Know Your Ally: Britain (1944). US War Department, Special Services Division. Held by the Internet Archive; public domain.
Know Your Ally: Britain
An orientation film made for troops shipping to the United Kingdom: the country, the rationing, the class system, and the instruction not to mention any of it.
- Year
- 1944
- Made by
- US War Department, Special Services Division
- Directed by
- Frank Capra
- Free to use because
- A work of the United States government — no copyright, anywhere
The note
The mirror of Know Your Enemy, and much gentler — an anthropology lesson for GIs, delivered with the confidence of a man who has decided the British are eccentric but sound. It is full of small period detail about how ordinary wartime life was actually conducted, which is what makes it hold up as audio. Federal work, no copyright.
Know Your Ally: Britain, 1944. US War Department, Special Services Division. Directed by Frank Capra. This is the film’s soundtrack: narration, score and location sound, streamed from the Internet Archive’s master. No picture — the audio is the work. A work of the United States government, and therefore free of copyright anywhere it is used.
The soundtrack