The History Channel has returned to its roots when it was the Hitler Channel. It took Tom Hanks to convince the bosses to carve out some time between programs like Pawn Stars and Ancient Aliens. It will be 20 episodes and promises to be all encompassing. Here’s what the first episode tells us about the series.
The first episode is entitled “The Beginning”. It starts with a “graphic images” warning, but few people watching it will be traumatized by what appeared in episode one. The series will undoubtedly show quite a few dead bodies, but it will be more traumatizing to be reminded how bad some humans can be to other humans. There is a good short introduction by Hanks and he serves as the narrator for the series. (He narrates the great film at the WWII Museum in New Orleans.) For those not aware of it, the actor has history cred. And not just because he has starred in some good to great WWII movies. But he is not just an actor. He was very hands-on for “Band of Brothers” and significantly did not take a role. I trust him.
Hanks is not one of the talking heads. Those consist of mostly college professors, probably because they are used to lecturing students, as opposed to historians whose main talent is writing. (I bet the vetting of the experts included what percentage of their students fall asleep in class.) Not surprisingly, the experts are not just white males. Please don’t assume this makes the series “woke”. I did not notice anything in the first episode that would indicate the series has a liberal agenda. Unless you consider portraying both Hitler and Stalin as evil to be “woke”. (If so, stop reading this and go f*** yourself.) There are some historians of note, including Jon Meacham and Anthony Beevor. I have read extensively on the war and taught it for decades, so I can vouch for the accuracy of what episode 1 covers. There were only a few things I had never read about, so that’s a credit to it.
The episode begins oddly with the invasion of Poland. I assume that was to get explosions in early to keep the audience from leaving. Thankfully, after that taste, it flashes back to the Versailles Conference and gives background leading to the invasion. However, it is just a cursory look at events leading to the start of the war. In a series that has 20 episodes, I would think it would have allowed for a whole first episode dedicated to how we got to Poland. The invasion of Poland should have been episode 2, but you can’t have a whole first episode with no shots fired. Hitler gets some biographical coverage, but there is no mention of the Reichstag Fire. The audience is left with little understanding of how he came to power. Although I assume there will be an episode on the Holocaust, the series does not wait for that to begin coverage of the mistreatment of the Jews. The SS and the Einsatzgruppen are introduced. And so are the NKVD as the series is not going to play nice with Stalin. The Katyn massacre is mentioned. The episode concludes with the bombing of Warsaw. Oddly, there is no mention of blitzkrieg. The series is not going to be a treat for hard core military history buffs.
The obvious comparison would be to the “World at War” series. Since that was my generations gold standard, “WWII with Tom Hanks” clearly hopes to be the 21st Century equivalent. It actually has more in common in format to Ken Burns’ Civil War and American Revolution series. It compares well to them and benefits from the massive amount of footage. Any topic the talking heads want to talk about has visuals to match. Fans of “World at War” might find the colorized pictures jarring, but the History Channel has prepared us for the colorization of the war. However, for this series, the decision was made to use colorized photos, but not footage. And the decision was made to forego the docudrama approach. I just finished watching the excellent docudrama “Soviet Storm” about the Great Patriotic War and it is superior to this series, if you want a heavy dose of strategy and tactics. For your average viewer, the History Channel made the right decision on format.
I am happy to report that my fear of it being pop history was unfounded. Although the very first expert is a podcaster (Dan Carlin of Hardcore History, wearing a baseball cap), the series does not try to sensationalize the war. It does skip boring stuff and concentrate on the greatest hits. For instance, in the second episode, which covers the invasion of France and the Battle of Britain, there is a long segment on Dunkirk and little about Norway. Based on the first three episodes, it appears the series will have problems with running out of time to cover the episode’s topic and has no interest in carrying on in the next episode. It just moves on to Operation Barbarossa in episode 3. Speaking of which, that episode gets all the way to the Battle of Moscow.
Overall, I recommend the series and I am looking forward to watching it. None of my red flags were confirmed. I was worried about the lack of maps, but there are seven in the first episode and they are animated. I can’t be too hard on the History Channel because I don’t want to discourage it from airing history. I do believe in redemption and I encourage the executives to try to get into Heaven. Clearly they are concerned because this same week they are starting a series on the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. You go months of nonstop reality shows and then two history series in the same week?! I’ll take it. This is what DVRs were made for.
GRADE = A-
