Movies

The state of neutrality kept by Brazil since the beginning of WWII was disrupted by Nazi Germany when U-Boats sank Brazilian merchant ships, killing over 1,000 civilians. In August 9th 1943, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (BEF) was created and Division General João Baptista Mascarenhas de Moraes assigned as its Chief ,nder. Organized in a similar manner as the American Army, BEF was composed of 1st Expeditionary Infantry Division (or 1st DIE) among other non-division units and sent to Italy.

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A moving collection of World War I era photographs which show the earliest of the Australian graves on a number of different fronts; France, Belgium the Middle-East.

A collection of funny clips from the Master. Very funny.

Documentary on the Decisive World War 2 Battle Of Midway .

Footage from a new documentary in which veterans of the Bataan Death March recall their experiences.

The newsreel footage showing the assassination of the Yugoslavian king Alexander in 1934 by Vlado Chernozemski from the Bulgarian VMRO in cooperation with the Croatian Ustasha, executed after VMRO issued a death sentence for the king as a punishment for his atrocities against the Bulgarian population in Macedonia and against the other supressed nationalities in Yugoslavia.

A clip from a documentary produced by BBC about the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

Puccini’s aria from Gianni Schicchi, also used as the soundtrack of the motion picture A Room With A View, by James Ivory.

The T34 Rocket Launcher T34 (Calliope) was a tank-mounted rocket launcher used by the United States Army during the Second World War. The launcher was mounted atop the Medium Tank M4 and fired a barrage of 4.6 inch rockets from 60 launch tubes. It was developed in 1943, small numbers were produced and were used by various US armor units in 1944-45.

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The first part of a very lucid documentary explaining Dada.

A montage of archival footage from the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (1938).

Independence Day in Europe – In France, General Eisenhower observes General Bradley fire a giant howitzer which signals our massed artillery into a massed crescendo of fire. Behind the lines, the French string ‘Welcome’ signs all over, improvise American flags, and a choral group of French children sing ‘America.’ They love our mow-oon-tains. Canadians Advance – After a well earned rest, following the landing battles in Normandy, the Canadians return to the thick of the fighting at Cariquet. So severe is the fighting that some of the Canadian camera crew were killed while filming these shots. In their sector, the Yanks are blazing through the hedge rows with grenade guns. In Rome – Old Glory is raised at the Piazza Venezia, near the Victor Emanuel Memorial, scene of Nazi retreats.””

A more sombre but still interesting though very short silent film. It’s more interesting I think for the fact that King and Kaiser are united in grief, but not for that much longer after that.

Former Miss America, Bess Myerson, hosted this remarkably hokey instructional clip from the mid Sixties intending to teach salesmen how best to sell cars to women.

The Army’s first motorized tank destroyer, featured here, was the “T12/M3 Gun Motor Carriage,” a modified M-3 half track with a 75mm M1897A4 gun mounted in the rear, an adaptation of the quick firing “French 75.” The idea of such a thinly armored vehicle facing armored tanks may seem insane today, but the Army’s tank destroyer doctrine at the time was “shoot and scoot,” where fast moving anti-tank vehicles would

The invention and use of the tools of war:Machine Guns, Constant Artillery bombardment, Barbed Wire, Tanks, Aircraft, Submarines, Flamethrowers, Grenades, High Explosive… All came down to the suffering of individual soldiers, it becomes painfully obvious why World War One happened the way it did once you see this video…Some sobering statistics are below…The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was over 35 million.There were over 15 million deaths and 20 million wounded ranking WW1 high among the deadliest conflicts in human histtory…