The knowledge that the History Channel was launching a new mini series called The World Wars piqued my interest as I anxiously to see what the series would produce. There have of course been many documentaries on cable television. A whole cable channel is devoted to military history and hardware, so I was mainly interested in seeing what new material was to be offered by this program.
The show is in three parts, each two hours long. The series centers on six main historical figures and their experience in World War I that shaped the course of history in World War II and beyond; Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur, and George Patton. The problem with a format of this type is that while interesting, the narrative is susceptible to tunnel vision; that is, the roles of other key figures in the chronology are either omitted or glossed over. This leads to misleading or even erroneous reporting.
To be sure there are many inaccuracies. The most obvious are trivial: a soldier in part one is seen shaving in a trench with a modern Gillette or Schick disposable razor; footage of warships include many shots of modern US missile frigates; the head gear of America troops during the Corregidor campaign are wrong (US Army and Marine personnel used British-style helmets until late in 1942, not the steel pot helmets shown during this battle); many weapons were of the wrong type for the time period. One scene had American soldiers the M1 Garand rifle in World War I battle scenes and during the fall of the Philippines. That iconic weapon was adopted by the army in 1936, but it was not widely issued until late 1942. Marines at Guadalcanal in August 1942, for example were still equipped with the 1903 Springfield rifle.
As I say these are trivial matters. The most glaring weakness is the focus on the six main characters, which really distorts the history. Granted there is only so much that can be addressed in a six-hour series, but the omissions or misstatements are unfortunate. The interwar period is primarily about the rise of Hitler’s National Socialist Party in Germany. If you were to believe this series, Hitler came to power mainly due to the oppressive reparations forced upon Germany by the Allies at Versailles in 1919 and his oratorical skills. Merely glossed over or not even mentioned was the progressivism of the Weimar Republic, which stabilized the German economy and laid the base for the powerful industrial infrastructure of the Germany that eventually emerged and dominated Europe.
Also if you follow the narrative of the series, Hitler had no rivals to challenge for power in the rising Nazi party. Never mentioned was his rival, Ernst Roehm who was the center of a great deal of intrigue within the party, which ended with his assassination of orders of Hitler’s right hand man, Heinrich Himmler. The whole interplay which finally resulted in the German President Hindenburg conceding power to Hitler in 1933 was never fully addressed.
For viewers who really want to know more about this key period in world history I would suggest reading the exhaustive study done by William L. Shirer in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I realize that the time constraints and entertainment value of the show precludes detailed history telling, but if you are going to do it, get it right. Otherwise all that you have is a flashy poster, with little real value.
A case in point is the description of the Sicilian campaign, which was essentially described as Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s show. If you believe what the show said, it was Patton’s leadership which carried the day and lead to the conquest of mainland Italy as well. There is a problem there, though. Patton was relieved not long after the poorly planned and executed Sicilian Campaign for slapping a soldier (which was depicted) in a hospital area. Patton in fact had nothing to do with the long, bloody and mostly forgotten Italian campaign that followed the invasion of Sicily.
In fact the British-American rivalries for influence and dominance in the course of winning the war had no finer example than the botched Sicilian affair. George Patton and overall British commander General Bernard Law Montgomery hated each other, mainly because they were both made from the same cloth. Both were vain and egotistical. “Monty” was plodding and cautious, while Patton was daring and adventurous. Montgomery’s plan for Sicily was adopted by the Allies over Patton’s, which assured a long and bloody trek up the rugged Sicilian terrain, instead of being daring by bottling up the German forces in making Messina – the main port of the island – the first objective instead of the end point. Monty’s plans allowed the Germans to fight a skillful delaying action while they escaped into Italy through the port of Messina. The entire campaign marked one confrontation after another between the two commanding generals. Patton was upset because he was not in charge of the invasion despite the invasion forces being predominantly American. Montgomery distrusted the Americans, seeing them as green and untested.
The whole Italian campaign was in fact a compromise by the Americans who had their sights set on France from their entry in the European war. They agreed to invade Sicily and Italy as a compromise to the British plan of invading the Balkans through Greece, protecting their oil interests while avenging the stiff defeat they suffered there in 1940. Not a mention of any of this was made by the producers of this show, and even more curious, nothing was said about the role of the supreme allied commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who resurrected Patton, his most skilled tactical general, and mended the fences necessary to keep the fragile American-British alliance from falling apart at the seams. Now that was a story that should have been told and worth hearing.
So while I give all the credit to the History Channel for bringing this important topic to television it would have been better to tell the whole story as accurately as possible. By focusing the narrative on six individuals, as key as they are, leaves out to many other characters’ roles in shaping the course of events which still influence the world to this day. That story still has not been told.
