Cologne March 1945: Tank Duel at the Cathedral - The film documentary - The source

MARCH1945 The one and only source! NEWS MARCH 2023! Don't miss the complete document and photoedition in a 366pages, fully illustrated book about this amazing research. Uncut look into the book • Cologne March 1945 - T...
No other research has shaped the perspecttive on the battle for Cologne like this. This video shows excerpts from the 200 minutes film documentary, available as Video on Demand (Stream&Download) vimeo.com/chan...
It is the most cited research in Adam Makos´ novel Spearhead. Watch out for the new english book edition.
The english book edition of 366 pages with 1200 images and documents is now (feb. 2023) available in the United States: March 1945 - Duel at the Cathedral - U.S. troops battle for Cologne and the Rhine. The Book - The Source. Available as Ebook and Print on Demand.
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Cologne, Germany, the famous Cathedral city in March 1945. Eight months after D-Day, the US troops are now on the cusp of a long-awaited milestone. Nazi propaganda has declared Cologne to be defended to the last cartridge. The impending battle has dominated the headlines of the world press for days. Dozens of correspondents, photographers, and cameramen have followed the US troops in order to report in detail on the event. Some of the shots taken by the cameramen of the US military are still perceived in the USA as the most famous scenes of World War II. The battle for Cologne ends with a final, dramatic tank duel at the base of the Cathedral. The film footage makes the engagement the most famous tank duel in the world. However, who the people in those scenes were still remains unknown. Based on several years of research into the background and contemporary witnesses, this documentary reconstructs the advance of US troops into Cologne and shows crucial moments of the battle for the city in March 5 -7, 1945.
among the long facebook threads of comments Douglas Rivela wrote:
"This looks absolutely fascinating. Too rarely do we really take one incident in a long conflict and pick it apart to find the profoundly human stories lost in all the spectacle. The film makers here, go to the archives to find out who the people were - German as well as American - in one of the most famous pieces of newsreal taken during World War II, a deadly personal battle between two tanks in front of a Cathedaral in Cologne, Germany in March 1945. What they irreverently end up doing in their research is uncover an amazing mystery where what we were told happened may well of not happened anywhere near as reported and thus one of the most famous incidents of World War II becomes an investigation as the film makers track down and find the man who may of been the commander of the tank in this photo, who was reported dead at the time but has lived a long life since. Absolutely fascinating research that puts a human face on what otherwise would of remained grainy old newsreal footage in an achive."
Featured eye witnesses: Andy Rooney (correspondent "The Starts&Stripes"), Clarence Smoyer (3rd Armored Division), Francis Wilber (104th Infantry Division), James Bates (U.S. Signal corps cameraman), Robert Ziller (RAF-cameraman), Manfred Bockhoff (9.Panzerdivision), Gustav Schäfer (Panzerbrigade 106), Günther Müller (360 Volksgrenadier-Division) and many others.
German book editions: The complete photo and document edition is available in german with the title 1945-Kriegsende in Köln (1945 - war´s end in Cologne) first edition 2015 and the second extended anf fully revised edition in 2020. Requests: [e-mail]