Adam West

Reconstruction of West Germany, 1970's - Film 14792

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• published: 20 Jan 2015
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Essentially the story of West Germany's post-war reconstruction, with rather cliched American commentary. Somewhat Cold war Pro-Nato and anti-communist ,but not excessively so. Some of the historical maps are innacurate. A man in shirtsleeves, walking along a road which is still being completed, carrying a suitcase. Cars on an autobahn. Credits. Aachen Cathedral. Remains of Charlemagne - The first Reich, Holy Roman Empire. A map of Europe, labelled 800 - 1806! Picture of Bismarck, "architect of second Reich." Bismarck's monument near Cologne. Map of Europe, showing Second Reich, 1871. This map shows countries like Czechoslovakia which did not exist at that date. Date on the map changes to 1918 as the map shows Germany's territorial losses at that date. Next we see a map showing Germany at almost the height of her World War Two conquests , but it is dated 1933. Swastika fills the screen. Flames. German soldiers and civilians with hands up, presumably 1945. Footage of bombed out German city. Map then shows Germany divided, with East Germany and the lost territories marked off, date 1945. A German street in the1970's, filled with cars. Footage from the 1940's, people standing in the snow. Newspaper headlines shown,"Obituary for Germany". More ruined buildings and bridges. Statues in seventeenth century costume. Headline: "Occupy Germany for fifty years" 1940's footage of people cleaning off bricks and pulling possessions along on little handcarts. Men mixing concrete. Men laying bricks. "Rebuilding began on a very small scale". Legs and feet walking through mud. Upper bodies and heads of "Young men fleeing the Russian occupied zone". Barbed wire fence. Discussion of the partition of Germany and breakdown of the wartime alliance. Another map,again showing East and West Germany and the lost territories in the East. Headline: "West Germany, birth of a nation". Young men standing outside a factory in the wet. Picture of General Marshall. Discussion of the Marshall plan. Pictures of old Reichsmarks and the new Deutschmarks. Grain elevators. Coal arriving by ship. Building materials being unloaded from ships. Chickens being unloaded. Cattle being unloaded. This looks forties, but is in colour. Pallets of chemical fertilizer being unloaded. Shot of ships in the docks. More grain coming down a chute. Details of Marshall plan. Shot of farmer ploughing with a horse. Planting potatoes by hand. Two women moving a cart, one pushing, one pulling, child alongside. Man moving stones. Building, men in cloth caps, one pushing a wheelbarrow up a ramp. Men and women working in constuction. These are apparently refugees from the Eastern zone building their own housing. Small boy spreading dung in the fields. An old woman haymaking. Women in headscarves planting potatoes. Sheaves of a largeleafed crop being loaded by hand. An old woman trimming a swede , or beet. Heap of root vegetables. A woman loading root veg. onto an oxcart. The agricultural footage is colour, but rather muted colour. Man driving an oxcart, then man driving a tractor. "By 1950 West German agricultural production had reached pre-war levels, and food rationing ended". Women and children harvesting potatoes. German village from a distance, in the sunshine. Inside the village two boys ride bicycles past a flock of geese. A cobbled street in a small town. City streets, "damage would be visible for many years" Cars and trams in the streets. Barges on a river. Cranes, docks. Discussion of coal and steel community. Men in suits round tables. "Combined labour- management committees". Shots of factories, focusing on company logos, "Monnesmann", "Hoechst" , "Krupp". Steelworks. "By 1953 West Germany's output exceeded pre-war levels". Forges. Building sites. A historic edifice shown before and after restoration. Little boy running to school. Children in a classroom. Making paper dice. Boys learning metalwork. Older boys in a laboratory. White coated adults in a research laboratory. Dubious looking liquid in a sink. Close up of a chemical reaction. Block of futuristic looking metal. Man at a microscope. Industrial production of large blocks. Sections for prefabricated buildings being made. A block of flats being made with prefab sections. Shot of finished blocks of flats. Map of Europe again, dated 1957. Lost Eastern territories still shaded in as German. A combine harvester at work. Coal trucks. Discussion of Common market. Map of Europe , Eec countries with stripes. Docks, barges, steel being rolled. Finished metal tubes. An oil rig . Men working on a drilling rig. Oil pumps on the outskirts of an old-fashioned town. Pipeline being laid from the Netherlands. Chemical works.