War and Peace Britain on Film

In Britain, two kinds of machine carried the deterrent.

One of them is this, the Vulcan bomber.

In a demonstration shown to the Prime Minister,

it took four big Victor jet bombers less than five minutes

from the alarm until the last bomber was away.

These bombers form part of the celebrated

V-force of Valiants, Vulcans and Victors.

All capable of carrying the deterrent and launching it

if ever the fatal signal was given.

The Look At Life cameras were not allowed to see the thing this

plane is designed to carry somewhere inside that mighty triangle.

We only know it can destroy as much in one explosion as the entire

Allied air forces accomplished in the six years of the Second World War.

These marchers on London from Aldermaston are concerned

with the biggest issue in the world today.

Whatever the pros and cons of banning the hydrogen bomb may be,

there is a protest that has brought together people from widely different spheres.

Students and teachers, workers and bosses, the artists

and the artless, wise heads and eggheads walking the same road.

They may regard themselves as forerunners of what is to come - the uniting of humanity itself.

But, in the meantime, humanity itself is divided about the safest way to get there.

Half a city, 100 miles behind the Iron Curtain.

Half a city the West rebuilt in the heart of Communist East Germany.

The last outpost of Western democracy on the road to Moscow.

The Kurfurstendamm is the Bond Street and Piccadilly of West Berlin.

But as you travel east along it, the shops and bars get fewer

and the noticeboards go up.

Everything stops at the border with East Berlin.

Frontier Police check cars on both sides of the border.

The East German People's Police are on the alert.

This bridge marks another part of the border.

And on the other side Communist slogans are evident.

A bear is the coat of arms of the West Berliners.

They enjoy their days out at the zoo or in the park.

The nearness of the slogans

and the red flags doesn't stop the fountains playing.

And here is the memorial to the men who lost their lives building

the biggest air bridge of all time. That was 10 years ago.

The Russians closed the roads into West Berlin

and 2,250,000 people were fed, fuelled and clothed from the air.

This year, Earl Attlee, Mayor Brandt, the generals

and the politicians laid wreaths at the 10th anniversary ceremony.

Today, the roads are open again.

Under the watchful eye of the guards, the traffic flows freely.

But the city stays divided. Beyond the Brandenburg Gate is East Berlin.

And, on the border, is the Russian war memorial where armed red

soldiers maintain a 24-hour patrol.

Over the border go the West Berliners to spend their much

more valuable West German marks.

And the West Berlin police make a polite

but thorough search of every car.

East Berlin's Piccadilly is the Stalinallee with its huge

blocks of flats, offices and state-owned department stores.

Here too are slogans and propaganda posters.

This one says, "Sweep away NATO. Make West Berlin clean."

In East Berlin is the cemetery in the War Memorial Park

of 6,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the battle for Berlin.

The statues were moulded in Moscow.

The Soviet Union sends more tourists to East Germany than any

other country, says the official handout.

And some of the sites must be familiar to them.

Functional blocks of flats on the Moscow pattern. A lot of them.

But much of East Berlin has still to be rebuilt.

Walk up the steps of any East Berlin tube station near the border

and you're back with war damage as it was in 1945.

But the biggest human hangover of the war is the endless

stream of refugees. 10,000 a year.

Walking, riding, hiding their way from East Germany to the West.

How long will this stream go on?

East German troops

and police closed the border to stop the flow of refugees.

Armoured cars are brought out under the cover of night to block

the Brandenburg Gate.

Barbed wire fences were rushed up.

East German police were heavily reinforced.

But all this was only a stunt.

Within a few days, walls of cement blocks were being

built across every street leading from East to West Berlin.

Where West Berlin joins the Soviet zone of Germany,

the border takes no account of jobs, homes or families.

Here in the British sector, it runs down the middle of the street.

On the right is West Berlin.

The grass grown roadway on the left is in the Soviet zone.

The British patrols must not cross the middle of the road.

People living in the houses on the right look across the road

at their neighbours and that's all they can do.

They can't visit them, they can't telephone them,

for the houses on the East side are fenced in with wire.

And the phones to the West are cut off.

And when the road turns to go into the Soviet zone, it is blocked.

Like this.

Behind the wire, the East German police, armed with Tommy guns,

looking out from watchtowers, hiding in bushes, reporting every move.

But the British, American and French troops live in constant readiness

though Berliners do not see the exercises which, in the British sector,

take place in the heart of the Berlin forest.

Here, United States helicopters cooperate with British infantry and

tanks in mock battles to keep men and machines at the peak of fitness.

At the Potsdamer Platz, once one of Berlin's biggest squares,

the wall is fortified with barbed wire.

Behind it, steel girders embedded in concrete form a tank track.

British soldiers keep watch on East German police.

The police watch the British soldiers.

When the wall was first built, angry West Berliners used to flock

to the Brandenburg Gate but, today, they are forbidden to approach it.

Only tourists from other countries and the patrolling British

scout cars are allowed within 100 yards of it.

These sightless windows look down on Bernauer Strasse in the French sector.

The street of crosses.

Each cross marks the spot where a man or woman has

died in a desperate leap for freedom.

Many more have been shot on the eastern side of the wall

while trying to escape.

Yet hundreds have managed to tunnel under the wall or climb over it

or get through the wire.

Among them are about 700 East German police and soldiers.

Erected in an attempt to divide a people,

the wall today stands as a symbol never intended by its builders.

A symbol of the triumph of the spirit of man.

A high-speed armed patrol boat of the Federal German Border Police

sets out on a regular mission.

She's patrolling an invisible line which runs out into the Baltic Sea.

The start of the demarcation line between West Germany

and the Communist-controlled East.

Night and day of ceaseless watches kept

all along the border by the West German force of more than 15,000 men.

Trained to detect any changes in what has now become a formidable barrier.

It began as a simple barbed wire fence.

But now, as it runs through forests and plains, hills and valleys,

it is often more of a military fortification in a zone three miles deep.

In the border police headquarters, there are models of the new barriers.

And here's the real thing running across the back

garden of a house which is just inside West Germany.

Down past the washing on the line goes the border guards to keep

an eye on what is happening on the other side

were 52,000 men of the so-called

Border Command Of The People's Army Of East Germany keep watch on the West.

To the wire fences have been added a ditch,

a mine belt and a wide strip of land ploughed to show

footprints of anybody trying to escape to the West.

In the woods are East German patrols.

Behind the river are barricades and, always, the observation towers.

More than 500 of them have been built along the border.

Photos are taken constantly of people looking across the border.

Somewhere, no doubt, they are classified and indexed.

As the people go about the streets on their daily work,

they know they are being watched, always.

The Iron Curtain dividing Germany joins the Czech frontier

near the town of Hof.

Roads leading out of it to the east come to an abrupt end.

Minefields bar the way.

On the Czechoslovakian frontier, things look much the same.

German farmers work the land almost up to the dividing line.

But, here, the wire fences are electrified with

a force of 5,000 volts.

Between Czechoslovakia

and Austria, the traffic goes through recognised frontier posts.

Like other Iron Curtain countries,

Czechoslovakia is trying to attract more tourists from the West.

But the restrictions on Czechs going abroad are still severe.

Ever since it went behind the Iron Curtain, Hungary has been

a closed book to most of the Western world.

But, slowly, it is opening up again.

Here in Budapest, 26 countries - Britain among them -

are showing their wares at the annual trade fair,

competing for a slice of a new market.

40 British firms are represented here.

Knitting machines are among a wide range of industrial goods.

So is lighting equipment for cinema and television.

But none of these is bought on the spot.

It is an opportunity to show ordinary Hungarians

the quality of the goods Britain makes.

Buying is done by a state purchasing agency.

The idea is that Hungarian technicians will be sufficiently interested to come to Britain

and see goods, such as this copying machine, being produced.

Out of such visits business will result.

For years, Hungarians did most of their trade with other Iron Curtain countries.

But Hungary is changing.

Today, like other countries behind the Iron Curtain,

she is looking for new ties through trade with Western Europe.

For the first time, Look At Life brings to the cinema screen

a series of four films on life in Russia today.

Special permission was given to travel the Soviet Union far

and wide to meet people in their homes, at work and at play.

It must be something of a shock for many to

stand in a Leningrad Street or a Moscow market and see, what? Angels?

Bogeymen? Or people like themselves?

For, to everyone outside it,

the Soviet Union is not only a state but a state of mind.

At one extreme they talk about a workers' paradise

and at the other about the Communist menace.

But everyone reacts to the word Russia.

This is the time of celebration.

The 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Giant dams and housing projects are a measure of the present

but the past is not forgotten.

Untold millions being spent on lovingly restoring

the masterworks of the Russian past, particularly the fine churches,

many of which are still functioning.

The Soviets love the biggest and best

and here in Moscow is the world's biggest hotel.

In the middle of the city, a giant swimming pool.

No need to detail the achievements of Soviet sportsmen.

Or to dwell on the frightening military might of a superpower.

Perhaps a greater achievement still is

the transformation of a semiliterate peasant people

into one of the most advanced technological nations on Earth.

Nothing unusual about this iron shot except that it was

played behind the Iron Curtain.

To Communists, golf is a bourgeois game.

There are no courses in Russia.

But this is not Russia, it is Czechoslovakia.

Whatever the outcome was to be in the events of 1968,

the Czechs in that summer were enjoying their new freedom.

Jazz, folk and pop were all the rage.

Students could and did discuss anything openly.

Censorship had been abolished in the press, radio and television.

An astonishing thing to find in a Communist capital...flower people.

As everywhere, most adults disapproved

but the point was nobody stopped them.

Life in Prague had become pleasant and carefree

but freedoms are hard-won, easy-lost.

Czechoslovakia is strangely placed. Hemmed in by six countries.

All of them, especially Russia,

deeply concerned with the changing pattern of Czech life.

But Czechs are no strangers to change and upheaval.

They've been around a long time, as this ancient

and beautiful city of Prague goes to show.

But idyllic scenes like this,

although fine for the tourists, are a headache for those striving

to improve Czechoslovakia's economic status.

The same people who instigated the reforms.

At the head, Mr Dubcek, the party secretary

whose pursuit of a middle path won the applause of the majority.

With him, Mr Cernik, the Prime Minister.

Both seeking to lead the country along paths of social

and economic reform whilst preserving the one-party system

and the firm alliances that exist with the Soviet Bloc.

Subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing by Red Bee Media Ltd