![]() : "Upon our arrival in the liberated Czechoslovak territory, after six-and-a-half years of exile, I could nominate a new government a government including representatives of four major Czechoslovak parties. The American servicemen used hand-held cameras and recorded sound only for important planned events, for example, the address you've just heard by the Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes, speaking - in English - from Prague Castle, upon his triumphant return from over six years of heading the government-in-exile, in London. So I proposed doing this compilation of unedited film clips and they hesitated a little bit because they didn't know how the audience might react to it, but I tried to make a case that the material has intrinsic value and is of compelling interest, certainly to the people who lived through that era - not to mention their descendants." The liberation of Pilsen, photo: RP: And this was a 70 minute film - so 10 percent means some 700 minutes/12 hours of raw footage? Embassy, to honour American veterans of the campaign, and arguably also for its own modern propaganda purposes, wanted to set the record straight, and commissioned a documentary of the Allied liberation of western Bohemia. Czechs greeting American GIs as liberators was not Moscow's idea of good PR. But Czech audiences - and, indeed, anyone on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain that divided Europe for nearly half a century- would have seen little or none of it. ![]() It created a massive archive of film documenting the Allied campaign against Nazi Germany and the Axis powers, to which historians have had complete access for decades. The Signal Corps acted as the motion picture service of the American war department. "The motion picture footage we are about to see was shot by combat cameramen of the United States Signal Corps, assigned to various units of the United States army, including General Patton's Fourth Armoured Division." ![]() It's a compilation, actually: 70 minutes of raw footage, shot by these American servicemen as the Allied forces took control of western Bohemia in May 1945, in the final days of European operations of the Second World War. ![]() ![]() Murphy is the man behind the film which premiered in Prague on Tuesday night. National Archives that are relevant and significant for Czech national history." The liberation of Pilsen, photo: "As an archivist for most of my professional life, I take the greatest pleasure in showing you the original documents from the U.S. ![]()
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