Hoover Archives has digitized and made available several reels of film from the Boris T. Pash papers on its recently revitalized YouTube channel. The newly digitized films document Pash’s service in the Alsos Mission, a U.S. Army intelligence unit based in Europe in 1944-1945, of which Boris Pash was commanding officer and whose object was to determine the status of German nuclear development. In addition to manuscript and film material in the collection’s Alsos Mission file, there is a large number of photographs on the mission in the photographs series, including prints of the liberation of Paris and the surrender of Thanheim, Germany. The films were preserved through National Film Preservation Foundation grants awarded to Hoover in 2016 and 2017.
The Boris T. Pash papers reflect the military career of Pash from his time as a volunteer in the Russian Imperial Army and Navy in 1918 through his retirement as a colonel in the U.S. Army in 1957. In addition to Alsos Mission files, the collection includes materials relating to the Foreign Liaison Section for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers during the postwar occupation of Japan, 1945-1948, found in the subject file. See also, among the photographs, prints of Soviet armed forces in Tokyo.
Boris T. Pash papers, Reel 1 of 4: "Alsos Mission Films":
