The Unknown War

It's wonderful series about war against Nazis in Russia. We call this war - Great Patriotic War. Then all people went against Nazis, they enlisted the Soviet Army and were ready to fight and protect their motherland till the last drop of blood. One of the commanders who defended Moscow at the beginning of this war in 1941 said: "Russia is great but there is no place to retreat as Moscow is behind us". This war took 27,000,000 of lives (and this figure is inexact). In the last film of the series "The Soldier of Unknown War" Burt Lancaster says "There is no such family in Russia which wouldn't lose its member during the war". He is really right. Fathers, brothers, daughter, husbands who were only 16-25 years old by the beginning of the war wanted to protect the country and they came from all cities, towns and the deepest corners of the country to become soldiers, fighters, defenders.... They died for their motherland... They didn't come back to their mothers, children, wives.... But they knew what they were dying for.... Concerning my family... My great-grandfather died in 1943, my grandfather became soldier when he was only 14 years old, he survived and met the news about Victory in Austria. This war is very sacred for us because in 1940's it touched every family and every person even till now. We thank our veterans. Unfortunately they died every year because of their age, but still they are very beautiful, full of good thoughts, still brave.... I am very glad as Russian and as the part of the generation of Russian people whose aim is to pass the story about this war to the next generation (as our parents and grandparents passed it to us) that this series is very truly and full of respect to the veterans of ALL armies who fought against Nazis.... Even I, who was born 37 years after the end of the war, still can't stop crying when I watch the series "Unknown war" as I can't stop crying when I see any other military chronicles of 1939-1945 period....

I remember our entire family watching the series diligently - on communist television in former Czechoslovakia. I must have been late seventies or early eighties, I don't know anymore.

I still remember the magical words 'Hello, I'm Burt Lancaster' that opened every episode.

It was amazing (to us) to see "such a famous American actor" talking about the evens between 1939-1945 we had been brainwashed about ever since we could remember (my parents were born right after the war ended.)

We had seen many, many movies about the WW II - the government made sure of it - but, of course, none of those movies was free of communist propaganda. The invincible Soviet Union lead the world (and some insignificant allies) to victory; D-Day was, pretty much, an obscure episode; and the end of war was celebrated on May 9th. And that was that.

The Unknown War was the first documentary that didn't stink of brainwashing and yet, it was showing the same basic facts and much more. For someone, who grew up under communism, it was absolutely refreshing and amazing to watch.

Even from an adult perspective, and with the Berlin Wall down, this TV series was very well produced and would be enjoyed by any intelligent person no matter where they were born. And they don't even have to be history geeks.

I do agree with the (insuradj02) about the Soviet government controlling all the resource material at the time the series was produced; naturally - many important and atrocious events are not mentioned here, but I wouldn't go as far as dismissing the commentary as biased and inaccurate. (I mean, please, how many Americans knew of the Japanese internment camps or were even aware of what exactly was holocaust? To many of my educated and smart American friends Spielbergs Schindler's list was a revelation!)

I moved to Seattle form Prague in 2001 and have been scouting local video stores for the Unknow War without success. If it ever comes out on DVD somewhere, please let me know.

Speaking as an American veteran of Vietnam and longtime amateur military historian, I think this is an excellent series. I taped it from a broadcast by a Los Angeles station in late 1987, and I'm glad I did. I wish I could get a copy on DVD.

The Soviet-German struggle was by far the biggest and most important component of World War II, and has long been overlooked by us Americans, who like to think WE won the war, more or less by ourselves.

We did, of course, in the Pacific theater, but in Europe we helped the Soviets crush Adolf Hitler. It's telling that an estimated 88% of German military fatalities in the war were caused by the Soviets.

I have to give this series, broadcast in 1978, an "8" - almost a "9" because of it's remarkable televising of long unseen Russian newsreel and movie photography of the war effort on the Eastern Front from 1941 through 1945. In a sense the release of this material in 1978 was a kind of harbinger of the release of long secret Russian historical records and archives in the "Glastnost" period, until even today. The most notable effect of this tendency was the cooperation of the post 1985 governments to assist in finding and restoring the family remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his slaughtered wife Alexandra, and their children, to the Romanoff Family for proper burial. There are other examples, such as tracing the fates of millions of Stalin's purge victims. But the first feeble attempt at this was the photography released for this series on the Russian sacrifice (20 million dead!) in the Second World War.

But the film was released at a heavy price: The Russian Government of Leonid Brezhnev insisted that they control the narrative. Now, while nobody in their right minds would deny the terrible losses and trauma Russians and other Soviet Peoples suffered at the hands of the Nazis (example on a "small level, shown in the series: the destruction of the home of the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tschaikoswki by Nazi goons and the burning of original musical manuscripts to show their contempt for Slavic culture), the narrative went to the extent of almost denying the losses of Britain and Commonwealth, China (Communist and Kuomintang), the United States, France, and others (Jews, for example), as being on a large level too. The result was, at the least, annoying. In the opening episode the Western Viewer was told by the narrator (Burt Lancaster, managing to give a good accounting of his delivery - even when speaking the worst nonsense) that the so called "Winter War" of 1939 - 1944 between Finland under Marshall Mannerheim and Stalin's Russia was due to Finnish aggression.

I don't think I ever heard before about this theory of "Greater Finland" or the hitherto under-discussed "Finnish Baltic Supremacy Theory" that shook up the globe. Somehow it escaped most of us.

To be fair Mannerheim did get aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but he was not a puppet of the former (say like Vidkun Quistling of Norway) nor a collaborator like Pierre Laval of France. In fact, Mannerheim threatened to make peace with Stalin, and even join forces with Russia against Germany, if any attempt was made to deport Finland's small Jewish population.

It is instructive that in the general "clensing" of neo-Nazi stooges in Europe following 1945, like Franco in Spain, Mannerheim was not bothered. But unlike Franco Mannerheim was honored as a great hero - even getting on an American postage stamp in the 1960s.

Similar twisting of history distort the good of the series. Little is said of such off stage incidents as the blitz or the later V2 campaign against London. While aerial warfare is given good treatment (particularly showing the loosening of sexual role playing in the war - like America's "Rosie the Riveter", Russia's women played an active role in the war machine, even as pilots of the Russian air force), the Russian's willingness to sacrifice anything for victory is underplayed. Stalin is not shown as the monster he was - his Nonaggression Pact with Hitler is barely touched on. Nothing is said of the Gulags or the Purges, except to extol certain public works projects that were valuable (that we now know were built by slave laborers from the Gulags.

The series was not fully shown. Russia invaded Afghanistan, and the U.S. public lost interest. It has not been brought back with a fixed narrative, but it probably could be now. Russia did sacrifice on an unprecedented scale. But the story of that hard, terribly hard and bloody victory of the Russian People still needs to be told without propagandistic lies for the West and the rest of the World to know of, and appreciate. Those lies prevent this from being a "10".

Watching many documentaries about WWII is like watching the Olympics on network TV, you usually are limited to watching the US in the games. When the best indoor volleyball game is Spain against Poland, you get to watch the US against any other country.

The 2nd world war was a "World War"! Lot's of prominent action did not involve the United States directly. Many other countries such as Canada, Australia and Iceland made significant contributions. Where are their stories? I'm sure that New Zealand's efforts are well known at home, but not told to those of us here in the US who are interested in the bigger picture.

This documentary brings an acute understanding of the Russian loss of life and property in comparison to that of the US. Are we so parochial that we cannot, after 60 years, offer sympathy and credit, where it is due, to the enormous effort of the Russian people?