Aachen fell in October 1944 after heavy fighting as the first major German city to come under Allied control. Such encounters between U.S. soldiers and the civilian population—particularly children—were part of the immediate postwar reality of the occupation zone and were documented by correspondents such as Jack Lieb as signs of the beginning normalization. The image belongs to the phase of the advance into Germany, which in the film follows the liberation of Paris and the Rhineland campaign. Lieb’s color footage from Aachen is a rare document of a moment otherwise preserved almost exclusively in black and white.