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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Dec 31, 2009 22:57:04 GMT
We've all seen the many black and white WWII newsreel videos. Now we're seeing color footage being posted on the web. This is great stuff for history buffs. The History Channel has a good collection here www.history.com/content/wwii-in-hd/videosYouTube has a lot of color footage. Here is one place to start. There are also some German clips that I found interesting. Here is one example.
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on Jan 1, 2010 10:14:34 GMT
There are several DVD's available with colour WWII footage, I keep meaning to pick them up.
Nice thread anyways.
AH
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Post by everso on Jan 2, 2010 16:14:15 GMT
Funny, isn't it, how you tend to think of WW2 as black and white? When you see colour shots of it, it kind of makes it "real". I was born 5 years after it ended so it's something I've been brought up with, but I always think of it in black and white!
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Post by Liberator on Jan 2, 2010 17:02:09 GMT
You should get a lot from the German side because Hitler was very keen on colour photography and film.
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on Jan 2, 2010 18:20:37 GMT
FFF, you are correct. I once loaned a copy of the "Signal" year book from my library, that was full of colour pics as well.
Mrs E, yes, being of a generation that was born long after the war, my only "colour impressions" ever came from movies...but when you see colour footage of real events, it looks all the more, well, real...
Edit: You can find lots of colour footage from the US Pacific campaign, probably because it was so late on.
AH
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Post by beth on Jan 3, 2010 5:31:46 GMT
Thanks, das, and, especially, thanks for the link. I love the History Channel. I tend to think I'm of a post-WWII generation, but from my parents POV, 1954 was still under the shadow of the war - just as current to them as 9-11-01 is to us, now.
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Post by Liberator on Jan 3, 2010 17:46:35 GMT
I think we were still very aware of WW2 until about the mid-60s. Maybe by then the first post-war generation was starting to raise its own children and old enough to be noticing current politics. We were one of the most heavily fortified parts of the 'Atlantic Wall' so I grew up surrounded by it. Had we been more primitive it would be fascinating to trace the development and reworking of stories we passed around as children into 'proper' folklore about Nazi survivors underground that weren't quite sure whether we meant real people or a sort of ghost. This has an American commentary added but the film is original. It looks as if they are using a twin emulsion system from the 1920s based on a brownish and a purplish layer that handled blue badly. In the other hand there are very vivid 19th century colour stills using dyes based on potato starch that went out of use, This however is even more fascinating, if monochrome: hour long documentary on German television broadcasting starting 1935, ending 1944. At that time, Baird was broadcasting and I think had moved from a a mechanical system to an electronic one but the BBC was still experimenting.
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Post by everso on Jan 4, 2010 18:44:41 GMT
Indeed. When I started work in London in 1966 there were still bomb sites in the City.
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on Jan 4, 2010 19:11:08 GMT
My primary school history education consisted of WWII, WWII and some WWII.
Seriously, that is all I ever remember from those days.
AH
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jan 5, 2010 3:28:58 GMT
I've been interested in WWII history since my days as a maritime academy midshipman where Naval History was part of the curriculum. There were several pivotal battles that had much to do with determining the outcome. Of course there was Stalingrad which wasted away the Nazi war machine. There was also the Battle of Midway Island in the Pacific which turned the war against Japan in our favor by sinking four of their aircraft carriers. The D-Day landings were also incredibly pivotal. So were the British evacuations at Dunkirk. Last September we vacationed in Lorient France. This port city on the Brittany coast happened to be U-Boat headquarters in 1941 and 1942. That is when the U-Boats were winning the Battle of the Atlantic and sinking so many American ships going to England. The German Admiral (Donitz) took over the most luxurious mansion on the beachfront in Lorient for his headquarters. He was living a life of luxury while sending hundreds of people to their deaths at sea. We toured that mansion and the submarine base. The mansion is a rich man’s palace on the ground floor but the basement underground was a series of rooms for communications equipment and bomb shelters. The submarine base is a huge concrete structure designed to be bomb proof. Very interesting historical place to tour. This kindled my interest which prompted me to read a book titled, "The Battle Of The Atlantic: The Allies' Submarine Fight Against Hitler's Gray Wolves Of The Sea by Andrew Williams (Paperback - Mar 16, 2004). This is a great read. The story of the U-Boats is one of the best of WWII The most interesting aspect of the U-Boat war has to be the rapid evolution of technology and how it impacted results. At first the Germans were unstoppable. The U-Boats sank an incredible amount of merchant marine tonnage. Then the British code breakers got hold of one of their coding machines and broke their communications codes. This enabled the convoys to be rerouted avoiding submarines. But then the Germans broke our codes and once again were dominant. Advancements in Sonar technology and Radio Direction Finding then turned the tide back in favor of the allies. The U-Boats were eventually defeated but it was a tough go. One thing I didn't know until reading this book is that the U-Boats were actually surface ships. They could submerge to hide but they were too slow underwater for attacks. Their usual modus operandi was to find a convoy while on the surface, submerge to hide, then resurface at night to launch their attacks. Almost all of the U-Boat attacks were launched at night and on the surface.
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