Countdown to War

This British ITV production was timed for the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War and is both intelligently scripted and engrossing.

The fine cast of actors is dominated by Ian McKellen's mesmerising Hitler. Many actors have attempted to inhabit the skin of the German dictator but to my mind McKellen's performance is one of the best ever committed to film (or in this case, videotape). It is completely convincing and never lapses into caricature. McKellen possesses the same piercing blue eyes as the Fuhrer which adds to the verisimilitude of his performance.

Every nations characters have formal English accents. The uniforms the characters wear are not accurate and unidentifiable at times. The characters are not introduced or named. The scenes jump for location to location and nothing is displayed on screen or mentioned in conversation therefore locations are not identified. The only way to follow the movie is to have a baseline understanding of the events. And the only way to know what nation you're in or listening to is to closely listen to the conversations, which ever country they aren't talking about is that nations representative that's talking. I only gave it 5 stars because it's one of few movies that leads up to the beginning of WWII.

I remember when this was first shown over 20 years ago and l'm as impressed now as l was at the time. How anybody can rate this production or, in fact, any production as 1 or 2 is beyond me - if the film is that bad then anyone of any sense would stop watching after a few minutes, in which case how can the review be a fair one? I notice that the poorest review was by an outright Nazi sympathiser who blames Jews for bringing Germany to such a pass that it forced the country to invade its neighbours and it must be convenient to have a world view that dismisses some of the complexities that are brought out in this TV play.

As a WWII history buff, I really enjoyed Countdown to War. You can see it is a high budget television production. It has scenes of the diplomacy involved up to the start of the war that include diplomats from Germany, Italy, England, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia and the USA. The production is done very literally with a minimum of artistic interpretation. This will probably come off as very dry to the average viewer but for a history buff it was hard to stop watching. My criticisms of the film is that all the characters are English so it may be a bit hard at times to know what country is being presented. Some titles for the various diplomats introductions may have helped as even I was a bit confused who's side was talking at times (Polish?) but I recognized the major players although the average viewer will probably be lost. I noticed that David Irving was a historical contributor to the film which also caught my attention as I thought he had been discredited in the public eye by 1989 (he was). For history buffs this is an excellent TV production that I rate a high score of 9 out of 10. For the average viewer, it's possibly unwatchable as there are many different characters involved that are hard to differentiate due to all being English actors and accents playing different countries.

Clearly showed Germany bluffs. How hitler planned his invasion .