Film Collection Online: Second World War Captured Films
To complement the release of the film collection online, the film and sound team are creating a series of highlight reels to give you a taste of the material that is now readily available at your finger tips!
Though only consisting of forty six titles, the German and Japanese films of the Second World War in the AWM Film collection are an important and varied collection for research as well as great source of unique stock footage. The majority of these films were sourced during or just after the war from the Department of Information and the army’s Military History Section. Other films came to the Memorial from government agencies and private donations. As well as newsreel extracts, training films, propaganda documentaries the collection includes two features, a Japanese home movie and several German shorts also made for the wartime home movie market.
This showreel feature clips from various German and Japanese titles and opens with the somewhat menacing eagle logo of the weekly newsreel Die Deutsche Wochenschau (compare with Fox Movietone’s Kookaburras). The German clips cover Rommel in North Africa, the battle of Arnhem, winter fighting on the Eastern Front and Luftwaffe fighter pilots on homeland defence. The Japanese clips consist of a short on a tank school, a bizarre piece on military training of school children, naval aviation and the invasion of Malaya.
Please enjoy exploring, researching and, most importantly, viewing our collection.
Links to collection items used in the showreel – F01964, F01965, F01967, F03354, F06931, F06936, and F06937.
Our previous showreels can be found here - Department of Information and First World War.