Death Mills (1945)

Death Mills (or Die Todesmühlen) is a 1945 American film directed by Billy Wilder and produced by the United States Department of War. The film was intended for German audiences to educate them about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. For the German version, Die Todesmühlen, Hanus Burger is credited as the writer and director, while Wilder supervised the editing. Wilder is credited with directing the English-language version.

The film is a much-abbreviated version of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, a 1945 British government documentary that was not completed until nearly seven decades later.

The German language version of the film was shown in the US sector of West Germany in January 1946.

Synopsis

The film opens with a note that the following is "a reminder that behind the curtain of Nazi pageants and parades was millions of men, women and children who were tortured to death - the greatest mass murder in human history," then fades into German civilians at Gardelegen carrying crosses to the local concentration camp.