The World at War

Overview

The World at War was commissioned by Thames Television in 1969. Such was the extent of its research, it took four years to produce at a cost of £900,000 (equivalent to £9,800,000 in 2015). At the time this was a record for a British television series. It was first shown in 1973 on ITV.

The series featured interviews with major members of the Allied and Axis campaigns, including eyewitness accounts from civilians, enlisted men, officers and politicians. Among these were 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, Sir Arthur Harris, Charles Sweeney, Paul Tibbets, Lord Avon, Traudl Junge, Mark Clark, Adolf Galland, Hasso von Manteuffel, Jock Colville 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.

Broadcast history

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 in syndication on various stations in 1975. WOR in New York aired the series in the mid-1970s, 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 1980s. The Danish channel DR1 first broadcast the series from August 1976 to February 1977 and it was repeated again on DR2 i 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 14 and 15 November 2009. The Military Channel (now American Heroes Channel) in the United States aired the series in January 2010, and has shown it regularly since. BBC Two in the UK transmitted a repeat run of the series since 5 September 1994 at teatime and has been shown continuously to this day at various times. In 2011, the British channel Yesterday 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.

Home video history

The series was released in various territories on VHS video as well as on 13 Laservision Longplay videodiscs by Video Garant Amsterdam.

In 2001–2005 DVD box sets were released in the US and UK. In 2010 the series was fully restored and re-released on DVD and Blu-ray. In the latter case the image is cropped from its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio down to 1.78:1, to better fit modern widescreen televisions. The restored series was re-released on DVD and Blu-ray in its original aspect ratio, in the United Kingdom on 31 October 2016.

Episodes

The series has 26 episodes. Producer Jeremy Isaacs 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, while the Dona nobis pacem (Latin for "Grant us peace") from the Missa Sancti Nicolai, composed by Joseph Haydn, can be heard. The series ends with Laurence Olivier uttering the poignant word, "Remember".

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 Porter. These were released as a bonus to the VHS version and are included in the DVD set of the series, first released in 2001.

1. "The Making of the Series: The World at War"
2. "Secretary to Hitler – Traudl Junge"
3. "From War to Peace – Professor Stephen Ambrose"
4. "Warrior – Reflections of Men at War"
5. "Hitler's Germany: The People's Community (1933–1939)"
6. "Hitler's Germany: Total War (1939–1945)"
7. "The Two Deaths of Adolf Hitler"
8. "The Final Solution: Part One"
9. "The Final Solution: Part Two"

Books

The original book The World at War, which accompanied the series, was written by Mark Arnold-Forster 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 film 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).