The Unknown War

Having just finished watching this epic telling of what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War I was struck by several things. In the interest of letting others make an informed decision about the recent DVD set I've decided to jot a few things down as Pros and Cons.

First the Pros... The number one reason to get this is for footage not found anywhere else, and lots of it. This covers aspects of World War 2 not even covered in other documentaries that feature the Eastern Front. A small sampling: The Russian attack on Manchuria/Manchuoko (not the small last minute attack western documentaries hint at), Yugoslavia (where over a million people died and yet this material isn't covered anywhere else), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (is there another documentary that covers the Czech uprising AFTER the fall of Berlin?), Hungary and the battle for Budapest, the Caucasus Mountain war, the Baltic states, Byelorussia (truly heart-breaking), Romania, and much more about Poland, Ukraine, the big Russian battles and sieges. This material itself would be worth 5 stars were it not for some of the Cons.

Another Pro: It is helpful in understanding a basic Russian perspective of the war (even as the propaganda has seeped into that viewpoint as our own has ours). It becomes clear that from a Russian perspective that the West promised help, it gave a bit, opened up little skirmishes in North Africa and Italy, dithered a lot and didn't really enter the war until June of 1944, when essentially the Russians had it largely sewn up on the Eastern Front. I'm not saying that that is what happened, but I believe I'm correct in stating that it's the Russian point of view even today. But I'm grateful to be able to crawl into that perspective.

Now the Cons... and there are quite a few. First and foremost, Burt Lancaster and Rod McKuen not withstanding, this was entirely an act of Soviet Propaganda, most of which could have been made in the 50s. Yet it does have the Detente flavor to it. The series was shelved for a while after the Soviet Afghanistan invasion. Nevertheless even though made in the late 70s not a word contradicts the essentially Stalinist interpretation, and not a word implicates Stalin in anything. Quite simply there were no Soviet mistakes. And we know far too much to swallow anything like that today. (To be fair, the Left in America hadn't really digested, or wanted to digest, Solzhenitsyn, the dissidents, or the evidence quite yet.) Fortunately Willard Sunderland's two part analysis (about an hour long) largely helps to correct that impression and I would add that as another Pro. Without that this would be an act of largely defused propaganda. And that's another reason why the propaganda isn't quite so bad, it's mostly been so unmasked and there are few old school leftists around anymore (at least in the West).

Other Cons... Sentimentality. There is a tendency sometimes to edit in such a way as to hammer a sort of Germans are Animals while Russians are Innocent Victims. And granted millions of innocent Russians did die, but who was sending all of these folks to the Gulags too? Who was starving Ukrainians? Who was purging the military before the war? Who was executing Polish officers at Katyn? Was it Stalin alone? For a much more balanced view check out Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow made in the late 90s before Putin revived Russian Nationalism.

And, while there are other nit-picky Cons to observe, the last one I will mention is the music of Rod McKuen. He adds to the sentimentality in truly terrible ways. And at least five times he sings a cheap sentimental ditty over a montage near the end of an episode. Fortunately there are many episodes.

But even with those caveats the Pros win out. There are moments in the visual record that take the breath away. In a shorter and lesser documentary I would've knocked it down to four or five stars. But this is quite an epic. My feeling is that if you can take the Fifties Era pro-Americanism of Victory At Sea then you can surely find much to savor here. Dig in.

I remember well this TV miniseries that ran in 1978 and 1979. My Grandparents and I would watch every episode and they would share WWII memories with me. This miniseries is highly detailed with excellent interviews with surviving field commanders, veterans and leaders from both sides. The episode about the Battle of Stalingrad where "the irresistible force met the immovable object," was unforgettable. This series was pulled from TV when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980. When I saw another recent movie entitled "Enemy at the Gates," starring Jude Law and Bob Hoskiss, I remembered this TV series and am surprised that it has not been released on DVD or VHS yet. I highly recommend this TV miniseries for anyone seriously interested in World War II and it would be perfect also for classroom usage. Let's all hope that this classic miniseries becomes available soon.

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?

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".

What a great series! Film footage I have never seen before and hosted and narrated by one of my favorite actors Burt Lancaster. The entire series is 20 episodes. There are a few interviews but it is mostly actual footage. If you want to get deep into the Rusian front then this series is for you! The episodes are as follows:

June 22 1941, The battle for Moscow, The siege of Leningrad, To the east, The defense of Stalingrad,Survival at Stalingrad, The world's greatest tank battle, War in the Arctic, War in the air,The partisans, The battle of the seas,The battle of the Caucasus, Liberation of the Ukraine, The Balkans to Vienna, The liberation of Poland, The Allies, The battle of Berlin,The last battle of the Unknown war, A soldier of the Unknown war.

I found that one person who was looking for this series did a Google search and they got it! They entered "Unknown war narrated Burt Lancaster". They read about a lady's search for the series and a recommendation of where to get it. There is a companion book that compliments this series also. I have also found that a double album was made about this classic series. The footage is from Russian cameras as well as German cameras. This is the end of the rainbow as far as the Russian front. It does not get any better than this. It really goes into detail but since the Russians made this series it is slanted toward the Russian point of view. All in all if you get a hold of this series you will not regret it. The actual footage with Burt Lancasters voice narrating is fabulous! This series is the "crown jewel" of my collection!