ABSTRACT
A detailed analysis of the 33 newsreels Welt im Film issued in 1945 reveals a more or less clear break after August, marked by several events of that month: the capitulation of Japan, the East-West tensions following the Potsdam Conference and the fact that the British definitely entered the production team. However, the reports on the Potsdam Conference in the issues of 17 and 24 August can hardly gloss over the increasing East-West tensions by the declaration, that ‘the conference was dominated by the will that the unity and fellowship lasting all the long years of the war must serve the aims of peace. News of the Germans’ ‘unconditional surrender’ was doubtless the common central message of the Allies for Occupied Germany in the ‘zero hour’. British and Americans scarcely mentioned the French zone in their newsreel and likewise the French tended to ignore the British and Americans in theirs.
