Polish prisoners; British Courageous air carrier; German ships
Creator(s)
- John C. Bechtler
- Ms. Claranne M. Bechtler
Scope and Content
German intertitles describe action. Low aerial shot of Polish prisoners marching, then a shot of the column from ground level. The camera pans across a field of prisoners and starved-looking horses, some of which are yoked to carts. Dead horses, abandoned carts and weapons strewn about on the banks of a river and in the river. A low aerial shot of rows of cannons in a field; no people in the shot. Piles of weapons and gas masks, then a brief shot of German soldiers with rifles, perhaps inspecting the weapons. Hitler reviews soldiers in Warsaw. Soldiers on foot, on horseback, and with bicycles march past Hitler. Close up of Hitler and of some of the soldiers. Airplanes picking up wounded from the front. An ambulance and an airplane on an airstrip. Soldiers remove a wounded man on a stretcher from the plane and load him into the ambulance. One of the soldiers speaks briefly to the wounded man. German soldiers repair a destroyed bridge. A wide shot of a destroyed and still-smoking bridge. Several shots of men performing different stages of repair work on the bridge. Footage shot from a plane (the wing is visible) of the aircraft carrier Courageous. The British Courageous was sunk by a U Boat on 17 September, 1939, but the footage doesn't appear to capture this event. A damaged U-boat returning to port. The U boat arrives at port, with sailors standing at attention and waving from the decks. A high-ranking naval commander pins a medal on the chest of the (presumably) captain of the U boat and perhaps other sailors. Close-ups of the smiling sailors and a shot of the flag of the Nazi navy. A German destroyer on a pirate trip on the north sea. This appears to show some kind of exercise or war game between two German ships. The scene opens with several shots of the exterior of a ship on the ocean, another ship is also present. Soldiers are shown rushing up from the hold of the ship and boarding a dinghy, in which they cross to the other ship. They board the ship and a sailor appears waving two flags, in mock victory or surrender (?). A brief shot of sailors looking over the railing, smiling. The dinghy returns to its ship and the last shot shows the wake of one ship and the other in the distance.
Subjects
- CARTS/WAGONS
- GAS MASKS
- BICYCLES
- POWS (POLISH)
- POWS
- HORSES
- SOLDIERS/MILITARY (GERMAN)
- INVASIONS
- FIRES
- AIRPLANES
- MARCHING
- WEAPONS/ARMS
- SOLDIERS/MILITARY (POLISH)
- AMBULANCES
- SHIPS
- RIVERS
- SUBMARINES
- BRIDGES
Places
- , Atlantic Ocean
- Warsaw, Poland
- , Poland
Genre
- Film
- Newsreels.