German Concentration Camp Factual Survey

Even before the end of WWII in Europe, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force’s Psychological Warfare Division ordered at the behest of Sidney Bernstein the production of a documentary about the concentration camps, to show the German people the atrocities they were responsible for. Material was collected from Soviet, American and British sources, a treatment written (with some advice from Alfred Hitchcock), the editing process started – till September 9th, when the production was stopped after a rough-cut screening.

At that point, two other films using partly the same material had been finished: Nazi Concentration Camps by George Stevens, presented as evidence at the first Nuremberg Trial, and Death Mills by Hanuš Burger (supervisor: Billy Wilder), screened to the German public starting January 1946. With German Concentration Camp Factual Survey, the Imperial War Museum has attempted to create a version of the project that comes as close as possible to its original form and intent.