World War II with Tom Hanks: Episode 1

EPISODE 1: THE BEGINNING

General Comments:

These observations presumably apply to the entire twenty episodes.

The visual format is powerful and attractive. “Black and white” or more accurately to my eye a gray scale tone predominates. Colorization appears frequently, and there are subtle screens in which the gray scale predominates, but selected features are in color. Main text appears in a distinctive dullish red which stands out harmoniously with the images. The symbolism of red like blood is patent. This is all first class.

In World War II, the camera arrays that could capture images in color were very bulky and temperamental. The film ideally had to be kept refrigerated before and after it was shot. For these reasons the image archive prepared at the time contained a very small fraction of original color images. A perhaps surprising exception was proportionally more original color images were shot in the Pacific theater. This stemmed from the relatively immediate access to refrigeration on ships to preserve color film. In North Africa and continental Europe refrigeration was rare.

We have since learned that more color was shot in late stages of the war in Northwestern Europe. I surmise that the producers made the understandable decision that audiences in 2026 and far beyond would find “black and white” images far less appealing than the colorization of the originals. Although part of me argues for strict authenticity, I think the long-term reach to inform the widest audience by using colorization is justified.

This brings us to the issue of what standards each combatant nation used for “authentic” combat images. The US War Department (the Army Air Force was then part of the army, not a separate service) ruled that “combat” footage had to be shot in real combat, not something

staged. US images from the War Department soon were being disparaged as much inferior to those the British were producing. Much later it was revealed the British were staging a great deal but not all of their “combat” images, especially in the early years. Both US and British air war images were exceptions as gun camera film and photographers who flew actual missions produced notable imagery. The US Navy stationed still and motion picture cameramen on warships who created authentic combat imagery.

Most imagery from the Soviet Union, especially during 1941-42, was staged or more benignly called “recreated.” The desperation of the Soviet situation left scant room for “frills”: like a large cadre of cameramen, not rifle or sub machinegun totting soldiers. The German footage was a mix.

If US cameras are a guide, an important point to keep in mind is that spring drives powered motion picture cameras carried in combat. They could only run for periods measured in seconds, not minutes. The springs had to be reloaded by rewinding by hand before the next sequence.

General Episode Contents

The episode and effectively the series sets the beginning of the war in September 1939. This, of course, is based on the European orientation that continues the framework of The World At War. Hanks’ narration gives the total deaths in the war as sixty-five million, most civilians. The sixty-five million figure reflects a trend of the past half century that kept elevating death tolls upwards from about fifty million. There are arguments that the toll is greater than sixty-five million. Most of the increase in death estimates generally adjusts civilian totals higher than combatant deaths. I deem sixty-five million a reasonable number, maybe best seen as a floor, not the ceiling.

This episode contains remarkable footage of German tanks attacking Poland. The markings on these vehicles appear in a whitish tone that is accurate. The tanks are the correct models. The only issue here is that the German army never had more than about ten percent of all its divisions that were tank or fully mechanized. There are scenes of marching infantry, but about nine of ten German divisions throughout the war used horses to move artillery and supplies. Railroads served as the main logistical support. In choosing the drama of the moving tanks and vehicles, the episode achieves kinetic momentum but deceives the casual viewer about the structure of the German army. I do not think deception was intended, but that is an effect.

At about minute 34:50 we cut back to World War I and the post-active hostilities Versailles Treaty. This is grounded in explaining Adolf Hitler’s background and especially why his messages appealed to the German public. For the unversed viewer, this comes across as perhaps compelling justification for what led to Hitler’s ascent from a German point of view. Here is one place where I regret the episode did not take at least a few seconds to point out how much more draconian the terms the Germans inflicted on the Russians in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1917 to provide more balance.

The account of the 1932 German elections is described as convincing “conservative” German politicians and business leaders to persuade Chancellor Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Canchelor. This narrative is disputed, but presumably the choice was made not to incorporate this dispute due to time limitations.

Then there is a major leap from 1934 to 1938, from when Hitler seizes power and ends any real democracy in Germany to the Munich Agreement. At Munich, the UK and France sacrificed the Czechs in vain hope of an enduring peace. A counter narrative is that the Munich settlement was actually to buy time that placed Great Britain in a better posture to fight Germany in September 1939 than it was in 1938. The French situation was less successful in preparations for war with Germany in 1939.

When Hitler after Munich occupies Czechoslovakia, the UK and France provide guarantees to defend Poland. The episode shows Hitler’s utter contempt for his Western adversaries--they are the “worms” he says he met at Munich.

The episode then slows time down to mere days over September 1-3. By now, it’s clear the breaks in the narrative are designed to permit ads in later broadcasts. I have no real dispute with the narrative September 1 and 2, 1939.

The September 3, 1939, segment includes the recording of Chamberlain’s voice, overloaded with the pathetic recognition he has stumbled his nation into the war he sought to avoid and now it is not ready to fight. Scenes of civilians in gas masks not only convey the real expectations of what the war will bring, but also symbolically register the nightmare quality after Munich of events.

A brief segment turns to the US. The narration says the US was “emerging” from the depression. This overstates the domestic economic situation. FDR gives a speech proclaiming he knows and hates war, which is what the vast majority of Americans believe at that hour. The reality is that FDR can read German and has been reading Hitler’s speeches. The President presciently senses that Hitler is on a path of global conquest and seeks to follow that with a murderous reordering of who will live--those with supposed “Aryan blood.” All other people without “Aryan Blood” will not have any inherent right to live. This actual FDR thinking does not appear here. Perhaps later.

The next segment covers Field Marshal Herman Goering, head of the German air force, and number two figure behind Hitler. This segment is excellent in both narrative and even more so in images. The bombing of Polish civilians, however, is presented as novel. The reality is that in 1937-38 the Japanese bombed over a score of Chinese cities and the world saw images of that. Then there was the German bombing of Guernica in Spain, made an enduring symbol with Pablo Picasso’s famous painting of that name. This undercuts the novelty of bombing Warsaw.

During the war, the governments of bombed countries generally permitted publication of images of physical destruction, but avoided as much as feasible images of the actual dead, especially the rawest of these images. The episode shows graphic images of dead Poles killed in air raids. This would not have been available on any public scale in 1939.

At about minute twenty on the counter, the segment addresses Nazi ideology. Alexandra Richie, who is always an astute voice, describes it as neo-Darwinism. That cuts to the core of the concept and its roots. But this segment does not venture further into just what the Nazi idea is of “Aryan Blood.” I assume that will come at some later point and the time count for this episode is already packed.

The background of Himmler’s SS is then painted succinctly. This will become the central instrument of annihilation of Jews and others. It will also grow exponentially in size and seek priority for scarce assets like the best tanks over the German army. But that part of the story should be fleshed out later.

The next segment turns to the siege of Warsaw. The narrative debunked effectively the notion the Poles were militarily so backward that they sent horse cavalry against tanks. They were in fact competent and very courageous. This corrects a lot of sloppy or just incompetent history about the Poles.

Then we come to the Soviet attack on Poland from September 17. There is a lot of good narrative about how paranoid Stalin became over his long career as a revolutionary. Notably this included by the late 1930s his fear the Western Allies would make common cause with Germany to destroy the Soviet Union. Inevitably Stalin’s purges are discussed, particularly his slaughter of a huge swath of the top Red Army officers and the disastrous effects this had on the Red Army’s combat effectiveness. A figure of “millions” of dead in the purges is used. Whether the purge death toll was over a million is disputed, thanks to lack of access to authentic Soviet era records, and questions about more recent records presented as authentic. But no mention is made of the massive death tolls earlier in Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture or specifically due to terror against the Ukrainians.

Coverage addresses the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement in late August 1939. This was a massive shock since to this point the two nations appeared radically hostile to each other. The agreement has secret protocols erasing Poland and creating spheres for Germany and the Soviet Union in eastern Europe. This event is presented as making war inevitable. That’s a fair assertion.

The Red Army strikes from the east and the Polish strategic situation becomes hopeless.

The last minutes concern the heroic defense of Warsaw. During that battle about twenty percent of the city is destroyed and 18,000 Poles, most civilians are killed or injured. The images here are another triumph.

The Poles surrender at the end of October 1939. Over 20,000 Polish officers fall into Soviet hands and are murdered around the Katyn Forrest in early 1941. We will hear more about this later in the series.

We end on a tiny hopeful note. FDR seeks and obtains a direct line of correspondence with Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. We hear Churchill’s distinctive voice delivering a sober appraisal of the outlook for the war which has just begun. We are only one month in of a European phase of the war that will stretch for sixty-eight months and eight days. Things will get much worse for three years and the final outcome remains in doubt till very near the end.

Buckle up.

Notwithstanding a few issues, the series is off to a very impressive start.