They shot 25,000 feet of film about 5 1 2 hours. They returned to the United States in september of 1915 and in november released a 108minute feature film on the firing line with the german. The film received positive reviews and screened widely in the United States despite the fact that it presented a favorable view of the germans. Up next learn about how the once lost film was rediscovered by the library of congress and then watch the film with commentary by two scholars. This program is about two hours. I at the moment am retired but i used to work at the library of congress. And while i was here among the fascinating things i found buried in the vaults, and theres a lot of stuff buried in the vaults here, is this film, on the firing line with the germans. And i looked at it and thought it was a fascinating bit of lost American History including the high mark maybe of the german army especially on the Eastern Front in 1915 as well as other stuff because it reflects very interestingly whats going on in the United States at that period where the United States was looking with great interest and some suspicion at this strange war in europe and wondering how much it wanted to get involved and how much it could stay out of it, whether in fact circumstances would allow it to. Im jim castallen, a retired scholar. I was looking into oswald, a correspondent during world war i. And i came across his bylines and i saw durborough had come back, made a film in 1915 and had praised schuti for getting world war pictures. Within three years he moved from the inquiriy philadelphia to the examiner in chicago and then offer an independent contract with the Newspaper Enterprise Association, and shortly was the best person they sent on difficult assignments like the mexican troubles. Anyway, in the background of my research for i was looking for durborough, just wanted to click on the film and witness what they were looking for on the east front. And durborough is a hard guy to research because he moved around a lot, changed careers a lot. And after about ten years while i was still working on other research, i came to a line and was going to write ancartical because i thought durborough was a fascinating fellow. And i was organizing notes and lo and behold, i read this fabulous article. I was really glad there was somebody else interested in this. And i contacted him and i said i brought total ignorance to the fact this was a lost film and nobody knew what the contact was. And you gave me the magic sauce, the magic key. And theres some copyright paper rolls from the original copyright filing with a few small images from the original film frame that enabled us to document the original content. And our with the help of our coauthor, found many lost pieces of film and then worked with the library of congress to encourage them to help them recreate it. Its been my job for the past 30 some years to take care of the nitrate film collection of the library of congress. And what that means are these of the fims made on nitrate film stock. And the reason its different is because nitrate tends to detearierate and even more importantly is highly flammable. So its not only important for us to maintain the films but the atmosphere theyre stored in, to give them a long life and keep them from growing up. My duties involve kind of ensuring the physical integrity of the collection, our handling and storage standards. I mainly concentrate on the safety side, have many other duties including maintaining circulating film loan program and also assignments on special projects such as durborough, whether its assisting in reconstruction or research into the projects. So on the firing line with the germans, where did that film originally come from . Why do we still have it . Its just one of those Amazing Things that just happens. From what i have learned, we akwoo ired the film several years ago from the son of one the original backers of the film. And he had found it in his fathers wine cellar. And there were 47 reels of film, and it was sent to the library and had been sitting on the shelf. And several attempts had been made over the years to try and put the film back together. But there was no paperwork, so it just kind of sat there. I would see this film sitting hon shelf there, oh, durborough, what the heck is this thing . So im so glad finally we were able to put it beback together because its one of those things that should not have survived. Theres no reason it should have survived. A wine cellar is not an environment for storing any type of film. So the fact it survived all these years probably with damp definitely damp, the amount of water damage. How do we get to the point it sitting in storage to now its restored and available for the public to view . I think the library had always at least people in the library had always wanted to see this film put back together. I know cooper had always been interested in. From my voipt of a film just needing to be put together, a always had an interest in it. I never thought id actually get to see it put back together. But when the script was put together by james and cooper and presented to us, thats when the time came. Plus the time had come where we were able to do high enough level scanning of these film reels that they could be edited together digitally rather than trying to make a film copy and try to edit it that way. Because there was such a huge volume of material, the cost would have been astronomical to make film presents of all these different pieces. But using it digitally, it was much easier interest us to electronically put things in their place and try this, oh, heres a better version, and we use this shot and part of that shot. So without digital technology, i dont think this would have happened. And i think it was about two years all together. Thats just the physical putting it together. That doesnt include all the prework. So it takes a lot of time and effort to do Something Like this. Whats the value in it for the American Public . Why is it worth it from your point of view . I would like to say one of my Guiding Principles i first saw it on the wall in an air force museum, and i always thought its important for us to then make this stuff available for people to see so we learn from it. Whether we actually do learn from it, thats not my problem. But i want to make sure i do my part for people to see this other part of history that is not in the books. Whether it be this film or a film about dairy work, a film about laundry, newsreels. So many newsreels or lost, but there are so many interesting stories in the newsreels. Just to see what we did, how we walked, we talked. Just so we dont forget. Because our society now is so diz posable. Were getting to it point now it almost seems like people are disposable. Its really sad. But i want to make sure all of that, as much as we can carry, is still there. I think particularly to the refugee sequences, really reinforce this circle of history repeating itself. Were looking at these different scenes of the refugees, and going home at night and watching the news and reading the paper with refugees. Again, different refugees from a different part of the world, but nonetheless this human effect of political actions, the cause that the regular populous was having to endure and figure out ways to deal with, this has repeated itself. And almost 100 years to the day we were looking at the same scenes we were seeing on the news every night. That was really shocking. This is durboroughs film. Youll see in the first film segment he rarely missed an opportunity for selfpromotion. He allowed energy and only came about because of his initiative. The nea asked him to go abroad. He was their top photo journalist. Whats the nea . The Newspaper Enterprise Association. And there he is. I think you can already sense a kind of high charge certain tension about him. Ries looked a little bewildered but game. Also with a cigar. Both guys had a cigar habit. But he looks affable. Here they are in the streets of chicago enjoying a close up. And this really documented his trip to europe, durboroughs trib to europe. So how did this trip come about . Who funded it . Durborough was turned down by the Newspaper Enterprise Association to pay for the film. But he was given permission to moonlight, and as long as he paid for any of the extra costs and he actually met some chicago businessman and convinced them to fund it. And then went about purchasing the cameras and the equipment. And here he is going abroad. This is about the time the luci tainia was sunk. So submarines were on everybodys mind. And here is the famous stuts. This was a lamborghini of its time, a wonderful car. Still very much in demand. One just sold in california i think for 595,000. And durboroughs personality, it had yeah, its a hot car. But i think he realized the film and the car would help him get access to the individuals he wanted to film and interview. As i said, he was very good at projecting his persona and had a definite flamboyance to it. So was world war i a really big news item in newspapers at the time in the United States . It was. Obviously, the official position of wilson was nutrality. We had a tendency since washingtons time to stay out of foreign affairs, at least European Affairs which almost always seemed to be totally mixed up. And there was concern about trying to get involved by several different groups of citizenry. What are we seeing here . This is ambassador gerard. He turned out to be very probritish. A controversial figure. President wilson didnt much like him. He did a good job getting us out of germany once we entered the war. The ambassadors were willing to give input, eisen years and also to input whatever wilson told him. After can i seer left germany and went to holland prince max was the first leader who setup the republic, for which a lot of people in germany never for gave him. But he was a good fellow, i think. Why would durborough not cover the war from the germans side . I wouldnt say everybody in the midwest was progerman, but there were a lot of germans, lot of scandinavians, a large irish voice in chicago and some of the big cities out there, milwaukee. And so the feeling in the midwest was very different than on the east coast which tended to be much more proallied. And i think one of the reasons that durborough got funding was that the germans could get the german side of their story told. Because they didnt feel like the New York Times and so on and so forth was doing much for them. And german propaganda wasnt much either. Already in the time less than seven months into the war there were already several numbers of casualties, blind soliers and amputees and whatnot. Youll see some of that in the films here. There was a home setup for the blind. She became very famous. She was married to a very famous architect. She was originally italian and italy had just entered the war on the allied side. But nevertheless she did notable work for the german wounded. And her blendenhime was turned over after the war. Here is the first woman on the faculty of the netherlands, here three extremely powerful women. Its funny as jim said, that shot you just saw is probably the most famous shot thats come out of this reconstruction. So jane adam, who was she briefly . Jane adams edith jane adams ran a house for european immigrants to help get ind grated into our society. And he did a large amount of effort in the Peace Movement obviously. Her reputation was so important she was invited to be the cochair of the peace conference the women organized. This was visiting day at a hospital . This is very interesting stuff. Again, this sort of shows the dark side thats becoming more and more effect, i think, in this period. As i say in the summer of 1915. This is not frivolous footage. And interestingly, cigarettes became much more prominent in the trenches, obviously. I guess they couldnt drink in the trenches, so i think smoking became more popular. But i guess premade cigarettes really grew in popularity among the army. Why do you think they decided to film these things or how did that happen . I dont know. You could put durborough down as kind of a frivolous guy whos going for the main chance, but some of the footage in this film like this, soldier died after a picture like this, youve got to think he was aware of the tragic side of this. He wanted to capture the civilian perspective and show it just as he could see in the film lens. Theres an interesting little shot the other thing is in a way its a god send that durborough couldnt travel to the front and was stuck in berlin, stuck, quote, unquote, and got these incredible shots of berlin in wartime, i think. Hes got this nice little portrait of a city thats beginning to suffer. And he wouldnt have gotten that if hed gone off to some battlefield. In the beginning the correspondents actually would go out to the front on their own officially they should have gotten permission and theyd go out on their own to it front and connect out there. This is rather famous. This was shot at workshop of a professor who became very famous for working on prosthetic devices for soldiers. And you can see the same shot almost in the Scientific American and three or four newspapers in the United States. Same guy, same workshop. And evidently he was very famous. Durborough was a horseman as i said, and youll see a bit of emphasis on the horse activities in the opportunities for film. Did he go into this project with a plan about what would happen with this film when he got back . No, i dont think so. I think he just wanted to record his trip, get enough good footage that it would be able to be shown in the theaters around the United States as a profit maker, essentially. But also i think to drum up some sympathy for germany, which was already unsuccessful largely in its propaganda. But he did i dont think the syndicate had that as the motive. It was just that, obviously, there was a Large Population or a market for showing the german situation. Thats true. That is true, of course. I mean they werent progerman or brits. You could argue about wilson or whatever, but they were businessman. They wanted to make money. Durborough wanted to make his name, to get out front of the camera. I should mention that hes in 25 of the film scenes here. The second most scene item is the stuts, which is in 10 of the film scenes. Ill mention this, the germans liked to take camera to the german camps. It was a safe trip. The germans liked to do it because they had a lot of control about what the correspondents saw and what they didnt see, and no one was likely to get hurt. And also it gave the germans a chance to show they were treating the prisoners well, getting them enough to eat. Some like these shots, there may be an element of paraied in them, but these guys do seem happy enough in some ways. And theyre probably very happy not to be in the trench. And obviously they did it in a place of time where they put their best foot forward. To be fair he did watch over for the allied prisoner war camp wheres, and he did credit for improving the conditions at some, which were pretty bad, later on. Do you know if these camps were close to berlin or were they the durbwits camp was very close to berlin. It was put there it was a major army field, training field. And as i say, i dont know. Its hard to know if the prisoners are trying to make the germans happy. But it looked tame like theyre happy to be warm and dry. Youll see later on in warsaw and here, film was like a new commodity. Getting featured and filmed, it was a novel experience. So i think that was the thing that stimilated everybody to want to get in front of the camera. And maybe it was a way from somebody from your family might see the footage and say oh, hes all right. Things were so pretty rudimentary especially for the russians. The recruited prisoners to help repair the roads and also the farms. The ones without the tools were going to the farms, which already had tools. The ones with the shovels and stuff were going to fix the roofs. These look like british. You sort of get the impression that there are many journalists going around with them, or was this almost like a media tour in some cases or yeah, well, these trips to prison camps were generally more than one correspondent. They get a bus or maybe take ten people. So itd be a group trip. They control them pretty well. Youll see in a bit, waiting to go to the front, theyre in uniforms. Initially they didnt have uniforms, they didnt have good control. And they arrested many journalists who didnt have permission who went on their own, walked around on their own and were almost shot as spies. So they decided from then on they would give them official uniforms so they could be recognized and also escorted from berlin by an officer. What do we see here . A band is leading the soldiers from berlin out to the train station to go to the front. Thats the brandonberg guilty behind and also one of the most Famous Hotels is right about a block in one direction to the left here, i think. So actually durborough could have popped out of his hotel and just shot in front of his hotel. But whether these guys are headed east or west, i couldnt tell you. Well, they were coming from the garden area, so they were heading east. Well, in this war the germans looked rather happy, so what was the situation . They werent thrilled. Again, one of the reasons for this film is there was a huge drive in the summer of 1915, starting about may, as a matter of fact some of these guys may be part of the people heading towards the battlefront, which was designed to chuck the russian army out of poland. There was a wing from the south going with austrian troops and german troops. And then there was a northern wing which was headed to warsaw. So the germans, i think, were very happy with the situation as they envisioned it in the summer. And one of the reasons that durborough might have been invited to do this is because they wanted witnesses and they wanted it film. Evidently this is durboroughs footage, but its extremely privileged. You didnt go up and start shooting the royal family at 20 paces. So how he got this or whether he got some film from somebody else, i dont know im pretty sure he got access in the castle, and they set it up so hed be able to film this impressive ceremony. Impressive, indeed. We are seeing the royal family who thats the kaiser. This was a review for the kaiser