With the D-Day invasion in June 1944, the Allies finally establish a beachhead in France and begin to roll back the Nazi forces. In order not to dampen morale, the Allied High Command hides the true human cost of taking Normandy, both for the allied soldiers and for the unfortunate citizens of Northern France who will suffer enormous casualties as the Germans retreat and the Allies advance. Canada's master of propaganda, John Grierson, explains why "withholding the truth" is not the same as spreading lies - such as German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has done throughout the war. As the war grinds on, more and more questions are being posed about what is happening to the Jews of Europe. There are rumours of mass extermination, but so far the Nazis have kept the truth about the ultimate fate of Jewish minorities and others hidden. Finally Germany invite members of the International Committee of the Red Cross to tour a detention camp near Prague called Theresienstadt. Conditions there don't seem so bad to the visiting observers. But Theresienstadt is a total lie and the International Committee of the Red Cross falls for it. Theresienstadt will be remembered as just one of many horrendous lies concocted by the German propaganda machine. Also in 1945, the Japanese are growing increasingly anxious about the expected showdown with the Americans. The two countries have been at war since December 1941, but so far there has been no invasion of Japan by U.S. forces. The firebombing of Tokyo in 1944 will shock the Japanese, who have been told by their Emperor that they are invincible. Koyo Ishikawa, a Japanese police photographer, will record the terrible events of that night in which 100,000 will die. But he discovers no one wants to see the pictures he has taken. The Emperor doesn't want to acknowledge loss and the Americans don't want the true brutality of the firebombing seen by outsiders. In the end, Ishikawa will choose to bury the pictures he has taken, rather than hand them over to authorities.

From the Curio.ca streaming audio-visual collection.