WORLD AT WAR, THE, PART 25: RECKONING (TV)
Summary
Part twenty-five in this twenty-six-part documentary series chronicling the history of World War II. This installment covers the events of the post-war period in Europe and Asia. Highlights include the following: footage is shown of displaced civilians and demobilized soldiers streaming homeward through scarred landscapes; recovery plans are argued out among the victors -- U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill -- and the issue of Germany's economic future is considered; veterans William Robertson and Kay Summersby recall the initial friendliness of the Soviet troops, whose ideological differences soon became apparent; in San Francisco in April of 1945, the United Nations is conceived; to facilitate a joint administration, Germany is divided into military zones among the three victors -- France receives a conciliatory slice of the Rhine valley; footage is shown of the Red Army moving into Leipzig as U.S. forces withdraw; Charles Bohlen of the U.S. State Department considers the prematurity of the agreement to adopt zonal positions in Berlin; Lord Avon (Anthony Eden) talks of Stalin's agenda at the tense Potsdam Conference; Averall Harriman, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, speculates on Stalin's disappointment in not having conquered more of Europe; Lord Adm. Mountbatten remembers learning of Truman's trump card, the atomic bomb; millions of refugees and prisoners of war pose a problem for military logistics; German civilians are conscripted into sorting the rubble of their cities; in the confusion of post-war Europe, dozens of Nazi officials escape -- others find themselves ensnared by military police; Heinrich Himmler poisons himself to avoid capture; ranking Nazis brought before the International Military Tribunal include Reich Marshal Hermann Gšring, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Grand Adm. Karl Dšnitz, Deputy FŸhrer Rudolf Hess, and Production Minister Albert Speer; Lord Shawcross, a prosecutor at the NŸrnberg Trials, reviews the War Crimes proceedings; of the twenty-one Nazi defendants, three are acquitted, seven are imprisoned, and ten are sentenced to death-by-hanging; Gšring cheats the gallows with a cyanide capsule; in Southeast Asia, the people of India, Burma, and Malaya shake off their colonial yokes and demand freedom; historian Noble Frankland holds forth on the issue of former British territories aspiring to their own rule; French Gen. Jacques Leclerc refuses to relinquish control of Indochine; in Europe, citizens Ursula Gray and Christa Ronke recall the black market which thrived under Germany's "cigarette-and-chocolate" economy; Douglas Spencer, of the British Occupation Force, details the indignities imposed on starving German women by Allied troops; tensions escalate between the Western powers and the Soviets, who attempt to lock off their zone and extract crushing reparations from Germany; simultaneously, Eastern Europe is swallowed into the Soviet system and grand victory parades are staged in the streets of Moscow; Britain, nearly bankrupt, struggles to reconcile its industry; and in America, which emerges from the war richer than ever, veterans return to jubilant reception. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: Thames (United Kingdom)
- DATE: May 1, 1974
- RUNNING TIME: 0:50:38
- COLOR/B&W: Color and B&W
- CATALOG ID: T82:0217
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Germany - Economic conditions; Germany - History - Allied occupation, 1945-; Indochina; International Collection - United Kingdom; Iron Curtain, origin of; Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, 1945-1946; Potsdam Conference; Prisoners of war (World War II); Refugees, political; Thames Collection; United Nations; World War II
- SERIES RUN: Thames (United Kingdom) - TV series, 1973-1974
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Jeremy Isaacs … Producer
- Jerome Kuehl … Producer, Writer
- Noble Frankland … Production (Misc.), Historical Adviser
- Carl Davis … Music by
- Laurence Olivier … Narrator
- Stephen Ambrose
- Avon, Lord (See also: Eden, Anthony)
- Charles Bohlen
- Eden, Anthony (See also: Avon, Lord)
- Ursula Gray
- Averall Harriman
- William Robertson
- Christa Ronke
- Lord Shawcross
- Kay Summersby
- Winston Churchill
- Karl Dšnitz
- Rudolf Hess
- Heinrich Himmler
- Jacques Leclerc
- Lord Louis Mountbatten
- Hermann Gšring
- Albert Speer
- Joseph Stalin
- Harry S. Truman
- Joachim von Ribbentrop