The World at War

For other uses, see World at War (disambiguation).

The World at War
Created by	Jeremy Isaacs
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	1
Production
Producer	Thames Television
Running time	22 hours 32 minutes
Original release
Network	ITV
Release	31 October 1973 – 8 May 1974

The World at War is a 26-episode British television documentary series on World War II and the events immediately before and after it. 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.

The series, which made use of rare colour film footage, was commissioned by Thames Television during 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 during 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.

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.

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 home life in Britain and Germany, the experience of occupation in the Netherlands, and the Nazis' use of genocide.

#	Title	Original air date
1	"A New Germany (1933–1939)"	October 31, 1973 (1973-10-31)
2	"Distant War (September 1939 – May 1940)"	November 7, 1973 (1973-11-07)
3	"France Falls (May – June 1940)"	November 14, 1973 (1973-11-14)
4	"Alone (May 1940 – May 1941)"	November 14, 1973 (1973-11-14)
5	"Barbarossa (June – December 1941)"	November 21, 1973 (1973-11-21)
6	"Banzai!: Japan (1931–1942)"	December 5, 1973 (1973-12-05)
7	"On Our Way: U.S.A. (1939–1942)"	December 12, 1973 (1973-12-12)
8	"The Desert: North Africa (1940–1943)"	December 19, 1973 (1973-12-19)
9	"Stalingrad (June 1942 – February 1943)"	January 2, 1974 (1974-01-02)
10	"Wolf Pack: U-Boats in the Atlantic (1939–1943)"	January 9, 1974 (1974-01-09)
11	"Red Star: The Soviet Union (1941–1943)"	January 16, 1974 (1974-01-16)
12	"Whirlwind: Bombing Germany (September 1939 – April 1944)"	January 23, 1974 (1974-01-23)
13	"Tough Old Gut: Italy (1943–1944)"	January 30, 1974 (1974-01-30)
14	"It's A Lovely Day Tomorrow: Burma (1942–1944)"	February 6, 1974 (1974-02-06)
15	"Home Fires: Britain (1940–1944)"	February 13, 1974 (1974-02-13)
16	"Inside the Reich: Germany (1940–1944)"	February 20, 1974 (1974-02-20)
17	"Morning: (June – August 1944)"	February 27, 1974 (1974-02-27)
18	"Occupation: Holland (1940–1944)"	March 13, 1974 (1974-03-13)
19	"Pincers: (August 1944 – March 1945)"	March 20, 1974 (1974-03-20)
20	"Genocide (1941–1945)"	March 27, 1974 (1974-03-27)
21	"Nemesis: Germany (February – May 1945)"	April 3, 1974 (1974-04-03)
22	"Japan (1941–1945)"	April 10, 1974 (1974-04-10)
23	"Pacific (February 1942 – July 1945)"	April 17, 1974 (1974-04-17)
24	"The Bomb (February – September 1945)"	April 24, 1974 (1974-04-24)
25	"Reckoning (April 1945)"	May 1, 1974 (1974-05-01)
26	"Remember"	May 8, 1974 (1974-05-08)

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. 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. The Military History Channel in the UK broadcast the series over the weekend of the 14th and 15th of November 2009. The U.S. version of The Military Channel aired the series in January 2010. Currently, (Summer 2010) BBC2 in the U.K. is transmitting a repeat run 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 Porter. These were released as a bonus to the VHS version and are included in the DVD set of the series.

1. Secretary to Hitler
2. Warrior
3. Hitler's Germany: The People's Community (1933–1939)
4. Hitler's Germany: Total War (1939–1945)
5. The Two Deaths of Adolf Hitler
6. The Final Solution: Part One
7. The Final Solution: Part Two
8. From War to Peace

Books

The original book The World at War, which accompanied the series was written by Mark Arnold-Forster during 1973. During 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 (Parliamentary Private Secretary to Winston Churchill), Averell Harriman (US Ambassador to Russia) and Arthur Harris (Head of RAF Bomber Command).

See also

• The Great War
• BBC History of World War II

External links

• The World at War at IMDb

• The World at War official site