WINSTON CHURCHILL: THE VALIANT YEARS, PART 25: GOTTERDAMMERUNG (TV)
Summary
Part 25 of this 26-part series of documentaries based on Winston Churchill's "The Second World War," his six-volume history and memoirs of World War II. Highlights of this program, subtitled "Gotterdammerung," include the following: the war drawing to a close; April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler's birthday; Russians are at the Berlin gates but Hitler decides to remain in his Berlin bunker; Benito Mussolini's visit to Hitler in late March; on his way to Switzerland, Mussolini and mistress Clara Petacci are executed on April 28 by partisans; Heinrich Himmler surrenders German armies in the West to the three major powers; Russian armies in the streets of Berlin; Hitler in the Berlin bunker; Maj. Gen. William W. Quinn recounts the story of Hermann Goering's surrender; Hitler makes his will on April 29, and he and Eva Braun commit suicide on April 30; the concentration camps; war correspondent Alan Moorehead describes the surrender of German senior officers; Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, chief of staff at Supreme Headquarters, describes the negotiations with Admiral Hans Von Friedeburg for the German surrender; Bedell Smith accepts the unconditional surrender of the German army from Gen. Alfred Jodl on May 7, at Rheims; British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announces V-E Day and the end of the war on May 8; King George VI and the royal family on V-E Day; and Churchill in the Commons and with the King on V-E Day. Includes commercials for Metrecal.
Preservation of the Post–World War II American Television Documentary Collection is supported in part by a Federal Save America’s Treasures grant administered by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Details
- NETWORK: ABC
- DATE: June 4, 1961 10:30 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:29:20
- COLOR/B&W: B&W
- CATALOG ID: T83:0520
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Berlin, Battle of, 1945; Biography; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Prisoners of war (World War II); V-E Day; World War II - 1945
- SERIES RUN: ABC - TV series, 1960-1961
- COMMERCIALS:
- TV - Commercials - Metrecal
CREDITS
- Robert D. Graff … Executive Producer
- Louis Clyde Stoumen … Producer
- Anthony Bushell … Director
- John Schlesinger … Director
- William L. Shirer … Writer
- Richard Rodgers … Music by
- Hershy Kay … Music (Misc. Credits), Orchestration by
- Eddie Sauter … Music (Misc. Credits), Orchestration by
- Gary Merrill … Narrator
- Richard Burton … Narrator, Churchill's words spoken by
- Bedell Smith, Walter
- Eva Braun
- Winston S. Churchill
- Ben Feiner
- George IV, King of Great Britain
- Hermann Goering
- Heinrich Himmler
- Adolf Hitler
- Alfred Jodl
- Le Vien, Jack
- Alan Moorehead
- Benito Mussolini
- Clara Petacci
- William W. Quinn
- Von Friedeberg, Hans