secret movies of the WWII internment camp where he spent three of his 92 years. He wasn't trying to spy, he said decades later, but document everyday life in the early 1940s at the Topaz Relocation Center in the Utah desert. In 1996, his 48 minutes of silent footage, called "Topaz," became the second home movie placed on the list of historically significant films kept by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The first was Abraham Zapruder's film of the assassination of President Kennedy.     [Internment camps & Internees]

3 Leni Riefenstahl Alpine fantasies: S.O.S. Iceberg, White Hell of Pitz Palu, Storm Over Mont Blanc     villagevoice :: 2006-01-22
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 job, 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.     [WW2 Footage]

Art of Justice: The Filmmakers At Nuremberg     washingtonpost :: 2005-11-29
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.     [Nuremberg Trials: Nazi War Criminals]

Hitler sister - Paula Wolf - footage to be shown     BBC :: 2005-08-20
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.     [Hitler family & Last living relatives]

Hitler in Colour - Newly discovered WWII colour footage     guardian :: 2005-04-10
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.     [Adolf Hitler]

Convoy PQ17 - Digital leap for Russian war film     bbc :: 2004-02-13
Work has ended on Russia's first war film to make full use of digital special effects. Convoy PQ17 tells the true story of an Arctic convoy devastated by German bombers in the summer of 1942. Video clips posted on newsru.com website show Allied AA gunners in unequal combat with the planes. The TV film took its creator, Russia's Semyon Levin Studio, about a year to make, using archive material to recreate the ships, planes and subs. "Nothing remains of the armaments of that time," Mr Levin told newsru. "War and time left nothing. We had to recreate them from scratch."     [PQ-17 and Arctic Convoys]

A nation shamed - Extent of French collaboration with the Nazis     guardian :: 2004-01-24
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.     [French Collaboration with Nazi Germany]

The Occult History of the Third Reich: Himmler the Mystic     nytimes :: 2001-03-04
The second in a 3-part series of documentaries that explore the links between the Third Reich and its leaders and belief in occult powers and practices, this episode looks into the history of the SS. Originally organized as Hitler's elite bodyguards, the SS became a sinister military/spiritual order under Heinrich Himmler; this film examines the roots in German mystic and occult teachings which inspired Himmler in the creation of this murderous gang.     [Nazi Occult, Ahnenerbe, Wewelsburg castle]

See also:
'Documentaries'
'WW2 Movies'
'Hitler Films'.

Although the articles linked from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-1945 and World War II in the News are reviewed and specially selected, they do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, who is not responsible for the content of any external sites. This service is © Joni Nuutinen 2005-2009. All rights reserved.