Reichsarbeitsdienst (Labor Service)

Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe. Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD): Young men working and training. Boots lined up in a row. Digging ditches, mountains in BG, stop to exercise in unison. Working as train passes in BG. Seated on ground, eating from mess kits, resting. HAS camp, running into lake to swim. HAS barracks, men lined up. Marching in uniform with spades. Man with swastika armband takes photograph. Men exercise with logs. [White screen from 00:05:31 to 00:05:46, then footage repeats men resting, eating, marching until 00:06:37] Bare-chested men sit outdoors with instructor, Politische Weltkarte map. Men swimming, throwing poles. Men exercising in fields in unison. Location is the Bavarian Alps.