1945. Year of Victory

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Description

This program contains contemporary newsreels shown to American and British movie audiences at year's end-important not only for the events shown, but for the emphases and biases of the participants in those events. The year 1945 began with V2s targeted on London and the Battle of the Bulge on the Continent. But then events rushed to their inevitable conclusion: the Russian attacks toward Berlin; the Yalta Conference; blistering air attacks on Germany and the crossing of the Rhine; the death of Roosevelt; Soviet and American armies converging; the surrender of Italy and the end of Mussolini; the surrender of the Germans; and the Nuremberg Trials. On the Pacific Front: the recapture of the Philippines and Burma; Iwo Jima and the historic raising of the American flag; the bombing of Tokyo; the invasion of Okinawa; the Potsdam Conference; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Japanese surrender. This program ends in a tally of the cost of war and a plea for peace.