The World at War (TV series)
Encyclopedia
The World at War is a 26-episode British
television documentary
series chronicling the events of World War II
. It was produced by Jeremy Isaacs
, narrated by Laurence Olivier
and has a score composed by Carl Davis
. A book, The World at War, was written by Mark Arnold-Forster
to accompany it.
in 1969. Such was the extent of its research, it took four years to produce at a cost of £900,000 (2009 equivalent: £11.4 million). At the time, this was a record for a British television series. It was first shown in 1973
, on ITV
.
The series interviewed major members of the Allied and Axis
campaigns, including eyewitness accounts by civilians, enlisted men, officers and politicians, amongst them Albert Speer
, Karl Dönitz
, Walter Warlimont
, James Stewart
, Bill Mauldin
, W. Averell Harriman
, Curtis LeMay
, Lord Mountbatten of Burma
, Alger Hiss
, Toshikazu Kase
, Mitsuo Fuchida
, Minoru Genda
, J. B. Priestley
, Brian Horrocks
, John J. McCloy
, Lawrence Durrell
, Arthur Harris
, Charles Sweeney
, Paul Tibbets
, Anthony Eden
, Traudl Junge
, Mark Clark
, Adolf Galland
, Hasso von Manteuffel
, and historian Stephen Ambrose
.
In the programme The Making of "The World at War", included in the DVD set, Jeremy Isaacs explains that priority was given to interviews with surviving aides and assistants rather than recognised figures. The most difficult person to locate and persuade to be interviewed was Heinrich Himmler
's adjutant, Karl Wolff
. During the interview, he admitted to witnessing a large-scale execution in Himmler's presence. Isaacs later expressed satisfaction with the content of the series, noting that if it had been unclassified knowledge at the time of production, he would have added references to British codebreaking efforts
In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes
compiled by the British Film Institute
during 2000, voted for by industry professionals, The World at War ranked 19th.
asked Noble Frankland
, then director of the Imperial War Museum
, to list fifteen main campaigns of the war and devoted one episode to each. The remaining eleven episodes are devoted to other matters, such as the rise of the Third Reich, home life in Britain
and Germany
, the experience of occupation in the Netherlands
, and the Nazis
' use of genocide
.
Episode 1 begins with a cold open
describing the massacre at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane
by the Waffen SS. The same event is referenced again at the end of Episode 26 and the series ends with Laurence Olivier uttering the poignant word, "Remember".
The series was originally transmitted on the ITV
network in the United Kingdom between 31 October 1973 and 8 May 1974, and has subsequently been shown around the world. It was first shown in the US only in syndication, notably on Secaucus, NJ station WOR
in the late seventies (although episodes were edited both for graphic content and to include sufficient commercial breaks). PBS station WGBH
broadcast the series unedited and in its entirety in the late eighties. The Danish
channel DR2
also broadcast the series in December 2006 and January 2007. The History Channel in Japan began screening the series in its entirety in April 2007. It repeated the entire series again in August 2011. The Military History Channel in the UK broadcast the series over the weekend of the 14th and 15 November 2009. The U.S. version of the Military Channel aired the series in January 2010. In summer 2010, BBC2 in the U.K. transmitted a repeat run of the series.
Currently - October 2011 - the British channel Yesterday has started a showing of the series.
Each episode was 52 minutes excluding commercials; as was customary for ITV documentary series at the time, it was originally screened with only one central break. The Genocide episode was screened uninterrupted.
The series was also put on 13 Laservision Longplay videodisks by Video Garant Amsterdam 1980, and included Dutch subtitling for the Dutch television market.
. These were released as a bonus to the VHS version and are included in the DVD set of the series.
in 1973. In October 2007 Ebury Press published The World at War, a new book by Richard Holmes
, an oral history of the Second World War drawn from the interviews conducted for the TV series. The programme's producers committed hundreds of interview-hours to tape in its creation, but only a fraction of that recorded material was used for the final version of the series. A selection of the rest of this material was published in this book, which included interviews with Albert Speer
, Karl Wolff
(Himmler's adjutant), Traudl Junge
(Hitler's secretary), James Stewart
(USAAF bomber pilot and Hollywood star), Anthony Eden
, John Colville
(Private Secretary to Winston Churchill
), Averell Harriman (US Ambassador to the Soviet Union
) and Arthur "Bomber" Harris
(Head of RAF Bomber Command).
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
television documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
series chronicling the events of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. It was produced by Jeremy Isaacs
Jeremy Isaacs
Sir Jeremy Isaacs is a British television producer and executive, winner of many BAFTA awards and international Emmy Awards. He was also General Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden .-Early life:...
, narrated by Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
and has a score composed by Carl Davis
Carl Davis
Carl Davis CBE is an American born conductor and composer who has made his home in the UK since 1961. In 1970 he married the English actress Jean Boht....
. A book, The World at War, was written by Mark Arnold-Forster
Mark Arnold-Forster
Mark Arnold-Forster, DSO, DSC was an English journalist and author. He is best remembered for his book The World at War, which accompanied the 1973 television series of the same name.-Early years:...
to accompany it.
Overview
The World at War, which made use of rare colour film footage, was commissioned by Thames TelevisionThames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
in 1969. Such was the extent of its research, it took four years to produce at a cost of £900,000 (2009 equivalent: £11.4 million). At the time, this was a record for a British television series. It was first shown in 1973
1973 in television
The year 1973 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1973.-Events:*January 4 – The record breaking, long-running comedy series in the UK and the world "Last of the Summer Wine" starts as a 30-minute pilot on BBC1's Comedy Playhouse show....
, on ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
.
The series interviewed major members of the Allied and Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
campaigns, including eyewitness accounts by civilians, enlisted men, officers and politicians, amongst them Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz was a German naval commander during World War II. He started his career in the German Navy during World War I. In 1918, while he was in command of , the submarine was sunk by British forces and Dönitz was taken prisoner...
, Walter Warlimont
Walter Warlimont
Walter Warlimont was a German officer known for his role in the OKW inner circle .-World War I:...
, James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
, Bill Mauldin
Bill Mauldin
William Henry "Bill" Mauldin was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist from the United States...
, W. Averell Harriman
W. Averell Harriman
William Averell Harriman was an American Democratic Party politician, businessman, and diplomat. He was the son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman. He served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman and later as the 48th Governor of New York...
, Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay
Curtis Emerson LeMay was a general in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party candidate George Wallace in 1968....
, Lord Mountbatten of Burma
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS , was a British statesman and naval officer, and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
, Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
, Toshikazu Kase
Toshikazu Kase
was a Japanese civil servant and career diplomat. During World War II he was a high-ranking Foreign Ministry official.Kase was born in Chiba, Japan. After passing his Foreign Service Examination in 1925 he left Tokyo Higher Commercial College and attended Amherst College and Harvard as a Research...
, Mitsuo Fuchida
Mitsuo Fuchida
was a Japanese Captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and a bomber pilot in the Imperial Japanese Navy before and during World War II. He is perhaps best known for leading the first air wave attacks on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941...
, Minoru Genda
Minoru Genda
was a well-known Japanese military aviator and politician. He is best known for planning the Pearl Harbor attack.- Early life :Minoru Genda was the second son of a farmer from Hiroshima. Two brothers were graduates of Tokyo University, another brother graduated from Chiba Medical College, and his...
, J. B. Priestley
J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
, Brian Horrocks
Brian Horrocks
Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Gwynne Horrocks, KCB, KBE, DSO, MC was a British Army officer. He is chiefly remembered as the commander of XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden and other operations during the Second World War...
, John J. McCloy
John J. McCloy
John Jay McCloy was a lawyer and banker who served as Assistant Secretary of War during World War II, president of the World Bank and U.S. High Commissioner for Germany...
, Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
, Arthur Harris
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet GCB OBE AFC , commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press, and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command during the latter half of World War...
, Charles Sweeney
Charles Sweeney
Major General Charles W. Sweeney was an officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and the pilot who flew the "Fat Man" atomic bomb to Nagasaki on August 9, 1945...
, Paul Tibbets
Paul Tibbets
Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force, best known for being the pilot of the Enola Gay, the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in the history of warfare. The bomb, code-named Little Boy, was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima...
, Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
, Traudl Junge
Traudl Junge
Traudl Junge was Adolf Hitler's youngest personal private secretary, from December 1942 to April 1945.-Early life:...
, Mark Clark
Mark Wayne Clark
Mark Wayne Clark was an American general during World War II and the Korean War and was the youngest lieutenant general in the U.S. Army...
, Adolf Galland
Adolf Galland
Adolf "Dolfo" Joseph Ferdinand Galland was a German Luftwaffe General and flying ace who served throughout World War II in Europe. He flew 705 combat missions, and fought on the Western and the Defence of the Reich fronts...
, Hasso von Manteuffel
Hasso von Manteuffel
Hasso-Eccard Freiherr von Manteuffel was a German soldier and liberal politician of the 20th century.He served in both world wars, and during World War II was a distinguished general...
, and historian Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many best selling volumes of American popular history...
.
In the programme The Making of "The World at War", included in the DVD set, Jeremy Isaacs explains that priority was given to interviews with surviving aides and assistants rather than recognised figures. The most difficult person to locate and persuade to be interviewed was Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
's adjutant, Karl Wolff
Karl Wolff
Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff was a high-ranking member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel , ultimately holding the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS. He became Chief of Personal Staff to the Reichsführer and SS Liaison Officer to Hitler until his replacement in 1943...
. During the interview, he admitted to witnessing a large-scale execution in Himmler's presence. Isaacs later expressed satisfaction with the content of the series, noting that if it had been unclassified knowledge at the time of production, he would have added references to British codebreaking efforts
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes
100 Greatest British Television Programmes
The BFI TV 100 is a list compiled in 2000 by the British Film Institute , chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened....
compiled by the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
during 2000, voted for by industry professionals, The World at War ranked 19th.
Episodes
The series has 26 episodes. Producer Jeremy IsaacsJeremy Isaacs
Sir Jeremy Isaacs is a British television producer and executive, winner of many BAFTA awards and international Emmy Awards. He was also General Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden .-Early life:...
asked Noble Frankland
Noble Frankland
Anthony Noble Frankland DFC, , D.Phil., is a British historian.Noble Frankland attended Trinity College, Oxford from March 1941 to May 1942, and then from October 1945 to November 1947. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1945, as a navigator in RAF Bomber Command and was awarded the...
, then director of the Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. The museum was founded during the First World War in 1917 and intended as a record of the war effort and sacrifice of Britain and her Empire...
, to list fifteen main campaigns of the war and devoted one episode to each. The remaining eleven episodes are devoted to other matters, such as the rise of the Third Reich, home life in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, the experience of occupation in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, and the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
' use of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
.
Episode 1 begins with a cold open
Cold open
A cold open in a television program or movie is the technique of jumping directly into a story at the beginning or opening of the show, before the title sequence or opening credits are shown...
describing the massacre at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane
Oradour-sur-Glane
Oradour-sur-Glane is a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Limousin region in west-central France.The original village was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company...
by the Waffen SS. The same event is referenced again at the end of Episode 26 and the series ends with Laurence Olivier uttering the poignant word, "Remember".
| # | Title | Original air date |
|---|---|---|
The series was originally transmitted on the ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
network in the United Kingdom between 31 October 1973 and 8 May 1974, and has subsequently been shown around the world. It was first shown in the US only in syndication, notably on Secaucus, NJ station WOR
WWOR-TV
WWOR-TV, virtual channel 9 , is the flagship station of the MyNetworkTV programming service, licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey and serving the Tri-State metropolitan area. WWOR is owned by Fox Television Stations, a division of the News Corporation, and is a sister station to Fox network flagship...
in the late seventies (although episodes were edited both for graphic content and to include sufficient commercial breaks). PBS station WGBH
WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
broadcast the series unedited and in its entirety in the late eighties. The Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
channel DR2
DR2
DR2 is a Danish television station. It is part of Danmarks Radio, the public service broadcasting company of Denmark.It was launched in 1996 as a satellite-/cable-only channel. This was highly controversial at the time, as it was considered close to a breach of public service principles that the...
also broadcast the series in December 2006 and January 2007. The History Channel in Japan began screening the series in its entirety in April 2007. It repeated the entire series again in August 2011. The Military History Channel in the UK broadcast the series over the weekend of the 14th and 15 November 2009. The U.S. version of the Military Channel aired the series in January 2010. In summer 2010, BBC2 in the U.K. transmitted a repeat run of the series.
Currently - October 2011 - the British channel Yesterday has started a showing of the series.
Each episode was 52 minutes excluding commercials; as was customary for ITV documentary series at the time, it was originally screened with only one central break. The Genocide episode was screened uninterrupted.
The series was also put on 13 Laservision Longplay videodisks by Video Garant Amsterdam 1980, and included Dutch subtitling for the Dutch television market.
Additional episodes
Some footage and interviews which were not used in the original series were later made into additional hour or half-hour documentaries narrated by Eric PorterEric Porter
Eric Richard Porter was an English actor of stage, film and television.-Early life:Porter was born in Shepherd's Bush, London, to Richard John Porter and Phoebe Elizabeth Spall...
. These were released as a bonus to the VHS version and are included in the DVD set of the series.
- Secretary to Hitler
- Warrior
- Hitler's Germany: The People's Community (1933–1939)
- Hitler's Germany: Total War (1939–1945)
- The Two Deaths of Adolf Hitler
- The Final Solution: Part One
- The Final Solution: Part Two
- From War to Peace
Books
The original book The World at War, which accompanied the series was written by Mark Arnold-ForsterMark Arnold-Forster
Mark Arnold-Forster, DSO, DSC was an English journalist and author. He is best remembered for his book The World at War, which accompanied the 1973 television series of the same name.-Early years:...
in 1973. In October 2007 Ebury Press published The World at War, a new book by Richard Holmes
Richard Holmes (military historian)
Brigadier Edward Richard Holmes, CBE, TD, JP , known as Richard Holmes, was a British soldier and noted military historian, particularly well-known through his many television appearances...
, an oral history of the Second World War drawn from the interviews conducted for the TV series. The programme's producers committed hundreds of interview-hours to tape in its creation, but only a fraction of that recorded material was used for the final version of the series. A selection of the rest of this material was published in this book, which included interviews with Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, Karl Wolff
Karl Wolff
Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff was a high-ranking member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel , ultimately holding the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS. He became Chief of Personal Staff to the Reichsführer and SS Liaison Officer to Hitler until his replacement in 1943...
(Himmler's adjutant), Traudl Junge
Traudl Junge
Traudl Junge was Adolf Hitler's youngest personal private secretary, from December 1942 to April 1945.-Early life:...
(Hitler's secretary), James Stewart
James Stewart (actor)
James Maitland Stewart was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
(USAAF bomber pilot and Hollywood star), Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
, John Colville
John Colville (civil servant)
Sir John Rupert "Jock" Colville, CB, CVO , was a British civil servant. He is best known for his diaries, which provide an intimate view of number 10 Downing Street during the wartime Prime Ministership of Winston Churchill....
(Private Secretary to Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
), Averell Harriman (US Ambassador to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
) and Arthur "Bomber" Harris
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet GCB OBE AFC , commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press, and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command during the latter half of World War...
(Head of RAF Bomber Command).
See also
- Apocalypse: The Second World WarApocalypse: The Second World WarApocalypse: The Second World War is a six-part French documentary by Daniel Costelle and Isabelle Clarke about the Second World War...
(2009) - A National Geographic documentary on the Second World War - The Great WarThe Great War (documentary)The Great War is a 26-episode documentary series from 1964 on the First World War. It was a co-production involving the resources of the Imperial War Museum, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
(1964) - BBC History of World War IIBBC History of World War IIBBC History of World War II is a 30-hour, 12-disc collection of 10 BBC television films about World War II. The films include documentaries, docudramas, and "dramatized documentaries" .-The films:BBC History of World War II is a 30-hour, 12-disc collection of 10 BBC television films...
(1989–2005) - The Secret War (1977) - a BBC TV series on the technological advances of the Second World War