WATCH: Amazingly Restored, Colorized Video Shows US Army Liberating German Town in WWII

A recently restored and colorized video dramatically brings to life the scene as U.S. troops liberated a German town during World War II.

The video from the YouTube account NASS, which colorizes black-and-white footage, shows U.S. troops rolling into Nordhausen, Germany in April 1945 on trucks. It also shows a tank rolling down the street.

Later, shots can be heard in a forest as U.S. troops fire back. The shooting between American and German troops is intense.

The footage then switches to U.S. troops searching captive Nazi soldiers. Moments later, U.S. trucks roll into the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, where prisoners “began construction of large underground factories and development facilities for the V-2 missile program and other experimental weapons” for the Germans, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).

The footage shifts to fighting taking place somewhere outside Nordhausen.

The original footage was shot by the U.S. Army Signal Corps and was stored at the National Archives and Records Administration, where Douglas Hackney saw it while researching “his grandfather, Zane L. Strickland, who appears in one of the Nordhausen films carrying a stretcher with a liberated prisoner,” according to the USHMM, which obtained a copy of the video in November 2016 by Hackney.

Watch the restored video above, via NASS and Open Culture.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!