Reading what happened in World War II in a book compared to seeing it on a screen is a completely different experience. Personally, I prefer watching the events on a screen so that my mind does not have to wander. When I watch a WWII documentary on a screen, the horrible images of the Holocaust and the battle field are right in front of my eyes. As bad as they are and as terrible as they are to look at, I know they are not any worse then what I see in front of me.
This is not the case with a book. While books are filled with detail and adjectives, they leave the reader some space in the imagination to picture horrible things. Rarely in a World War II book will it explain, people’s facial expressions for example. In a documentary, actors will sometimes portray facial expressions, or they will be shown using something like an old photograph. One example of a World War II book is the novel Bloodlands.
The book Bloodlands is about World War II and it’s horrors. In the introduction, the author gives immediate detail. When referring to the world as it was right after the first World War he writes, “The European great powers that were not destroyed by the war, Britain and especially France, were substantially weakened” (Page 3). While this quote is filled with detail that leaves a visual in the reader’s mind, it could easily be narrated through a screen while pictures and video are being displayed. In that way, a documentary is able to take visuals and descriptions one step further by adding things, like video clips, that would not be in a book. Therefore, I definitely would rather watch a documentary about World War II rather then read a book about it. (Although I enjoyed reading Bloodlands).
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
JIMMY CARTER, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2002
War is the trade of kings.
JOHN DRYDEN, King Arthur
All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
TONY BENN, speech, Feb. 28, 1991
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Jan. 10, 1946
There never was a good war, or a bad peace.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Poor Richard’s Almanac
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist
I believe the Holocaust was able to happen because of a few factors. First, it occurred at the right time in German history. What do I mean by this? Germany had just been embarrassingly defeated in the very first world war. Paying back war reparations put Germany in extreme debt. Money became absolutely worthless. At some grocery stores, women could be seen using whole shopping carts full of money to pay for one loaf of bread.
The economic crisis plus the humiliation of defeat made it easy for a leader to rise up from the ashes and declare that there was a scapegoat. This leader was of course Adolf Hitler. He informed the German people that it was not their fault they were in extreme poverty. He said it was the Jews fault because they ‘controlled all the money.’ In times of hardship people will try to blame anyone but themselves. The group of people that the German nation started hating could have been an arbitrary selection on Hitler’s part (in fact, nobody is quite sure why Hitler hated Jewish people so much). Unfortunately for the Jews, they were selected, and brutal prejudice and hate crimes came in massive streams.
Nazi propaganda was a major reason why the Holocaust was able to go on for as long as it did. Not many people knew that Jews were being slaughtered in concentration camps in the beginning. Nazis told the public through propaganda that Jews were being taken away, not that they were being killed. Nazis portrayed Jews as evil, with horns and bad intentions. Pictures such as the one below started to come out in massive proportions.
Nazi propaganda
This picture portrays a Jew looking very scary and terrifying, not like a normal person. Therefore, Germans were able to separate their Jewish friends and neighbors in their minds as people that were foreign. Jews were seen as ‘scary.’ People to be feared- people who were different than everyone else. Nazi propaganda such as this was very effective in promoting and spreading hatred around Germany and around all of Europe.
I would say that Jews suffered the most in the Holocaust. Although other groups were killed in concentration camps as well, it was not nearly as many as the 6 million Jews who were brutally killed. Unfortunately, through the rise of a powerful leader and through the use of hateful propaganda, the Holocaust was able to go on for as long as it did without any intervention. It was only when the United States got involved that the war stopped. However, one shutters to think about how long the brutal murders would have gone on without American intervention.
If you were given a modest budget to create a documentary to tell a part of the story of 1939-1945, what would your subject be?
With a modest budget it is hard to complete a legitimate documentary. My class was given the privilege of having a guest lecturer, Nicole Newnham, come in to talk about her two documentaries Rape of Europa and They Drew Fire. She explained that it is very hard to fund-raise for a documentary and much more money is needed then one would initially expect for a film. Therefore, I would probably only have interviews in my documentary with a modest budget and not very many special effects or anything that would cost extra money.
The documentary would probably be about an hour to and hour and a half long. It would consist of a series of different interviews. There would be opening credits and closing credits. Besides this, there would be nothing fancy about it. It would be straight facts for the viewers from primary and secondary sources who were present during World War II or stories from the children of people who were involved in World War II.
I would choose to present my documentary on the Auschwitz concentration camp. While this is a very sad subject to do a documentary on, I think it is very important to keep the legacy of the Holocaust alive so that it does not happen again. Auschwitz was the biggest concentration camp, killing millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other groups of people that did not fit into the ‘Aryan ideal.’ I would do a documentary on the horrors of the concentration camp and an analysis of how this was able to happen in such a short period of time.
It is important to keep the horrible realities of concentration camps ever-present in the public’s minds. Some people try to deny that the Holocaust ever happened, but when documentaries are made with actual evidence theses deniers have no validity. When someone sits down for an interview and says “I know that it happened, I was there” that is the most powerful weapon against a future genocide. This is why it is crucial to have documentaries about World War II and this is why I would choose this subject for my own documentary.
Nicole Newnham's They Drew Fire poster
I thought that the movie “Judgment at Nuremberg” was a really interesting take on the portrayal of WWII. Instead of focusing on the events that happened during the actual time of war, it showed the trials of the Nazis by Americans after Germany lost. I liked this better than “World at War” and “Shoah” because it showed an aspect of WWII I never learned about before. The facts that are brought about in “World at War” are interesting, but I have heard about the happenings during the war alot in history classes. The Nazi trials are not brought up in “World at War” or “Bloodlands” in depth as in “Judgment at Nuremberg.”
I would give “Judgment at Nuremberg” a 7 as far as truthfully portraying the war. I think that a lot of the dialogue in “Judgment at Nuremberg” happened during the Nazi trials, but I also think some conversations were added for drama. For example, it seems unrealistic that the judge of the trials would allow the defense prosecution lawyers to bicker back and forth in a heated fit of passion for as long as they did during the movie. This appears to be added to make the trial more intriguing to watch overall.
“May I stress the need for courageous, intelligent, and dedicated leadership… Leaders of sound integrity. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with justice. Leaders not in love with money, but in love with humanity. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Documentaries work better if they are social. First, it is easier to share your opinions of the documentary with your friends and get feed back making it possible to get a wide array of opinions. Also, people tend to get more passionate in a social setting where others are passionate. This is how the Nazis were able to gain so many followers in World War II. The German people would see that their friends supported the Nazis, so often times people would support them because their peers were even if they did not believe in their message. This same response can be applied to people watching a documentary together. Passionate responses lead to social change.
The first major problem of the documentary is the question what do you leave out? There are clearly more facts in World War II than a simple documentary allows. The documentarian must pick and choose the facts and information that they want to show their viewers.
There were many battles: The Battle for Britain, Pearl Harbor, the war in the western desert, Stalingrad (The first massive german defeat), the dropping of the atomic bomb, etc. Most of these themes will only have one hour to be portrayed.
“The World At War” is a television narrative history documentary series portrays all of these battles in a series of very well made documentaries. They also explain the propaganda at the time. For example, many Germans believed that they were winning the war when in fact, they were losing horribly to America and Britain. However, Nazi Germany had perfected cinematic propaganda and made their points of view very convincing to the average viewer.
In “The World At War” series, there is an interview with Hitler’s minister of war production. There is also an interview with the wife of a conspirator against Hitler, and a Berlin housewife. These interviews are second hand counts of Hitler’s actions during the war.
The documentary makers who made the television narrative series had to pick and choose which people were going to be interviewed and put into the series and which were going to be cut from the final script. With a final cut-off of only 2,000 words of narration, the makers had to leave out a lot. This leads to the question does fiction tell you more of a complete story? “The World At War” series is credible because of the credibility of the people behind it— the viewer knows that they are not getting a fictionalized account. But would that necessarily be a bad thing? Could it be possible that fiction is just as accurate of a portrayal of WWII as a non-fiction documentary? What are your thoughts and opinions on the issue?
Documentary slogan
I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
John Adams
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire
A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Now, an Army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating.
We have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. You know, by God I actually pity those poor bastards we’re going up against. By God, I do. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel.
Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you’ll chicken out under fire. Don’t worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.
Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We’re going to hold onto him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass. We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we’re gonna go through him like crap through a goose.
There’s one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home. And you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what did you do in the great World War II, you won’t have to say, “Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”
proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle – anytime, anywhere. That’s all.
Poster for the movie 'Patton'
World War II Through Different Media outlets 