"THE RETURN" "This film was made by the American Information Services in collaboration with the American Army and with the help of former French prisoners." "Each worksite is hard labour, each worker, a slave, each soldier, a vicious warder." "This was Germany yesterday." "A vast prison at the heart of Europe, an immense dungeon towards which the Gestapo herded its millions of victims." "The Third Reich exploited and abused 6 million POWs and 15 million forced labourers and opponents of Hitler, condemned to a slow death in the camps, or to torture, the gas chambers or the firing squad." "But the Nazis also had to humiliate." "If just one prisoner retained any pride, if just one defied them, then their victory was incomplete." "The Germans sought to debase the soul after crushing the body." "And if they couldn't:" "Death." "Of the political deportees only one tenth survived." "Even though death stalked them, nothing could prevent the deportees hearing, far off, a rumour of hope." "The sound of battle drew near, the Allies' guns spoke of vengeance, freedom approached the captives." "It was a strange war for the Allied Forces." "On the other side of the lines they attacked, there were nearly as many brothers as there were enemy forces." "With each shot, they felt the joy of striking the foe and the fear of hitting a friend." "As they advanced, their reward came to meet them:" "German soldiers raising their arms in surrender." "But at times the prisoners captured their own gaolers, with weapons seized at the same time as their freedom." "To these men, victory meant not only deliverance, but restored pride." "Slaves now became fighters, like these prisoners, who, with 33 rifles, took Villingen:" "23,000 inhabitants and a barracks." "If ever soldiers knew what they were fighting for, it was these, giving freedom and honour back to their brothers." "We welcome our liberators" "The Germans were defeated, but Death wasn't." "The Nazis had promised it thousands more victims." "For example, there was a German doctor in Belsen, under whose reign 3,000 people a day died." "After the camp was liberated this figure slowly fell, to 800, then 400, then 200..." "Physiological exhaustion, wounds and injuries, dysentery, typhoid and what one doctor called "Buchenwalditis", a purulent infection which led to a swift death." "All this had to be defeated, too." "For the doctors this was by no means an easy task." "But each new smile on a skeletal face announced the greatest of victories, that of Life." "The freed captives began the long march home." "In their kitbags they stuffed their meagre possessions, old clothes, jumpers, bundles of old letters, whittled walking sticks, and off they set!" "They knew the route home, learning it by heart during their fevered preparations." "It was a route some had already nervously taken at night, until bad luck led them into the path of an SS patrol and they retraced their steps back to reprisals at the camp." "They set off with a determined, sprightly step, but German roads are long." "Prisoners of five years had little muscle on them." "Their bellies were shrunken, their legs no match for the road." "Their pauses were longer than they should have been, they walked with a heavy tread, more and more slowly." "The campsites by the road, with hundreds of cooking fires, swelled with the crippled, the sick and the lame." "Advancing columns struggled to get through the returning crowds." "The troops at the front waited anxiously for reinforcements." "The health of the new nomads was at risk, and victory was held up by the chaos on the roads." "So the Allies intervened, giving orders for the creation of provisional repatriation centres, set up in requisitioned barracks, factories and houses." "The Wehrmacht's stocks fed the starving." "The wanderers designated representatives for each nationality and interpreters, who collaborated with combatant officers, suddenly transformed into administrators." "They had to appease rivalries, prevent quarrels, distribute food and blankets, care for the sick, find milk for the children..." "When you're trained as an infantry captain, or a gunner, it's strange suddenly to find yourself in charge of thousands of people from all over Europe." "In the centres, the liberated learnt that their new freedom entailed new responsibilities." "They chose representatives for organising the camp." "First of all, they carefully had to sift out the handful of wretches who tried to melt into the crowds in order to return home and carry on their evil work." "These denouncers, Gestapo agents and traitors were unmasked by the very people they themselves had sold." "By the Elbe and Moldau, the Americans and Russians finally met." "On the banks of the rivers, those heading back to Russia, or the territories freed by the Russians, set up camp." "It was a swarming Tower of Babel made of rabbit cages, campfires, huts and improvised tents." "It called to mind Gypsy camps, slums and shanty towns." "A slum, yes, but one filled with hope." "American and Russian military commissions organised the huge migration, which flowed both ways over the pontoon bridges." "For several weeks tens of thousands were repatriated, crossing the rivers in both directions, including 292,000 Frenchmen liberated by the Russians." "This dance of freedom took home" " a home that was, alas, often destroyed - 2,400,000 Russians," "1,500,000 Poles, 330,000 Czechs," "1,750,000 natives of the Baltic countries, and 600,000 from central Europe." "Going the other way were 2,100,000 French, 570,000 Belgians," "400,000 Dutch, 420,000 Italians, going home to tackle the hard task of rebuilding their countries." "For days on end, endless columns took their turn to cross the bridges, columns of men who were henceforth free." "One column walking to the East, the other walking to the West." "But for them all it was the same route, the route leading home, the route back to freedom." "On the riverbank, military security officers set up their offices." "In this human tide, wretches tried to slip through unnoticed, traitors mixing with the innocent, torturers with the tortured, denouncers with the denounced." "A sharp eye was called for, the ability to spot, in these papers that spilled onto the table, in a shifty glance, in the vagueness of a reply, the presence of a traitor, to discern among all the good grain the poisonous weed." "The face of an enemy is similar to any other, the look of a traitor is similar to anyone else's, the bloodstained hand is similar to anyone's." "But one word can make a face turn pale, one word can cause the eyes to drop, the hand to shake." "Two suspects are caught." "They confess." "They're no longer in a position to do any harm." "To destroy Gestapo agents, torturers, LVF volunteers and collaborators, military security officers were used." "But to destroy this other vermin, which spread not Nazism but epidemics, which didn't bring death in the form of torture and shootings, but killed just as effectively in the form or typhoid and cholera," "DDT powder was used." "Thanks to this disinfectant, no epidemics broke out." "Victory required engineering:" "Bridge-builders, navvies, railwaymen and their trains." "Carriages which took shells and guns to the front, returned with the greatest prize of victory:" "The liberated." "For every ton of ammunition taken to the front, a thousand living men were brought back from Germany." "Back in the old days of peace, trains were for pleasure." "These trains, taking free men back to a life from which they'd been snatched, these trains rattling back home were trains of joy." "But for many the route home would be via the skies." "What captive has not watched clouds driven by the wind and the birds in the sky, while dreaming of following them?" "It's a dream which the American Transport Command and the Royal Air Force made come true." "On 10th April 1945 took place the greatest ever mass transport of human beings in the history of aviation." "Months of waiting." "Waiting is a soldier's life, waiting while hearing a Feldwebel's barked order, falling asleep 1,800 times and whispering, "Tomorrow!"" "The interminable wait came to an end on the runway." ""Now it's over!"" "And the final wait, eyes turned skywards, would be over in three hours, three hours on the wing, from the Germany of prison camps to the France of sweet dreams." "The French, full of Gallic cheer." "The English, some imprisoned since Dunkirk, but all seeming to march as if on parade at Buckingham Palace." "The Belgians, for the last time in columns of three, set off towards the aeroplanes." "For each departure, the 1,500 C47 cargo planes on repatriation duty took 26 freed men on their metal benches, which made them seem like sky-borne trams." "From 10th April to 10th May, 99,000 French were thus repatriated." "On 13th May alone, 10,900 landed in Paris." "In ten days, from 10th to 20th May, 73,000 Frenchmen crossed, at an altitude of 2,000 metres, the frontier of the Reich on their way home." "Sometimes in life too many things happen at once." "To fly for the first time, and for that to be towards freedom, is a lot." "They'd remember this forever, especially when the pilot passed a note saying, "We're over France."" "As a treat, he flew lower." ""The roofs of France!" cried a roofer as he spotted the tiles." "As they recognised the signposts, the cars, the farmyards, the mosaic of the fields, they knew this land unfurling beneath them was their homeland." "Their next steps would be on home soil." "At Le Bourget, Paris, the deportees and prisoners felt surrounded by affection." "They came down the metal ladder, a little shakily, dazzled by the light, the sudden absence of engine noise, the murmuring of the waiting crowd." "They had five years' homesickness." "It was hard, too, to come home." "But over each one of them, even the worst off, over the stretcher of a deportee whose brothers died in Germany, a face smiled down on behalf of the whole of France." "All those returning home and all those welcoming them thought," ""Never again!" ""We must remain vigilant." ""All this suffering must not have been in vain."" "France held out its arms to the repatriated." "In the street, as the buses passed on their way from the airport, the local people, as in so many areas, had spontaneously organised collections and auction sales." "With the profits, they provided 140,000 sandwiches, 500 kilos of cakes and 15,000 litres of French wine, which they hadn't drunk for 5 years." "The first glasses go to the head, but when it's offered so kindly and gently, it also goes to the heart." "Throughout the spring, at Orsay station, transformed into a welcoming centre, trucks and buses arrived from stations and airports." "A medical examination, food, medical treatment, a shower and a sleep prepared the men for the last stage, which would take them home to their town or village." "The interminable journey, testing their patience and fortitude, was now ending for those who managed it." "To reach this point meant lots of sacrifice and ruin, lots of suffering and death." "The day finally came, but at such a high price." "Free men, combatants, it was for this moment that you fought, that you shed blood, that you won." "This is your victory." "Subtitles by Howard Bonsor" "Subtitling by TVS" " TITRA FILM"