This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns.

Hello, welcome to the World War II podcast. I'm Alice Wallace. Today we're going to be looking at the story of Julian Bryan, the American photographer, filmmaker and documentarian, who found himself in Warsaw in September 1939. At a moment when every other foreign correspondent was fleeing the city, Brian chose to stay. He filmed and photographed the siege from the streets,

hospitals and shelters, capturing what everyday people were facing as the bombs fell.

His pictures of wounded civilians, destroyed neighbourhoods and the resilience

of ordinary polls became some of the first unscensored images of Nazi aggression seen in the West.

With me, once more, is Peter Zablocki, host of the History Sh's podcast. Pete has just written an article on Brian

for World War II magazine. So we're going to be following Brian's story through those weeks in

Warsaw, why he stayed, how he worked in such danger, and what happened to his footage

once he'd escaped, and why his records of the siege mattered then and still matter now.

Pete, thanks for joining me.

Who is Julian Bryan?

We're obviously going to be talking about in Warsaw and being the last photographer,

filmmaker in Warsaw, but prior to September 1939, who is he?

What's his background?

So Julian Bryan, interesting enough, World War I Vet, right? So he's a photojournalist. He's a photojournalist.

But he has a World War I veteran drove an ambulance in World War I.

And then afterwards, in the 20s, early 20s, he graduates from Princeton University with theology.

So he almost became a priest, right? And he's very close,

and then he decides against it. He decides he's not going to do that. And he goes into this

photo photography, but also journalism aspect. And I want to say he's known because even today,

...