The World at War

(1973)
For some reason lately, perhaps realizing that I am firmly ensconced in middle age, I have become particularly passionate about shedding light on all the unexplored or lost cultural corners of my youth. Maybe its driven partly by the fact that that world is gone, and if I dont peek in on what I missed now I may never get the chance, and likely theres a fair bit of nostalgia there as well. At any rate, those were some of the motivations driving me to devote a month of my viewing life to watching this 26 episode documentary about World War II. I would normally say something like we all know the story of WWII and I would bet that all of you reading this are at least marginally familiar with the general strokes of the war, but I work with someone who doesnt know the difference between Catholicism and Judaism, so Im learning not to take what I consider to be general knowledge for granted. WAW covers the war as no documentary did before it, and even including the renaissance that wartime fiction has undergone in the last several years Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Letters From Iwo Jima, etc. I feel it safe to say that nothing that ever came after it ever painted as complete a picture of the war which gave birth to the modern world as we know it. There are eleven discs in the set, seven for the series, three for supplemental material, and the final one dealing with the making of the series which is, surprisingly, tediously overlong. But dont let the last mostly unnecessary disc lead you astray the other thirty hours or so of film is probably the best documentary you will ever see, stronger and more effective than any other documentary Ive ever witnessed (and Ive seen my share). The war is not revealed in chronological order, but rather each of the twenty-six episodes covers one part of the war in detail, whether its the desert war in Africa or the bombing of Britain or the home front in Germany or Japanese expansion. Each hour covers just its part of the war terrifically, interlacing and occasionally overlapping with the other episodes, so you begin to get a sort of quiltwork of understanding that grows as you delve deeper into the show. What sets WAW apart from almost every other wartime documentary this or any other war is a continual return to focus on the lives of civilians and the effects the war had on them. Citizens of all major nations involved in the war are interviewed, from German housewives to British soldiers to Japanese diplomats to Polish refugees to French resistance fighters the interviewees run the entire gamut from a lowly field soldier up through Montgomerys chief of staff, Himmlers second-incommand, even Hitlers valet and secretary (the only names one might recognize are Albert Speer, and a very brief word or two from Jimmy Stewart). It helped greatly that the show was created in the early 70s, when many of those who had participated in the war were aging but still alive; indeed the producers say that one of their aims was to capture some of these people on tape while the war was still in living memory.

WAW covers the battles as well Stalingrad, the invasion of France, almost an entire episode dedicated to the long slow struggle for Italy and does so with remarkable clarity and excellent use of interviews and historical footage; I believe the interviews are the strongest part of the series. Listening to the woman who heard Hitlers final words, or hearing the man who had to watch the ambassador he served kowtow to MacArthur, or listening to the story of a man whose job it was to clean the corpses out of a crematorium at Auschwitz these people and their words can bring history to life in a way that war footage and narration simply cant. Watching a documentary on the war is one thing, but hearing a woman living in Nazi Germany talking about the night she hid two Jews from the Gestapo will drive home the evil of Hitlers regime in a much more personal and horrifying way. It would be hard to pick out a single episode amongst the set they are universally excellent, each one a gem in its own right but both the regular series episode and the extended presentation on the Final Solution are downright difficult to watch. That probably makes them the most required viewing of the entire set, but to see with your own eyes and hear the survivors speak of it one woman was actually shot by a firing squad but by some miracle managed to survive in the mass grave she was pitched into is to confront fully mankind at the apex of his most destructive and evil. A friend of mine at work said the other day, people need to get over World War II. They need to just move past it. Now, hes an intelligent person, but in this particular case he couldnt be more wrong. Its a clich that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them, but its also one of the saddest truths about the human race. One Englishman in the very last episode sulkily admits that hes already worried that the next generation has forgotten the more important aspects of the war and this was in 1973! Removed another four decades, it can perhaps be understood why the undereducated youths of today might shrug off the story of the six-year birth pangs of the modern world for that ultimately is what the Second World War was but given the state of unease and uncertainty in the world today, its more important than it ever has been in my lifetime that we look back and remember what happens when people en masse give in to fear, give in to hate, and allow what separates them to speak louder than what joins them. We are simply blessed that forty years ago a dedicated team of Englishmen and women spent three years of their lives documenting this war in such an unforgettable fashion, capturing the struggle in all its terror for those who followed, who were fortunate enough not to have to suffer through it, so they could learn the lessons by watching and listening rather than by bleeding and dying. I know that World War II isnt everyones cup of tea, and I understand that not everyone shares my interest in history. And, frankly, twenty-six hours is a major time commitment for most people (the sad vast majority of whom would rather sit in front of some mindless shit like Jersey Shore); but this is, simply, the best documentary thats ever been produced for television, an accurate, honest, and comprehensive telling of a dynamic and utterly vital period of the history of an entire race. Each to his own devices, naturally, but you really are missing something if you choose not to watch this series.

November 1, 2010