Without expressing definite optimism, Allied leaders say the final curtain is about to
fall on the European war.
Two of our armies have driven into the Tsar as the Russians battle just a few miles east
of Berlin.
The crossing of the Rhine has spelled the doom of Nazi hopes of victory.
The crossing of the Roar River was a preliminary step before we assaulted the Rhine at Remagen
and crossed that river for the first invasion of Germany at this point since 1805.
The Germans put their faith in the Siegfried Line, but as we took key fortresses and smashed
through, it was the beginning of the end.
The Allies have taken more than a million prisoners since our invasion of France.
This bag has meant the end of the German army and all the Nazi thoughts of conquest.
In the course of our rapid advance, forced laborers were freed from manufacturing centers
that we reduced to rubble.
Allied strategy called for the leveling of towns if it meant saving the lives of our boys.
Supreme Commander Eisenhower joins General Simpson, commander of the Ninth Army, on a
tour of inspection of what was once part of the Siegfried Line at Eulich.
This is one of the first places where we cracked the shell of Nazi resistance and brought the
Hun to his knees.
The speedy push of the Allied armies caught the Germans by complete surprise, they have
admitted.
And when G.I.
Joe passes through town without a chance for a howdy, the civilians can only stand by and
watch.
For example, these four men about town.
As a security measure, many civilians are rounded up for questioning, but they are few
compared with the number of soldier prisoners.
As the American troops approached Cologne, they freed countless numbers of Russian and
Polish prisoners who were forced laborers under the German heel.
When they have received medical attention and decent food, they're all smiles.
The G.I.'s can make friends at the drop of a Nazi.
These freed people have the greatest of thrills in preparing their own meals.
This concentration camp was surrounded by three lines of barbed wire, one electrified,
mute testimony to the horrors that happened here.
Imagine your son, your daughter, your husband, or your wife here.
Victory is in our grasp.
We have the opportunity to stamp out evil like this.
It's up to us to supply that final punch that will mean peace in this war-weary world.
Air warfare, terrifying and devastating, has returned 100-fold to Germany.
RAF Lancaster's unload everything from 500-pounders to blockbusters on Pforzheim, important industrial
center.
A city is literally being wiped out before your eyes.
Explosions and fires are sucking the oxygen from the air.
Nothing can live in this inferno.
City by city, the Nazi Reich is dying.
These are Americans, Americans who have known all that the Jap can dish out in brutality.
They're Navy men recently liberated from three years in Bilibid prison, years spent on rations
of rice, corn, and soybeans that approximated one-half pound per day.
Here men died slowly, despairingly.
Navy pictures beyond the power of words show what the Japs did.
Yes, many died in this grim fight against systematic starvation.
All America can mourn with this nurse who surveys the reminders.
But there were survivors of this ordeal.
San Francisco with a crowd of 100,000 turns out to welcome back some of these heroes of
Bataan and Corregidor.
These Americans are back home among the folks for whom they face Jap barbarism courageously.
Corporal Jolly receives the medallion commemorating all Bataan heroes, but it's a safe bet that
the crowd of friendly faces and a mother's kiss can help him forget.
Sport parks and other sections of the country may still feel the grip of winter, but Southern
California gathers at the Los Angeles Coliseum to witness a rodeo packing plenty of dynamite.
These Broncos are built entirely of steel springs.
And speaking of spring, it looks like an early fall.
And the boys had a few special thrills, such as this fire eater.
And if your pre-war model can take it, what do you suppose that trick driver could do
with a flying fortress and a couple of jeeps?
Thousands of Canada's servicemen and women returning to civil life are being groomed
for post-war careers in training centers all over the Dominion.
Among the many useful trades offered under the plan is bricklaying, and many skilled
machinists will be needed for peacetime industry.
At the Toronto Rehabilitation Training Center, several thousand vets resume studies interrupted
by a global war.
The school will soon be ready to supply any type of training a returned vet may demand.
They'll evidently teach them to grow hair on a billiard ball, but practice makes perfect,
and with a manpower shortage, you have to substitute.
Just once over lightly, old boy.
Bar, she blows.