Best Documentary, 1945

Awards presented March 7, 1946

With the war drawing to an end, the flood of documentaries from the various branches of the military slowed to a trickle. But the documentary award had established itself as an Oscar category, albeit one that would generate controversy in years to come. 

The nominees were ... 

(Feature) 

• The Last Bomb, United States Army Air Force 
• The True Glory, The Governments of Great Britain and the United States of America 

(Short Subject) 

• Hitler Lives? Gordon Hollingshead, producer 
• Library of Congress, United States Office of War Information Overseas Motion Picture Bureau 
• To the Shores of Iwo Jima, United States Marine Corps 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Feature) 

The True Glory, The Governments of Great Britain and the United States of America. 

A survey of the course of the war in Europe from D-Day to the fall of Berlin, directed by Garson Kanin and Carol Reed, with a script credited to Paddy Chayefsky, although many other writers were involved, including Peter Ustinov. The chief British narrator is Robert Harris, but various British and American speakers recount their wartime experiences. A remarkable and often stirring record of the wartime experience, though slanted toward heroism rather than realism. 

(Short Subject) 

Hitler Lives? Gordon Hollingshead, producer.

A shrill, unsettling propaganda short, that presents Germany as an ongoing threat. Directed by Don Siegel, who also directed Star in the Night, which won the two-reel short film Oscar in the same year. The hectoring narrator is Knox Manning.