Original subtitles

This was World War ll.

And this is how we remember it:

On film. Black-and-white motion-picture film.

And this is the way it really looked.

This is the way it looked to those who were there.

This is unique color film.

The most comprehensive color record of the war in Europe.

My father was George Stevens, the film director.

He started out as a cameraman.

Before the war, he directed films like Alice Adams with Katharine Hepburn...

...Gunga Din and Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

He left Hollywood in 1942 to serve in the Army Signal Corps.

And he was assigned by General Eisenhower...

...to organize the motion-picture coverage of the war in Europe.

His special coverage unit shot 35 mm black-and-white film...

...and much of it became the record by which we remember the war.

He also took along his own 16 mm camera and some Kodachrome film.

And with it, he and the men who traveled in his jeep...

...shot a kind of personal diary.

From time to time, he sent the film home in these boxes...

...to our house near Toluca Lake in North Hollywood.

After the war, the color film ended up in a storeroom...

...where my father kept the things that were important to him.

For decades, these boxes of film remained there...

...unexamined until after his death.

You are about to see the war the way my father and his colleagues saw it...

...and to hear their recollections of those times...

...when each day was an adventure and hopes for the world ran high.

We begin in London in 1944, where he assembled the team...

...which came to be known as the Stevens Irregulars.

These are men who were way past military age.

Who were all rather pacifistic.

Not pacifistic when it came to dealing with studio heads...

...or perhaps in a brawl at a nightclub.

But all very liberal men.

One and all, they gave up very lucrative and very prestigious careers...

...and went right in into the Army.

As D-Day approached, Lt. Col. Stevens had beside him a team of professionals...

...the Special Coverage Unit of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

Among them, William Saroyan, the playwright...

...Holly Morse, assistant director for Roach Studios...

...Bill Hamilton, soundman from Columbia Studios...

...novelist-screenwriter Irwin Shaw...

...writer Ivan Moffat...

...and cameramen Ken Marthey, Jack Muth, Dick Kent and William Mellor.

On D-Day, they would fan out among the Allied armies...

...to cover the greatest seaborne invasion in history.

In the dawn of the 6th of June, 1944...

...the armada of the Allied nations set forth across the English Channel...

...and drew near the heavily fortified beaches of occupied France.

With the same camera that he used for home movies on Gunga Din...

...my father began his color film diary.

The flagship Belfast was designated to fire the first volley of the invasion.

He saw the captain read to his men assembled on the deck...

...from Shakespeare, Henry V:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

For he to-day who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.

6:00, D-Day. Landing time for the first beachhead boats.

Now Signal Corps cameras catch the full drama of the fateful hour.

The Allies had the advantage of surprise...

...and put ashore 176,000 men in the first 24 hours.

But the German resistance was fierce, and the Allies could not gain momentum.

It became clear that long days and months of hard fighting lay ahead.

It was the job of the Special Coverage Unit to record what they saw.

We were able to move anywhere in the war under special orders.

But we were right at front-line action all the time.

If things got too heavy, George would say:

"I think we ought to get out of here".

George felt very strong about the war.

He knew what his mission was, he knew what the war was about.

And he was very dedicated to...

...the best motion-picture coverage of this tremendous event.

The Special Coverage Unit operated from a base camp...

...between the two American beaches, Utah and Omaha...

...which were pumping men and material directly into combat.

The overwhelming impression was of this extraordinary logistical power...

...coming with thousands and thousands and thousands of ships...

...and hundreds of thousands of tons of material...

...being down-landed 24 hours a day...

...pouring inland through every lane, across every road, in that beachhead.

And it was a sight that you would never have dreamt of ever seeing.

If there was victory, which we assumed there would be...

...this is what victory is going to be made of...

...this amazing accumulation of stock.

These were the... Truly the sinews of war.

The Stevens Irregulars dug in...

...and set up base of operations near the town of Carentan...

...in a field 1.5 kilometers from the German lines.

And now, Captain Glenn Miller.

Thank you and good evening, everybody. It's been a big week for our side.

On Normandy's beaches, they fired the opening guns...

...for the drive to liberate the world. Now a little music...

...here are the boys with their rocket-gun version of "Flying Home. "

We had a sign-- A famous sign up there...

...that started off as-- New York and Paris on it.

Gradually, more and more was added on until finally, at the bottom...

...it was " Shirley, 4200 miles," or something like that.

Shirley was one of the boys' girlfriends.

I believe it was Chicago, but I couldn't be sure.

We were all highly professional.

And we'd all been in the motion-picture business for some time...

...and we'd all made many, many motion pictures.

And we felt a little more qualified than some of the Signal Corps cameramen.

We had cameramen like...

...William Mellor, who was an Academy Award winner...

...Joe Biroc, who is currently filming all the great shows of today.

We were all experts in our field.

Four weeks after D-Day...

...they were summoned to a July 4th meeting of the high command.

British General Bernard Law Montgomery...

...commander-in-chief of the Allied land forces...

...General Omar Bradley, commander of the American 1 st Army...

...were there to decorate heroes of the invasion.

General George Patton, with his pearl-handled revolver.

Privately, the generals were worried about the Normandy campaign...

...fearing a stalemate on the narrow beachhead.

But publicly, Montgomery radiated confidence.

The pace has been hot...

...and it was clear that someone would have to give ground sooner or later.

It was equally clear...

...that the Allied soldiers would see the thing through to the end...

...and would never give up.

And so the Germans have been forced to give ground...

...which is very right and proper.

And today, the Allied armies fighting in Normandy...

...have good grounds for solid satisfaction.

Well done.

Well done, indeed.

Even as their army pulled back...

...the German land mines made the Allied advance dangerous.

The smell of death, I still smell...

...once in a while at night. I wake up screaming in the middle of the night.

The devastation was so extreme that it-- I'll never outlive it.

George had an extraordinary sense...

...of visualizing events and scenes.

But these visual horrors and paradoxes...

...gave him a great deal of insight...

...into things that he'd never dreamt of before.

In an attempt to break out beyond their bridgehead...

...the Allies launched a massive air attack...

...on the entrenched German garrison.

Wave after wave of bombers came in.

And they were dropping their bombs on one particular little place, Saint-L�.

And the concussion was just terrible.

This push went on for hours and hours, plane after plane.

The skies were full of bombers...

...coming over everywhere you looked...

...and dropping rows of bombs just ahead of where we were...

...to clear out that area of Germans.

After weeks of bombardment and ground assault...

...the mighty German force had cracked.

And for the Americans, this was their first look at the enemy.

You'd pick Germans out of foxholes...

...who were just absolutely devastated by what had happened.

They couldn't believe that, and they were just out of their minds.

I'm sure it took them a long time to get back to reality.

There was a curious, unmistakable smell of leather and sweat.

The Germans used a great deal of leather in their equipment.

There was a smell of unwashed uniforms...

...a curious smell one got used to...

...and came to recognize wherever they had been...

...among prisoners of war.

200,000 German prisoners were herded to the rear...

...while the Allies raced forward.

Where before, in the gritty battles in the hedgerows of Normandy...

...they measured a day's progress in yards...

...now, as liberators, they measured each day's advance in miles.

By August, the Allied armies were in competition...

...each hoping to be the first to Paris.

My father decided to try to join the French Armored Division...

...commanded by General Philippe Leclerc.

When he wanted to get around authority...

...he knew how to do it. Usually just by remaining quiet.

And he did that, I know, in Hollywood. And he did the same thing in the Army.

He was not a rebel...

...but he knew what he wanted. And he knew how to get it.

Authority granted, they joined Leclerc's forces...

...to photograph the liberation of Paris.

The 2nd French Armored Division entered the outskirts of the city...

...at dawn on the 25th of August.

And the Stevens Irregulars were with them.

The atmosphere was sort of halfway between a carnival and a-- And a bullfight.

All the purpose of the war seemed to be coming true before your eyes.

George went right to the top.

He went with the German command to the Gare Montparnasse.

He filmed them taking their surrender by General Leclerc.

Paris free again. The beginning of the last act in its amazing story.

The surrender of Lt. Gen. von Choltitz, German commander of the Paris region.

At a dingy office in Montparnasse Station, formal end of German rule.

Despite the surrender, sniper fire continued in the streets.

I think I ended up under a jeep, but Stevens was standing alone out in front.

He looked down at me and said:

"You can't make any pictures from down there. This is where the action is".

To achieve a ceasefire, captured German officers...

...were dispatched across the city under white flags of truce...

...to spread word of the surrender.

Ivan Moffat spoke German and was detailed to escort one German officer.

We drove off with some difficulty...

...through this enormous angry, rejoicing crowd...

...which was in the place de Rennes, below.

He was spat at, and we were all drenched in spit.

I had to sort of reassure him...

...that he wasn't going to be lynched or something.

I remember my father saying...

...that August the 25th, 1944, was the greatest day of his life.

The Americans turned a Bailey bridge on its side to make a reviewing stand.

General Bradley invited General de Gaulle to take the salute...

...as the 28th Division marched down the Champs �lys�es.

It was intoxicating. And one said at the time...

...that no matter what would happen afterwards...

...nothing could-- Nothing would ever exceed the emotional experience...

...of the 25th of August, 1944. And nothing did.

Once the 28th Division passed the reviewing stand...

...they moved out of Paris to rejoin the American offensive.

That day, Irwin Shaw bet my father that the war would be over by October.

But ahead was the coldest winter in 20 years... in history to be recorded.

The Allies believed the enemy was weakening.

But Hitler ordered the German army to counterattack.

In what became known as the Battle of the Bulge...

...200,000 German troops attacked the American positions.

The Americans prevailed but suffered 68,000 casualties.

The Belgian countryside was devastated.

The Americans were destined to spend one more Christmas away from home.

As winter turned into spring...

...the Allies were once again fighting their way forward...

...moving into Germany.

The next Allied objective was to cross the Rhine River.

They mounted a massive air attack...

...sending 22,000 paratroopers in gliders...

...to drop over the Rhine into Germany.

The American 1 st Army attacked on the ground...

...successfully crossing the Rhine and moving deeper into Germany.

On the 11 th of April, the Special Coverage Unit...

...came upon one of Germany's greatest and most secret installations.

They found the largest underground factory in the world at Nordhausen...

...40 miles of tunnels and passages.

This was Nordhausen's product: the V-1 Flying Bomb.

Eight thousand of these terror weapons had been launched...

...and rained destruction upon England.

These liquid-fuel engines powered the new V-2 rocket...

...upon which Hitler was placing his last hopes for victory.

And here the Germans had developed the Messerschmitt 216...

...the world's first jet interceptor.

These achievements of science were the product of slave labor.

Czechs, Poles, Russians, Frenchmen, Belgians and Italians...

...forced to work underground.

Ken and I walked through one of the barracks.

There was a man lying in bed with another. Two men in a bunk.

And we said we were Americans...

...and this one man was very happy, with a weak, sick face.

And we interviewed some of the people there...

...and when we came back that man had rolled over and died.

A week after leaving Nordhausen...

...they photographed the largest surrender of World War ll.

German Army Group B had been encircled...

...and gave up 320,000 prisoners, including 25 generals.

It was extraordinary... to see them all suddenly.

Masses and masses of them.

Admirals, generals, even field marshals, privates.

Everybody all corralled there together.

It was an odd feeling that-- Of all this enormous power...

...having laid down its arms and standing there before us...

...feeling this formidable machine...

...as though it were just like a whole mass of sheep in the field.

They're defenseless and unarmed, ready to do our bidding.

It was very heightened...

...by the sense, of course, that the Germans were probably a more professional...

...and better-trained army than we were.

And there they all were before us.

Now the Allies drove eastward...

...and the Special Coverage Unit tried to be in the right place...

...to cover the linkup between the Americans...

...and the Russian army approaching from the east.

They headed for Torgau on the Elbe River.

This is Frank Gillard at General Bradley's headquarters.

East and West have met.

At 20 minutes to 5 on Wednesday afternoon, April the 25th, 1945...

...American troops of General Bradley's 12th Army Group...

...made contact with Soviet elements...

...of Marshal Koniev's 1 st Ukrainian Army Group...

...near the German town of Torgau on the Elbe.

Their journeys had started a world apart.

Yet the Stevens Irregulars and their Russian counterparts...

...seemed like old friends.

Then the Stevens Unit received urgent orders...

...to move south through Germany to Bavaria.

At the Dachau concentration camp, what they saw and recorded...

...would not soon be forgotten.

As a 20-year-old young man...

...with a sheltered life behind him...

...it was a terrible shock.

How can one human being do this to another human being?

Impossible to think of.

How does one justify...

...this mass murder?

You just want to hate the Germans.

You want to hate all Germans at this time.

Some German guards had disguised themselves...

...in the striped uniforms of the prisoners.

Working with recently freed inmates...

...the liberators sought to identify the Germans.

One hundred and twenty-two SS guards were shot.

Others were beaten to death by enraged inmates.

An epidemic struck the camp...

...and the freed prisoners were sprayed with DDT to prevent further deaths.

After years of horror and degradation...

...the time had come for Dachau's first religious service.

On May 8th, 10 days after the liberation of Dachau...

...came the news that the world had long awaited.

Good morning from the White House in Washington.

The president of the United States:

The Western world has been freed of the evil forces...

...which for five years and longer...

...have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives...

...of millions upon millions of freeborn men.

The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.

A million and a half men had been held as prisoners of war in Germany.

Now warriors from many Allied nations were free...

...and they were going home.

As spring came to Europe in 1945...

...it seemed that the entire continent was on the move.

The whole of Europe was like some enormous crossroads.

A dusty crossroads.

Dust from all the vehicles churning up the roads.

And in the green of the spring was this dust...

...and this constant, constant stream of all the men of Europe going home...

...most on foot, pushing perambulators and carts.

Norwegians going north, Italians going south...

...Belgians and French going west.

People going back to Russia and Poland.

Everywhere, people passing each other...

...on these endless, endless crossroads of Europe.

The fighting over...

...my father's curiosity drew him east to the Bavarian Alps...

...to Berchtesgaden.

There they would inspect Hitler's mountain hideaway...

...with its tearooms and terraces. And its famous picture window.

I captured most of Hitler's dinnerware up there...

...and I took it back to Paris and traded it for cognac.

So a lot of Hitler's dinnerware is around Paris somewhere.

Finally, they received clearance from the Russians to go to Berlin.

The German capital had been liberated by the Russian army.

And Stalin had made it clear that the Soviet Union would not be dislodged...

...from Berlin or eastern Germany.

The Russians were very systematic about cleaning up the city.

Like, they'd take a block, and somebody who wasn't a true Nazi...

...they made him the boss, and they'd form endless lines.

They'd take these bricks and pass them one to the other.

And that's the way they cleaned up.

They were absolutely beaten.

Most of them were wandering around in a daze.

They were more afraid of the Russians than they were of the Allies.

Now Berlin was divided...

...into Soviet, British, French and American occupation zones.

The fragile Allied unity had come to an end...

...and the Cold War was about to begin.

The Stevens Irregulars were coming to the end of their time as soldiers.

Their last days were spent viewing the remnants of the Third Reich:

The Reich's chancellery, where Hitler plotted his war.

And the trench where his and his mistress Eva Braun's bodies were burned.

They saw the stadium where, in 1936...

...Hitler first found the world's spotlight...

...and a platform for his idea of a master race.

Their work was done. They had recorded history.

Now their thoughts turned to home, to their families...

...and to resuming their careers as filmmakers and storytellers.

Each of the Stevens Irregulars was affected by the war...

...and for many of them, their war experience would color their work.

In 1948, Irwin Shaw published the acclaimed World War ll novel...

...The Young Lions.

Captain Joe Biroc returned to Hollywood and photographed the film classic...

...It's a Wonderful Life.

Ivan Moffat wrote screenplays for Tender Is the Night and Giant.

William Mellor won Academy Awards as director of photography...

...for A Place in the Sun and The Diary of Anne Frank.

George Stevens turned from comedies, musicals and adventure...

...to create American classics...

...like A Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant, and The Diary of Anne Frank.

Ivan Moffat told me of the day in May, 1945...

...when they left the concentration camp at Dachau.

My father asked the driver to stop the jeep by a building on the edge of the camp.

It was the post office where all mail had come and gone for so many painful years.

He disappeared inside and came back 10 minutes later...

...and they drove off in silence.

After a time, Ivan asked, "Why did you go in there?"

Dad reached in his pocket and handed this to him.

It is the stamp that was used to mark the letters in the Dachau post office.

The adjustable date still shows April the 29th, 1945...

...the day the Allies liberated the camp...

...and the day the atrocities stopped forever.

[ENGLISH]