The Iron Fortress

Le Quang Vinh, a revolutionary student leader, was arrested in Saigon in August 1961. A show trial and death sentence followed. World-wide protests altered it to “life imprisonment” on Con Son, the Devil’s Island. The humiliating “Tiger-Cages” and the methods of torture are shown.

Stories from the first summer after the end of the war in Vietnam

Interviews with former generals of the South Vietnamese Army in the Quang Trung re-education camp, shortly after the end of the Vietnam War.

The President Dr. Walter Becher, officially the spokesman for the Sudeten German Homeland Association, called out the old flags, as he does every year.

The goal of the American operation "Phoenix" in Vietnam was to destroy all the bases of the liberation struggle. K. Barton Osborn, a former "Phoenix" officer, who publicly disassociated himself from it, talks about his experiences as a CIA agent. They are confirmed by the statements of General Bui Van Nhu, the last chief of the South Vietnamese police

Moy de Tohá and Isabel Letelier tell their story. They are the widows of two Defence Ministers of the Unidad Popular, who knew too much.

The Khmer word “angkar” signifies “organization”. The angkar of the Pol-Pot regime acted upon their own, unwritten laws. Records were discovered in the central interrogation and extermination camp “S21”, the former high school Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh that document the death of 20.000 people.

At the parliamentary elections that the Unidad Popular won, there were activities to overthrow Salvador Allende. By a white, supposedly clean coup, the rightwing powers of Chile tried unsuccessfully to gain a two thirds majority in the national congress. Months later, the armed, violent coup took place.

In the spring of 1974, a camera team from Studio H&S succeeded against the explicit orders of the Junta’s Chancellery, entered into two large concentration camps in the north of the country - Chacabuco and Pisagua - leaving with filmed sequences and sound recordings.

Le Quang Vinh, a revolutionary student leader, was arrested in Saigon in August 1961. A show trial and death sentence followed. World-wide protests altered it to “life imprisonment” on Con Son, the Devil’s Island. The humiliating “Tiger-Cages” and the methods of torture are shown.

Posing as West German journalists, East German documentary filmmakers Heynowski and Scheumann pay a visit to the notorious Nazi-turned-mercenary Siegfried “Kongo” Müller, pump him with booze, and get him to talk about his life and war campaigns in Africa.

Produced by DEFA and broadcast in four parts in 1968, this documentary series consists of extended interviews with ten United States Air Force and Navy pilots captured during bombing missions over North Vietnam. Filmed at Hỏa Lò Prison in Hanoi, the films focus on the pilots’ backgrounds, military service, and views on the bombing campaign and the war.

The epilogue to the film "The Laughing Man" (1966), which alternates between objectivity and anger, exposes the involvement of the West German mercenary Siegfried Müller in the war against the Congolese government Lumumba. In the sequel, new witnesses against Major Müller have their say, including a former school friend and a French paratrooper colonel. GDR lawyer Kaul reports on the status of the criminal proceedings against Müller, while the final images show the war criminal feeding the ducks in South Africa.

The story of communist Walter Zauner who in 1952 was one of the first in the Federal Republic to be convicted of sabotage of a military installation.

Report on the conflicts around the People's Republic of Kampuchea

In two chapters the film shows men in divided Germany willing to leave their country. In the first chapter, East-Germans are shown who leave their wives and children behind in order to live in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the second chapter, unmarried West-Germans try to move to the German Democratic Republic.

After becoming notorious world-wide for a bloody killing, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, former general and chief of the South Vietnamese police, moved to the United States and opened a restaurant outside of Washington, D.C. Contrasting images from these two phases of his life are intercut.

An auction in Munich, 1974, old man with crockery and knick-knacks labelled "Former property of Hermann Göring": relics of Nazism sold to the benefit of the post-war state: the west criticised by the east.

Salvador Allende’s last radio speech is given in full; nothing is interposed. The translation of the speech appears in subtitles, individual passages are placed into the center of the picture. Film scenes and photos underline Allende’s call to his citizens. The film ends with a slow close-up to the face of the President.