Big Picture: People to People

Year Published: ca. 1943 - ca. 1944

Creator: National Archives and Records Administration

Format: 16mm/video file

Description: National Archives and Records Administration ARC Identifier 2569695 / Local Identifier 111-TV-430 Big Picture: People to People DVD Copied by Timothy Vollmer. Today THE BIG PICTURE looks at one of America's not-so-secret weapons. No scientists or engineers are studying the blueprints on it. It will never come off the assembly line or be fired from a launching pad. But the range and power of this weapon is tremendous even though about all the equipment it needs is a smile and a heart. Our Armed Forces -- with a sizable portion of its strength stationed at overseas areas -- is ideally situated to play a major role in the job of winning friends for America. Using post-war Germany as an example, THE BIG PICTURE shows the individual serviceman and his foreign allies cementing international comradeship on a "people to people" basis. A game of baseball, an invitation to Sunday dinner, a visit to the local orphanage produces a bond of goodwill between countries that is impossible to measure. The way American GIs overseas look at it, the artificial barriers separating people from people are continually being swept aside by one of our most powerful weapons -- friendship.