Berlin in July 1945 (HD 1080p color footage)

[Quixote1818]

Be sure to see the last couple of minutes. Mind-blowing!

[doc03]

1. Total devastation, it is amazing how they were able to build it back. nt

[BarbD]

5. Building it back took the Marshall Plan for one thing.

Germany could not have done it alone.

[Oldem]

6. Berlin would have starved

without the Berlin air lift. That's one of the biggest humanitarian efforts of my lifetime--and one of the most improbable, given who we were helping. I have to wonder: If such a disaster happened again, would we be capable of helping our erstwhile enemies to such an extent

[halfulglas]

10. The Marshall Plan is best demonstration of soft power.

If the defeated Axis powers didn't receive a lot of help they would have been failed states and fallen prey to totalitarianism for decades. There was plenty of opposition to it in the US saying we suffered too and we should help our own people first, but the result has been a vibrant and prosperous Europe with their own brand of democracies. What so many America Firsters don't get is that we get plenty from helping other countries stand on their feet by having markets for our goods. Ytumpists want American arms and aviation sales abroad.

[BarbD]

2. The civilian cost of war.

There is a reason that death and destruction are linked together as its opposite, peace and prosperity.

[tblue37]

3. War really is hell.

[Mr.Bill]

4. The end result

of Fascism.

[dhol82]

7. And the reason why we were able to have a golden age from 1945 to around 1965.

There was virtually no competition from anywhere in the world. We were the only power that had not been devastated by destruction.

[Karadeniz]

8. We were in Berlin before the wall came down. Unter den linden was an ugly street with stores

Showing off out of date clothes. Buildings hadn't been repaired. But the thing that floored me was in a park the tour bus had gone to for a minimalist snack. I walked outside to the woods and the silence was huge, everywhere. Then it hit me: no birds! No chirps, no wings darting around, empty woods. That stunned me more than anything else and the only thing I could think was that even the birds had left East Berlin for the west.

[Nitram]

9. Tokyo was far more devastated due to a colossal fire bombing.

Conventional bombs reduced buildings to tinder and fire bombing turned the city into an inferno. Dresden experienced something similar. More lives were lost than in the atomic bomb attacks.

[hatrack]

11. At the six-minute mark, that's Goebbels asking the crowd: "Do you want total war?!!??"

"JAAAAA!!!!!"

OK, then.

[hatrack]

12. Fascinating - thank you!!

.