- Description
- Men working on a badly damaged building in postwar Munich. People and horse-drawn carriages on the streets. A crowd of people gather to buy newspapers. The dope sheet indicates that this footage was filmed on the day after the executions at Nuremberg. A woman looks at a poster advertising a performance of "Die Schoene Helena" by Offenbach, a Jew whose works were forbidden under the Nazis. Men looking at more advertisements for entertainment, some of them in English. A huge billboard advertises a Loretta Young movie, "Roman einer Taenzerin," also with Konrad Veitd. Scenes from a stage performance of the American play "On Borrowed Time," which, according to the dope sheet, received 51 curtain calls on opening night. 01:45:39 Marionette show in which a marionette version of Hermann Goering climbs the steps to the gallows where a hangman is waiting. However, he keels over dead right before the hangman can put the noose around his neck. Cutouts of American MPs guard the gallows. The scene is enacted several times, filmed from different angles. The audience of laughing German children and a few adults is shown. The audience scenes have a forced feel. The show alludes to the fact that Goering managed to commit suicide in his cell before he could be executed. 01:47:59 The next sequence shows a German greeting an American soldier on the street. The German bows and shakes the American's hand, then the scene is repeated. According to the dope sheet, this piece of footage "depict[s] the exaggerated but hypocritical politeness of Germans towards the occupation forces." 01:48:20 A "political cabaret" where a woman wearing an evening gown sings in a nightclub performance. She is meant to be an American singer but she is arrested by a "Bavarian version of the military police." The dope sheet's commentary reads: "The public received this ridicule of Americans with howls of laughter without realizing that the very fact that this perciflage [sic] is permitted by the Americans is a very proof of our liberal attitude." The next few scenes, combined with the commentary on the dope sheet, aim to depict how well the German population is doing under occupation: young German couples, "all well-dressed, well-groomed, and non-starving," dancing at an outdoor cafe; a group of men around a table playing cards and gambling; interior shots of a crowded restaurant where a waitress serves big steins of beer; women in equestrian outfits outdoors with horses, then riding them around the ring.
- Duration
- 00:10:02
- Date
-
Event:
10/18/1946
Production:
1946 October
- Locale
-
Munich,
Germany
- Credit
- Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration
- Contributor
-
Director:
Harry Sperber
Producer:
March of Time, Inc.
Camera Operator:
Marcel Rebiere
