Highballing to Victory

This 1944 U.S. War Department propaganda short, filmed in black-and-white, underscores the critical role of transportation and rubber conservation in securing Allied victory during WWII. It opens with a grim montage of Nazi conquests—Hitler at rallies, tanks rolling through Europe—before shifting to Paris’s 1944 liberation, crediting the Red Ball Express. The film details this famed truck convoy system, launched August 25, 1944, after Normandy, where 6,000 vehicles, mostly driven by African American soldiers, sped supplies—fuel, ammo, food—along a marked route from Cherbourg to Chartres, closed to civilians. Aerial support is highlighted via stock footage of C-47s airlifting goods, emphasizing a dual truck-and-air lifeline stretching from Western Europe’s coast inland. A key focus is rubber: with Japan cutting off natural supplies, the film shows tire production, recycling (retreading worn Red Ball tires), and the toll of 40,000 tires worn out in the Express’s first month due to overloading and debris like ration tins. Workers in American factories and Chinese troops receiving U-boat-dodging shipments illustrate global stakes. Narration ties it all to victory over the Third Reich, urging conservation as a patriotic duty in this logistics epic.