The Battle of Russia (1943). US War Department, Special Services Division. Held by the Internet Archive; public domain.
The Battle of Russia
The longest of the seven: seven centuries of invasion, then Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, assembled largely from Soviet combat footage.
- Year
- 1943
- Made by
- US War Department, Special Services Division
- Directed by
- Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak
- Free to use because
- A work of the United States government — no copyright, anywhere
The note
The Battle of Russia is the outlier — twice the length of the others, built on Soviet material, and warm about a partner that American policy would spend the next decade opposing. That is exactly what makes it worth hearing now: it is a document of the alliance as it sounded at its height, before the argument changed. The Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky in the score carry long stretches with no narration at all. Federal work, no copyright.
The Battle of Russia, 1943. US War Department, Special Services Division. Directed by Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak. This is the film’s soundtrack: narration, score and location sound, streamed from the Internet Archive’s master. No picture — the audio is the work. A work of the United States government, and therefore free of copyright anywhere it is used.
The soundtrack