He actually came up doing laurel and hardy silent shorts and then once sound came in he did everything from swing time, one of the best fred astaire and Ginger Rogers movies to wochlt year with Katherine Hepburn and spencer tracy. Each of these movies had reasons for directors going in. For stevens, who like all of the directors was old enough so he could have gotten a civilian exemption from the war, really wanted what he called a seat on the 50 yard line of history. He felt that it was a patriotic duty to go. He had been chafing in hollywood because he felt pigeonholed into making these very light movies when he had wanted to make some films with more contemporary or warrelated content. And when he was wasnt able to do it at rko or columbia, he jumped at the chance to do it in the army and for the army. Interestingly, of the five directors, stevens is the only one who never made a sort of freestanding documentary during the war that was shown to civilian audiences, but his work in the war, which ranged from restaging battle scenes in north africa to becoming the first major american filmmaker to enter the camps after they were liberated, and his films there actually provided evidence for the nuremberg trials. His work on the war was the most wide ranging and in some ways historically significant in terms of the camp footage of any directors during the war. Let me follow up on that point because he was a member of the u. S. Army signal corps under the leadership of thengeneral eisenhower, who was clearly responsible for the historic invasion on dday 70 years ago this year. Where was George Stevens during that time in june 1944 . Stevens was right there at dday. You know, just as john ford was at dday supervising the filming effort made by the navy, stevens was there overseeing the shooting done by the army. And of all the major battles and turning point in the war, dday was the one that allied filmmakers had the longest and best opportunity to prepare for. This was a filming effort that involved hundreds of cameras, both stationary and manned, and dozens of cameramen. And stevens, you know, as the war progressed, often his function was to coordinate some filmmaking efforts with the allies, particularly the british or canadians. And that was one of the things he did at dday. Ford asked if stevens wouldnt mind working with the british to help shore up their dday filmmaking effort. And i believe that the ship stevens arrived on on dday was nrvelkt a british ship. The library of congress listed his work as the essential visual record of what happened in word war ii, not only the american success on dday but also the concentration camps. Im wondering if you can talk a little bit about that including what he saw in dachau. Absolutely. I should also say, after dday stevens stayed with the troops and filmed all the way through the push into france and the liberation of paris which was, you know, absolutely some of the most historically important footage of the war. His work in the camps, in dachau, was really devastating. They got there just days after liberation. And whats remarkable is that even without official instructions, stevens instinctively understood that his job had at that instant changed, that he was no longer a documentarian and certainly no longer a propagandist but he was a collector of visual evidence. His job at dachau was literally to document, to film the devastation that had been wrought on the bodies of these people, to film bodies, to film things that still, when we contemplate the horrors of what was done in the death camps, its the images that stevens shot that give us our visual understanding, the language we use to comprehend those atrocities. And it was, for him, an absolutely devastating experience. He spoke about it afterwards. And, you know, stevens was a great director after the war. He went on to make movies like a place in the sun and shane, but he never directed another comedy. And he really he felt that dachau had robbed him of his ability to be funny, to be lighthearted. Among his work, the film the true glory, im going to show the first 25 minutes of that film, this was an American British coproduction. What can you tell us about it, mark harris . Well, the true glory was in a way very typical of a friendly tension that arose between the United Kingdom and the u. S. England, of course, was in the two years before the u. S. Was. And they were sort of perpetually two years ahead of the u. S. In the vigor and intelligence and passion of their wartime filmmaking efforts. So there were some uneasy collaborations between us and the british, coproductions in which the really good footage from england was used to prop up some inferior footage from the u. S. But the true glory was not one of those cases. The true glory was an instance in which england had a very, very good director, carol reed, who went on to make the third man and oliver and the u. S. Had a good screenwriter, a young soldier named paddy chayefsky, worked on the true glory and had then went on to write a number of great teleplays and movies, including network. So stevens job was really to step in briefly to make sure that everything was going smoothly between the brits and the americans. And thats what he did on the true glory. This is a nearly 30minute portion from that film. Mark harris thanks for the explanation. The film is called the true glory. Well begin with an introduction by general dwight eisenhower. I have been asked to be the spokesman for this allied Expeditionary Force in saying a word of introduction to what youre about to see. It is a story of the nazi defeat on the western front. So far as possible, the editors have made it an account of the really important men in this campaign. I mean the enlisted soldiers, sailors and airmen that fought through every obstacle to victory. Of course, to tell the whole story would take years. But the theme would be the same. Teamwork wins wars. I mean teamwork among nations, services, and men. All the way down the line from the g. I. And the tommy to us brass hats. Our enemy in this campaign was strong, resourceful and cunning, but he made a few mistakes. His greatest blunder was this, he thought he could break up our partnership. But we were welded together by fighting for one great cause. Into one great team. A team in which you were an indispensable and working member. That spirit of free people working, fighting and living together in that spirit of comradeship will persist forever among the free peoples of the united nations. To you who now living in lop love and hope who sense a future in the surrounding air, this testament is offered. Here you may look on the violent fragments of our age and the once thinness of the little thread that made us then the citizens of freedom. Dark was europe and the face of man when this begins. A nation that had gone mad and struck out every where the compass knew. Yet tired of our way and left its wreckage on a hundred coast. German cast its fires about the globe. His strength drawn from the smoking sire lay in our weakness. At last his conquest smoldered behind the barriers of his arms. Along the channel where the sea strikes france stood the west wall of concrete stone and steel to mock the frail hopes of the petty free. Wounded hard pressed and wasted in our strength almost like madmen then we planned to breach the wall and smash the german smite. But where . We searched the coast of europe. Our eyes sought out the place of assault. Exits in title range. Marked shallow flashing off. Sand of the wind cancelled the belgium coast. The north sand beaches were too small and cliffs barred the approaches. Qatar turn, too narrow. Another heavily defended. It all resolved on normandy on foot. Airplanes would land on the ground, the coast defenses were more light and tides had a good range, and men were safe from winds. So on five miles of still unbloodied sand, the threat of course would be sailed by armored nations. Now our people bent to the construction of a steel array and took the builders hammer in their hands. Seemed as though the sun stood still full of range and power through the air the sphere of war. This is our peoples story in their words. I suppose if the battle of the north atlantic hadnt gone right, things might have been considerably different. Its an ugly time for all of us. Merchant ships, naval escort air patrol. I guess i had my share of bad luck. I lost three ships and some good friends. I remember reading somewhere that when a sea gull comes down on a patch of oil its feathers stick together and cant get off the water again. There must have been a lot of dead sea gulls around the north atlantic. Of course, we only saw it happening on the war map. Yet it was, well, quite real. When i started there, those markers we used might have been toys out of a childrens game. Soon they were ships carrying cargo, Food Supplies and weapons and men to use them. I remember coming over the worst thing about the trip was you didnt know where you were going. Wherever it was, you would be a stranger and nobody likes that. That ship was loaded from stem to stern with sad sacks. Around the third day out were all in the same boat a comic. Finally we got to liverpool. They had a band to play us in. An english army band full of chimes. Im dreaming of a White Christmas they played. To tell you the truth it was pretty corny. But nobody said anything because you know, it was a nice gesture. Funny thing, on the way over, you felt like you were the whole works. You couldnt help it, but them all over the uk youd see things that made you begin to realize you were just part of a big proposition. All kinds of things. I was a premed student. At Johns Hopkins in civilian life. Now i do know a Little Something about anatomy. And i say it is scientifically impossible for the human body to stand up to the training we received. An absolute impossibility. Muscles and tendons and bone structure was not designed to withstand that battering. Dont ask me how it happens that we did stand up to it. I dont know. It has no scientific explanation. Here, listen to this. One of those army captains. To a young man, soldiered in the army of today offers exceptional advantages and opportunities such as physical training, foreign travel, sport, and many other facilities which are normally denied to those engaged in the majority of civilian occupations. The majority of occupations in civil life become monotonous to say the least. But in the army, life is so varied that theres little or no prospect of a monotonous or irksome time. So men will guard it for their highest hour. And while they earned the lethal arts of war in small and secret rooms, the planets met to watch their work mature. Beyond our view, the german proud and confident stood calm on the armored coast. The war was not yet one of men and blood, the weapons were the factories and maps and voices speaking in the hidden night. Season by season, all our plans advanced and those few men on whom the massive war rested with all of its weight worked ceaselessly. I used to wonder whether the millions of people doing their various jobs realized they were part of it all, paving the way for the invasion. We kept bashing away at german targets, worcester steel and oil, hamburg, battle of berlin. Things were getting tougher every trip. More ground defenses, more night fighters more crews not coming back. We got away early in the morning. Sometimes wed see land casters coming back. A lot of times wed stoke up the same target they did. We would beat up aircraft factories too. It was a service day and night, 24 hours a day. We dropped agents over france. Must be awful to risk your neck and have to keep it secret. One mans submarines torpedo boats, commandos. We used them all to bring back cups full of sand for analysis. It had to be quick drying with a solid clay foundation. It would have to support 30on ton tanks. I must have photographed every field in france. We dropped stuff armed, ammunition, sabotage materials and so on then went over ourselves and thought them thousand use it. We hadnt the least an idea what kind of gadget it was. The only name it had was mullberry. It was vital to know about the same tides and retrain to negotiate the tides and Landing Craft. Waring down german sea power in preparation for the day. The special study of the weather along the nor mandy coast. Miles of wire netting for the beaches, 7200 tons of petrol per day. With an underwater pipeline to carry to france. White stars to enable the liberation. New ships pouring from the stocks. Old ships adapted. Listening to the german radio output for fresh intelligence. That was just part of the preinvasion work. By december 43 the plan was set and we took it for final discussion. They approved the plan. Our Russian Forces advancing from the east and invasion from the west. And then the date was set. I assume command is safe with the best allaround team for which a man could ask. Some have already been working for months in england. Others i brought with me from the mediterranean. We adopted first a master plan and then had to coordinate every last detail of the ground, sea and airplanes. While this was going on, we led off with an air show designed to make the landing points as soft as possible to batter the German Communications and to make certain wed have control of the air. It was quite a show. Those airmen did a magnificent job. We had polish, french, czechs, the only way they could make up was marshaling the arts. We used to ask each other, have you cut any good bridges lately . Finally there was only one whole railway bridge left over the seine between paris and the sea. Down in the late spring through the wounded towns of england moved the mass made by our patients. Two precious years of plans were put away. The offices were empty. All the maps were rolled up on the walls. Paper had come alive. Across the channel, our resolve the germans stood beside our guns. Their generals were prepared. Their might was poised. They looked across the sea and grinned. They were on the beaches and even death himself would stand amazed. Yet faint across the groaning of the sea came the thin thunder of a massive power. Drawn from the great peoples of the earth, it gathered in the ancient ports of england. On the steel ships. It was a funny sort of feeling marching down to the ships. We had done it plenty of times before of course on the scenes and that sort of thing. They didnt tell us this was the big show. Might have been another exercise. Some of the chaps cracked gags. They wasnt very comic, but we laughed. I think we all guessed. D general feeling was, okay if this was it, lets get in there and get it over with. Even waiting for a bus, never could stand it. Well, after a bit our ship found its place in the middle of all the rest. There we stayed for days. They gave us the final briefing then. We knew what to do and how, they told us where and when, thats a briefing. I listened to every word. Wrote it down in my head like a record and it kept playing over and over again. Peace at beach in the morning. Ever since i became a soldier, they were getting me ready for this. Protecting me. Now the time had worn away and there were only a few hours left. In the morning i would have to face it. I had tried to imagine how much fear i would have, to keep me from doing my job. I suppose everybody else was wondering the same thing. Nobody said anything official, but all of a sudden the ship got much busier. And over the amplifier the chaplain said he would be saying mass at 1830 hours. Funny, i dont think i ever believed even after the final briefing that the invasion was going to come off. And a voice in the loud speaker said, men who wish to take their antisick sea pills should take their first one now. That did it. I was tugging a glider. The way we always practiced it. Except i had never been in the air with the whole army before. Three airborne division. 101st american. Just before the glider pilot cast off, they wished us good luck over the radio. Seemed inadequate thing to say. As supreme commander, let me break in at this point to say just a word about the navy. From the moment of embarkation, the full burden fell upon the navy and our merchant fleets. They had to sweep the mines, bombard the coastal batteries, marshall and protect the transports along the coastline. And finally man the small boats that carried the soldiers to the beach. On that day, there were more than 8,000 ships and Landing Craft on the shores of normandy. It was the most intricate task and a vital one for the success of our plans. The courage, fidelity and skill of the royal and american navies have no brighter page in their histories than that of june 6th 1944. Back in london, only a few people knew. It was a wellkept secret. Around daybreak, we told correspondence said to be there by 8 and they told us. They called our beach omaha. Dont ask me why. I never been to omaha, in nebraska i mean. If its anything like omaha, france, you can have it. I understand omaha was the roughest spot. We lost some good men, took a few prisoners. It was a lousy trade. Weve been told what to expect so it wasnt like a surprise or anything. It just, well, when it really happens, its different. For a while there, we were pinned down. Lucky thing, the other beaches were going better, so we got a little more than our share of the old teamwork. Navy come in and the air guys and finally we got moving good. We hear a lot about how long it takes to make battle hardened soldiers out of green troops. Listen, i got to be a veteran in one day that day. So they paved our beaches with our blood and reached the roads. In the depths of the rich green pasture of normandy, the three airborne divisions and loud across the crater face of france came german reenforcements. From berlin a voice cried out an ally must be burned another day burned a hole in the history. The armies clashed. Our first objective, then, was to merge all into one and 50 miles of men drive on together beyond the red sands through the broken wall. It wasnt too bad getting ashore. We had to fight for every bloody thing. That was the scene each time. Crawl on your belly. Staying down like youve been toldng a few hundred grenades and rush them. Sometimes they would kill us but we would kill more of them. They were regular fortresses. Our own men while they would wait for artillery support. The navy was still with us too chucking in shells ahead of us. In the three days, we advanced seven miles. Then we were told to stand fast and dig in. Next morning we heard the news, we got it from the bbc. It sounded great. We joined up all along the bridge head. There was a solid line 45 miles of it. We had got a foothold. We were in. A portion of the film true glory and joining us from new york is mark heir ris who has been researching many of the directors from this period. As you look back at that film, what are your impressions . You know, the english film makers, the men in the British Army Film unit were really peerless at putting together these documentaries. Not only did home front audiences in england find them very stirring, but they played well in america too. England had a head start on the film making effort in the war and their documentaries including early ones like desert victory really sparked a sense of competition in u. S. Film makers. There was a lot of open discussion in the War Department and with people like frank capra saying why arent our movies this good . Why isnt the material were getting as strong as this british material . So the true glory in the hands of carol reid a really great director is a good example of how the english really knew what they were doing on this front. In setting up our conversation about this film, we touched briefly on the concentration camps and what George Stevens saw throughout germany. He put a film together on the nazi concentration camps. What did you learn about that . Yeah, stevens did not go home quickly after the war was done. He lingered in germany and he was in uniform and on duty. His task was to prepare two evidentiary films that were to be shown at the nuremberg trials later that year. One of them was called the nazi plan which was intended to demonstrate that in fact this was a wellcalculated systematic effort, in a way to prove intent and conspiracy and the other film, nazi concentration camp was to document the atrocities that stevens and his men had seen when they went through the gates and filmed there. I, george p. Stevens, colonel, army of the United States, hereby certify that from the 1st of march, 1945, to the 8th of may, 1945, i was on active duty with the United States army corps. Both of the movies were shown at the trial themselves and since the defendants were, you know, were present, they were forced to watch these movies. By the accounts of people who were there, it was really a fascinating experience that at first they didnt understand that the crowd that the room was horrified by this. They were so infatuated with the footage of hitler that one of them said, you know, after this even the americans will want to join up. The films, in fact, had just the opposite of the impact that the german defendants had hoped. They so repelled and horrified the room that afterwards some of the defendants lawyers said they found it almost impossible to be in the same room with the people they were representing. By the time the second of the two films were shown as nuremberg, the defendants really understood that it was over for them. That the films had provided evidence that was more damning and more painful than any spoken testimony could be. Finally, George Stevens left the army in 1946. What was his post world war ii career like . Stevens post world war ii career was great. It did not include comedies because he felt incapable of making funny films after what he had seen. He became a very serious director who was hugely respected throughout the 1950s for movies like giant and a place in the sun and the diary of ann frank. The interesting thing was stevens felt that the closest thing he had made to a world war ii movie after the war was actually not a war movie but a western. It was shane. And shane was inspired because stevens when he was in post war germany was horrified to see little children running around in cowboy outfits shooting cap pistols. He wanted to make a movie that made audiences aware of what a bullet really did. What the impact of shooting someone really was and he said that in the movie, i believe the words he used was for our purposes in this movie, a single shot is a holocaust. And even today, shane stands as one of the most sober and painful westerns from that era. George stevens, one of the five directors featured in the new book out by mark harris titled five came back. Joining us from new york city, here on American History tv, thanks very much for being with us. Thank you. Youve been watching a special presentation of our reel america series. Join us every sunday at 4 00 p. M. 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