“The True Glory,” the World War II documentary of 1945 to be screened in a new print this Friday as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Oscar’s Docs” series, is the most expensive documentary ever made. Commissioned by General Eisenhower to record the progress of “Operation Overlord,” the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944 by Allied troops, the film took an enormous toll on all who worked on it. Of the 1,400 cameramen involved, 32 were killed in action, 16 were reported missing, and more than 100 were wounded.

Even those back in the cutting room in London found themselves deeply affected by the thousands of hours of battle scenes and depravity they were obliged to witness. Scenes of carnage from the Normandy beachheads paled in comparison to the horrors to come. The British actor Peter Ustinov, recruited to sift through the daily dispatches, remembered with dismay the first footage of the liberation of the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.

“One after the other, individual soldiers fell out, vomiting helplessly on all fours,” he recalled. “The shock had felled these men with a blow to the stomach, and there was nothing discipline could do. Suddenly one soldier went berserk. He broke ranks for no visible reason. Eyes wild, he ran, and the camera followed him.”

Intended as an official record of D-Day, the project quickly took on a life of its own. Eisenhower, the film’s nominal producer, insisted the film be made jointly by both American and British talent, and two young directors, both army captains, were chosen.

Garson Kanin, some years before writing, with his wife Ruth Gordon, the marital comedies “Adam’s Rib” and “Pat and Mike” for Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, was teamed with Carol Reed, whose masterpieces, “The Third Man” and “The Fallen Idol,” were still on the horizon.

Kanin described the collaboration as “a kind of love affair from the start. I simply adored Carol Reed.” Eisenhower, however, “got to be quite a pain in the neck after a while,” notwithstanding the resources he was prepared to release to ensure the movie would do justice to the historic events unfolding. Eisenhower provided a personally handwritten order on a scrap of paper which the directors waved at senior officers to get their way. “I suppose it may be the most expensive film in history,” Kanin recalled. “You couldn’t possibly estimate the cost and we were never given any figure. We had permission to commandeer any units that were available.”

Kanin and Reed assembled 440 combat cameramen for D-Day, though planning was difficult because the directors were not trusted with the exact date. They were given five likely days which did not include June 6, the day the invasion was finally launched.

Each day, footage was rushed back to London, where teams of editors quickly assembled sequences. But it soon became clear that no one was sure when the film was to end. Was it to be the capture of Paris? The crossing of the Rhine? The taking of Berlin?

Raw images from the front startled Kanin and Reed, not least the footage depicting the capture of the Luftwaffe minister Hermann Göring, which shows American officers joshing with the Nazi chief, asking for his autograph, offering him chewing gum, and lining up to have their photographs taken with him. When Eisenhower got wind of the incident, he sent back to America all those officers who could be identified.

As Kanin and Reed plowed through 6.5 million feet of film, some of it footage captured from German sources, the editing process was stricken with arguments over what to include. Kanin insisted that the contribution of America’s blacks-only regiments should be prominent, and he later regretted not having included enough about women’s efforts.

There were more anguished debates about the right tone and format for the film to adopt. It was eventually decided that service personnel should tell their story in their own words, that there should be a third-person commentary in heroic verse, and that there should be a musical sound track. Among the 130 voices heard is that of Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote the movie “Network.”

Eisenhower agreed to introduce the film, which cut straight to a scene aboard a landing craft heading for Normandy where a sergeant major is heard telling his troops: “Men who want to take their anti-seasick tablets should take ’em now.”

The film was given simultaneous premieres on August 21, 1945, in Eisenhower’s hometown of Abilene, Kan., and, following a military parade down Broadway, at the Victoria Theater in New York. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was so affected by the film that he suggested the movie should be shown free so that as many as possible could see it. He declared: “Every American ought to see this picture and, after he sees it, will pay his taxes with a smile and pray with tears in his eyes.”

“The True Glory” went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1946, though Kanin and Reed declined to accept the award and dedicated it to those who had lost their lives during the making of the film. Although it was widely agreed that it was an extraordinary movie, not everyone was convinced it would make money.

Harry Cohn, the boss of Columbia pictures, which distributed the film, was typically forthright: “All the major companies drew lots to see who would distribute this picture, ‘The True Glory.’ And what can I tell you? Columbia lost.”

Mr. Wapshott’s “Carol Reed: A Biography” is published by Knopf.