Watch Stunning Color Footage of Berlin Rebuilding After WWII

Just two months after the war, First Motion Picture Unit—the U.S. Army's film production unit—traveled around Europe to record the damage done by the war. Dubbed "Special Film Project 186," it was the last project of Owen Crump, a screenwriter experienced in propaganda and war movies. Thanks to Kodachrome color film in the crew's cameras, the whole thing was shot in vibrant color.

Courtesy of Chronos Media (produced coincidentally by Kronos Media), we can see the beginnings of Berlin's healing process. The tone of the film is somber, yet optimistic. You can see mothers pushing their baby carriages past the wreckage and young people forming assembly lines to clear out the rubble.

This video is only a snippet from the project; Crump and his crew shot hundreds of hours of film. The majority of the unused raw footage sits in archives.

Some of the mysterious film includes horrific scenes from the concentration camps and interviews with Nazi officials. Only a handful of people saw the footage from the camps, including Ronald Reagan and Technical Sergeant Malvin Wald, who described the experience: “Even though it was a summer day, Reagan came out shivering—we all did. We’d never seen anything like that.”