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Television and History: The World at War

2011; Routledge; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439685.2011.572608

1465-3451

James Chapman,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements My thanks to Tobby Haggith, Paul Sargeant, Matthew Lee and the staff of the Film and Video Archive of the Imperial War Museum; to David Culbert, Jo Fox, Dan Leab and the late John Ramsden for their comments on my various conference and seminar presentations about The World at War; and to Jerry Kuehl for sharing his memories of the production and showing me production documents in his possession. Notes Where newspaper reviews are quoted without a page reference, the source is the British Film Institute's microfiche for The World at War. 1. Observer, 11 November 1973. 2. Daily Express, 15 October 1983. 3. Donald Watt, History on the public screen (I), in: Paul Smith (ed.), The Historian and Film (Cambridge, 1976), 171. 4. Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History (3rd edn) (London, 1989), 315. 5. The Thames/IWM World at War Collection (hereafter Thames/IWM) consists of three unindexed archive boxes, with folders headed ‘General Memos Folder’, ‘Viewers Correspondence’, ‘Research’, etc. The value of the letters is that they represent the actual responses of real viewers. However, it is an unstructured sample that cannot be assumed to be representative of the viewing audience. It is usually the nature of such samples that they will contain more complaints than praise. As Jerome Kuehl wrote in reply to Miss D. M. Morris on 31 May 1974: ‘One of the sad things about doing the work that we do, is that we seldom hear from people who have seen our programmes, and the letters we do receive are, more often than not, complaints that we left this out or got this or that wrong. It is doubly nice, therefore, to hear from someone who not only understood what we were trying to do, but who thinks that we managed to do it’. 6. This includes my own previous work on the series: James Chapman, The World at War: television, documentary, history, in: Graham Roberts and Philip M. Taylor (eds), The Historian, Television and Television History (Luton, 2001), 127–144. 7. See Richard C. Bartone, Victory at Sea: a case study in ‘official’ film history, Film and History, 21 (1991), 115–129; and Peter C. Rollins, Victory at Sea: Cold War Epic, Journal of Popular Culture, 6 (1973), 463–482. 8. See James Chapman, ‘The yanks are shown to such advantage’: Anglo-American rivalry in the production of The True Glory (1945), Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 16(4) (1996), 533–545; and David Culbert, Why We Fight: Social engineering for a democratic society at war, in: K. R. M. Short (ed.), Film and Radio Propaganda in World War II (London, 1983), 173–191. 9. See the special issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television on The Great War, 22(1) (2002), and Emma Hanna, The Great War on the Small Screen: representing the First World War in contemporary Britain (Edinburgh, 2009). 10. Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom Volume V: competition 1955–1974 (Oxford, 1995), 414. 11. British Universities Film Council, Film and the Historian (London, 1968), 1. 12. Noble Frankland, History at War: the campaigns of an historian (London, 1998), 182–183. 13. Jerome Kuehl, Associate Producer [interviewed by Alan Rosenthal], Cineaste, 9(2) (Winter 1978–1979), 8–9. 14. Frankland, History at War, 188. 15. Ibid., 189. 16. Jeremy Potter, Independent Television in Britain Volume 3: politics and control, 1968–80 (Basingstoke, 1989), 21–22. 17. Ibid., 28. 18. Quoted in Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume V, 16. 19. Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1960. Chairman: Sir Henry Pilkington, Cmnd 1753 (London, 1962), 67. 20. Quoted in Greg Neale, One Man Went to War, BBC History Magazine, 4(2) (April 2001), 22. Christopher Chataway, the former middle-distance runner, was Postmaster-General in the Conservative government. 21. Quoted in Potter, Independent Television in Britain, Volume 3, 30. 22. Thames/IWM: Jerome Kuehl to Ruth McGregor, 13 February 1974. 23. Elizabeth Oliver (ed.), Researcher's Guide to British Film & Television Collections (London, 1989), 33. 24. Thames/IWM: Letter of agreement between N. T. Mustoe (copyright and contracts manager for Thames Television) and Noble Frankland (Director of the Imperial War Museum), 25 June 1971. 25. Frankland, History at War, 189. 26. Thames/IWM: Clive Coultass to Jeremy Isaacs, 13 March 1972. 27. Ibid.: Isaacs to Coultass, 9 May 1972. 28. Ibid.: Coultass to Isaacs, 1 August 1972. 29. Interviews with production personnel can be found in two special issues of film journals: Journal of the Society of Film and Television Arts, 2(9–10) (1974), 1–29 (hereafter JSFTA), and Cineaste, 9(2) (Winter 1978–1979), 6–25. For Jeremy Isaacs's account of the production, see his essay All our yesterdays, in: David Cannadine (ed.), History and the Media (London, 2003), 34–50. 30. Angus Calder was the author of the recent The People's War: Britain 1939–45 (London, 1969), a social history of Britain during the Second World War; Professor Louis de Jong was Head of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. 31. The archive sources credited on The World at War include (but are not limited to) the US National Archives (Washington), the Bundersarchiv (Koblenz), Cineteca Italiano (Milan), Cinematheque Suise (Lausanne) and Film Polski (Warsaw). Stock libraries used include EMI Pathe, Movietone, Visnews and Fox. The researchers were denied access to Soviet archives: Raye Farr acknowledged that The World at War ‘was done entirely from material available in the West’. Cineaste, 18. 32. Thames/IWM: Letter from Billy Frick, n.d. Frick claimed he had appeared in a film entitled Stranger in Paradise (The Story of Hitler's Escape and Life on an unknown desert Island); Kuehl to Frick, 26 September 1972. 33. Jeremy Isaacs, Producer of ‘The World at War’, defines his objectives, JSFTA, 1. 34. Frankland, History at War, 189. 35. Thames/IWM: The Second World War: A treatment for a television history in 26 parts, eight-page typescript by Jeremy Isaacs, May 1971. The working titles were: 1. ‘How? Why?’; 2. ‘First Moves’; 3. ‘France Falls’; 4. ‘Alone’; 5. ‘Barbarossa’; 6. ‘Japan Strikes’; 7. ‘America Enters the War’; 8. ‘The Atlantic’; 9. ‘The Western Desert’; 10. ‘Stalingrad’; 11. ‘Home Fires’; 12. ‘Occupation’; 13. ‘Bombing Offensive’; 14. ‘Inside the Reich’; 15. ‘Russia at War’; 16. ‘Burma’; 17. ‘Japan’; 18. ‘Big Three’; 19. ‘Second Front’; 20. ‘Pincers’; 21. ‘Death Camps’; 22. ‘Nemesis’; 23. ‘The Pacific’; 24. ‘The Decision to Drop the Bomb’; 25. ‘Reckoning’; 26. ‘Requiem’. 36. Ibid.: Jeremy Isaacs to ‘All Second World War Personnel’, 6 July 1972. 37. Jeremy Isaacs, Producer of ‘The World at War’, defines his objectives, JSFTA, 1. 38. Thames/IWM: Jerome Kuehl to Jeremy Isaacs, 12 March 1972. 39. The same point was made by David Peen of the IWM's Department of Information Retrieval in a letter to Isaacs on 13 March 1972: ‘Despite the lack of available material, I was unhappy at the repetition of the shot of the sinking U-boat in “Wolf Pack”’. 40. Jeremy Isaacs, Producer of ‘The World at War’, defines his objectives, JSFTA, 1. 41. Thames/IWM: Jeremy Isaacs to ‘All Second World War Personnel’, 4 October 1972. 42. Ibid.: Anne Fleming to Valerio Marino (Conservatore dell’Archivio Cinematografico dell’Instituto Luce), 4 May 1972. 43. Frankland, History at War, 189–190. 44. Daily Telegraph, 1 March 1995, 21. 45. Penelope Houston, Witnesses of War, Sight & Sound, 43(2) (Spring 1974), 46. Susan McConachy, Researching ‘The World at War’, JSFTA, 6. 47. Thames/IWM: Kuehl to Isaacs, 12 March 1972. 48. Kuehl cited an example: ‘We interviewed a woman named Christobel Bielenberg, an Anglo-Irish woman married to a German. Her testimony was invaluable because she was British, but was part of wartime German society. She told a very moving story about the battle of Stalingrad and how the news of it affected the civilian population in Germany. The story wasn’t used because she misremembered certain crucial facts. For example, she misremembered the point at which the German civilian population became aware that Stalingrad was not simply an important battle which was not going exactly the way the Germans wanted, but that troops in Stalingrad had been cut off. She mentioned knowing this fact at a particular time when she couldn’t possibly have had that information. She had read back into events things which she subsequently knew to be the case. And since I had no wish to discredit her as a witness about other matters, I thought it best to advise the producers not to use that story’. Cineaste, 12. 49. Susan McConarchy, Researcher-Interviewer, Cineaste, 22. 50. Ibid. A page of typed notes in the Thames/IWM Collection headed ‘Otto Reimer’ suggest Reimer was ‘of primary interest because he was the man who on 20th July 1944 finally fixed the plotters in Berlin. He spoke to Hitler on the phone that day and knew he was not dead’. But there is also evidence to suggest that the researchers set out to provoke a reaction. Proposed lines of questioning included Hitler's speech ‘Work is capital, gold is dirt’ (‘This should bring forth a tirade against the conspiracy of world jewry against Hitler from then on’) and ‘What do you think caused the war?’ (‘If last question did not get tirade against Jews this one might’). 51. Marwick, The Nature of History, 315. 52. Susan McConarchy, Researcher-Interviewer, Cineaste, 23. 53. Jerome Kuehl, Associate Producer, Cineaste, 15. 54. Thames/IWM: Letter from Doris Chambers, 29 March 1974. 55. One lady wrote ‘to ask if you could put [the] “World at War” film on maybe Monday or Tuesday instead of Wednesday. My grandson and friends watch it and won’t be able to see it at that time on Wednesday as they train at the Youth Club. They are very interested in it and it is the youth of today who ought to see what went on during that time. This may not be possible, and I shall understand if so, but the boys are nice types and will be very disappointed at missing it’. Letter from Catherine Philip, 8 February 1974 (Thames/IWM). 56. Daily Mail, 1 November 1973; Evening Standard, 1 November 1973. 57. Guardian, 1 November 1973. 58. Daily Telegraph, 9 May 1974; Daily Express, 9 May 1974; Daily Mail, 9 May 1974. 59. Observer, 11 November 1973. 60. Thames/IWM: David Elstein to Clive James, 12 November 1973. 61. Douglas Johnson, TV images of war, New Society, 31 January 1974, 267–268. 62. Jerome Kuehl, Associate Producer, Cineaste, 12. 63. Jerry Kuehl, History on the Public Screen (II), in: Smith (ed.), The Historian and Film, 178. 64. Thames/IWM: Letter from Miss D. M. Morris, 11 May 1974. 65. Ibid.: Letter from Mrs J. Bryant, 27 February 1974. 66. Ibid.: Letter from Mrs Rosemary Skyrme, 27 March 1974. 67. Ibid.: Edward C. McCann to Jeremy Isaacs, 3 June 1974. 68. Ibid.: Ronald Mauger to ‘Thames TV’, 29 March 1974. 69. Ibid.: Letter from G. Finch, 13 December 1973. Jerome Kuehl replied: ‘I guess you can’t please all of the people all of the time’. 70. Ibid.: Letter from Mary Brown, 2 December 1973. 71. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Mary Brown, 12 December 1973. 72. Ibid.: Letter from D. Spector, N. Wilson and David Page, n.d. 73. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Messrs Spector, Wilson and Page, 8 March 1974. 74. Ibid.: Letter from from B. W. Hale, 22 February 1974. 75. Ibid.: J. W. Cumming, 19 December 1973 76. Ibid.: Letter from H. J. Owen, 11 May 1974. 77. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Hale, 7 March 1974. 78. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Cumming, 19 December 1974 79. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Owen, 6 June 1974. 80. Ibid.: R. Lumley to Jeremy Isaacs, 12 January 1974. 81. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Lumley, 18 January 1974. Kuehl could not resist correcting Lumley's misspelling of Doenitz. 82. Ibid.: Ted Childs to Lumley, 23 January 1974. 83. Ibid.: Matt E. Norman to Jerome Kuehl, 26 October 1973. 84. Ibid.: Letter from Joan E. Barkley, 8 November 1973. 85. Ibid.: Letter from D. C. Thorne, 22 November 1973. 86. Ibid.: Admiral Sir Charles Woodhouse to Liz Sutherland, 21 November 1973. 87. Ibid.: David Elstein to Clive James, 12 November 1973. 88. Ibid.: Letter from G. Newman, 3 January 1974. 89. Ibid.: Letter from Miss Teresa Malik, 3 January 1974. 90. Ibid.: Letter from Major A. W. Gair, 8 March 1974. 91. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Gair, 26 March 1974. 92. Ibid.: Donald Park to Noble Frankland, 27 May 1974. 93. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Frankland, 10 July 1974. 94. Ibid.: G. Hobley (‘ex-CPO RN’) to Jeremy Isaacs, n.d. 95. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Hobley, 3 June 1974. 96. Ibid.: Mr and Mrs David C. Englet to ‘British Broadcasting Corporation’, 31 January 1974. 97. Ibid.: Letter from Stanley Bennett, 16 April 1974. 98. Ibid : Letter from Captain Roger J. S. Farrell, 27 May 1974. 99. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Farrell, 1 July 1974. 100. Ibid.: Letter from P. Gorka, 2 May 1974. 101. Ibid.: Noble Frankland to Gorka, 20 June 1974. 102. Ibid.: Letter from Mrs M. Reed, 20 February 1974. In the ensuing correspondence, Mrs Reed mistakes Jerome Kuehl for Austin Mitchell MP and complains about the revision of the King James Authorised Bible. 103. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to D. F. Corlan, 18 April 1974. 104. Charles Barr, War Record, Sight & Sound, 58: 4 (Autumn 1989), 261. Barr is referring to (though misquoting the subtitle of) a book edited by Geoff Hurd, National Fictions: World War Two in British films and television (London, 1984), in which one of the essays is entitled ‘The popular memory of World War II and the struggle over national identity’. For a recent discussion of the contested meanings of the war, see Jeremy Black, The Politics of World War Two (London, 2009). 105. Thames/IWM: Jerome Kuehl to Teresa Rubnikowicz, 25 March 1974. Elsewhere Kuehl wrote to producer Peter Batty: ‘I didn’t know there were so many Poles! Can you try and calm this one!’ (4 April 1974) 106. Ibid.: Letter from Miecczyslaw Kowalewski, 9 October 1973. 107. Ibid.: Christopher Rominski to David Elstein, 21 November 1973. 108. Ibid.: Letter from John Mason, 25 March 1974. 109. Ibid.: Letter from Erazm Freliszek, 28 March 1974. 110. Black, The Politics of World War Two, 113. 111. Thames/IWM: Jerome Kuehl to Kowalewski, 8 November 1973. 112. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Freliszek, 16 April 1974. 113. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Mason, 16 April 1974. 114. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Freliszek, 1 July 1974. (Poland beat several major teams, including Italy and Argentina, in the first round of the 1974 World Cup but were knocked out by the eventual winners—West Germany.) 115. Ibid.: Letter from Dorothy Hutchens, 20 March 1974. 116. Ibid.: Letter from D. A. Gardiner, 14 March 1974. 117. Ibid.: Margaret McClure Smith to Howard Thomas (Managing Director, Thames TV), 15 March 1974. 118. Ibid.: Letter from Winfrid Van Vuhl, 16 June 1974. 119. Ibid.: Abel Van Wyk to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 6 February 1974. 120. Ibid.: Jeremy Isaacs to McClure Smith, 20 March 1974. 121. Ibid.: McClure Smith to Isaacs, 23 March 1974. 122. Ibid.: Isaacs to McClure Smith, 26 March 1974. 123. Ibid.: Michael Darlow to Van Wyk, 15 August 1974. 124. Guardian, 28 March 1974. 125. Daily Mirror, 28 March 1974. 126. Sunday Times, 31 March 1974. 127. Daily Telegraph, 28 March 1974. 128. Thames/IWM: Letter from Miss Celia Woltag, 28 March 1974. 129. Ibid.: Michael Darlow to Miss Woltag, 1 April 1974. 130. Ibid.: Dr and Mrs Manny Myerson to ‘WTIC TV’, 27 January 1974. 131. Ibid: Letter from W. Twierdochlebow, 2 February 1974. 132. Ibid.: Michael Darlow to Twierdochlebow, 15 February 1974. 133. Ibid.: William M. Crane (Office of Special Investigations, Department of Justice) to D.L. Taffner, 30 July 1979. 134. Ibid.: Jerome Kuehl to Crane, 31 October 1979. 135. Quoted in Neale, One Man Went to War, 22. 136. Film and the Historian, 44; Paul Smith (ed.), The Historian and Film (Cambridge, 1976). 137. Penelope Houston, Keepers of the Frame: the film archives (London, 1994), 121. 138. Thames/IWM: Anne Fleming to Kuehl, 22 March 1974. 139. Stephen Humphries, The Handbook of Oral History (London, 1984), x. 140. People's Century (1995), a 26-part co-production between the BBC and WGBH Boston, and the 24-part Cold War (1998), produced by Jeremy Isaacs for Ted Turner, represent the last of the major ‘event’ documentary series in the tradition of The World at War. Other heirs to the tradition include Laurence Rees’ series such as The Nazis: a warning from history (1996) and War of the Century (1999), but these were only six and four parts respectively.