I've left a few comments on some other episodes and I'm afraid I may be repeating myself but don't see how it can be avoided.
"Battlefield" is a superb look at particular campaigns of the Second World War, largely from an objective, impersonal perspective. The narrator tells us what is happening as we watch events unfold. There are no talking heads, no reminiscences by participants. Instead, there is an undemanding technical assessment of the political situation, the men, the weapons, and the phases of the battle.
The first two seasons, Series One, are unimpeachable, thoroughly organized and deftly presented. Thereafter, for several seasons, we have Series Two, of which this episode is a part, and some of the quality has noticeably dropped.
The organization is more confusing, switching around enough at time to leave a viewer a little dazed. The "chapters" are less linear. We don't get "The Leaders", "The Commanders," "The Weapons", and so forth of Series One. There are fewer maps and they contain fewer details.
And, in this case, most viewers will miss the initial chapters on politics and maps desperately. Not being a historian or a political scientist, I could never quite get a clear picture of the internal squabbles among the nations that determined their places in the post-war world. These are the "Balkans" we're talking about.
Each of the countries described seems to have had competing factions, sometimes the result of decisions about national boundaries made near the end of the Great War. In Jugoslavia, for instance, the Orthodox Serbs hate the Catholic Croats, the Christians hate the Muslims, and the Chetkniks hate Tito's partisans. When armed by the democratic Allies, one group was as likely to turn against another ethnic or religious group as against their German occupiers. May I make an editorial comment here? We seem still to be at it.
This episode might make a splendid introduction to World War II for those unfamiliar with its general contours. The battles on both the Eastern and Western fronts are described, as is the air war over Germany and its Axis cohort.
It's chiefly during the last third that attention is given over to the Balkans. I don't know why we so rarely hear about the war in the Balkans. I suppose it was confusing enough that, in some cases, we might not know which group we should root for. And if there's anything that serves as a greater irritant to Hollywood -- or to the human mind -- than ambiguity, I'm not certain what it is. Better to put it out of our consciousness. And it's easy not to think about. I doubt that many college students could walk up to a blank map of Europe and put his finger on Bulgaria. And they produce such fine Easter eggs.
It clarifies the way in which the Soviet Union acquired its satellite states like Rumania and Hungary. The Russian troops marched in, liberated the citizens, and then never left. They saw to it that puppet governments were set in place.
And this episode is filled with facts we usually give little thought to. As the Soviet troops approached the border, the Polish Home Army, which was well organized and well armed, and which had been harassing Germans in order to make the Soviet advance easier, rose openly against its German occupiers, expecting the Russians to cross the border and join them. The Russian troops were in a position to do so, but were ordered to stop and refit, rather than intervene. Stalin even denied permission for American or British cargo planes to use Soviet airstrips to refuel in order to provide material to the rebelling Poles, who were ultimately defeated. Thousands of Polish activists were killed during the uprising, and more than 200,000 civilians died, about the population of a city like Buffalo, New York. With the Poles dead and the Germans gone, Stalin simply walked in and occupied the country. How can civilization produce people like Hitler and Stalin?
It's a pretty blunt, candid narration too. Mistakes on all sides are freely described or at least mentioned. It may come as a surprise to some to find that Hitler's troops were greeted as liberators when they invaded parts of the Soviet Union. Some of the Soviet minorities like the Georgians, Ukranians, and Cossacks, weren't communists and were perfectly happy to be rid of their Soviet dictator. But this perception was rapidly reversed when the Nazis treated the people they'd just "liberated" as not much more than inferior slave labor.
The emphasis throughout is on the fighting on the Eastern front, as it should be. But that fighting was extraordinarily bitter. The suffering of troops and innocent civilians alike was appalling. We often hear Sherman's remark that "War is all hell." And we nod in the firmest of agreements with it. But why is it that we can't seem to stop killing those who disagree with us or those we just dislike for ideological reasons or those who simply look different. I suspect no one is especially anxious to find the answer to a question like that because it's unlikely to be flattering to the human race.
"Battlefield" is a superb look at particular campaigns of the Second World War, largely from an objective, impersonal perspective. The narrator tells us what is happening as we watch events unfold. There are no talking heads, no reminiscences by participants. Instead, there is an undemanding technical assessment of the political situation, the men, the weapons, and the phases of the battle.
The first two seasons, Series One, are unimpeachable, thoroughly organized and deftly presented. Thereafter, for several seasons, we have Series Two, of which this episode is a part, and some of the quality has noticeably dropped.
The organization is more confusing, switching around enough at time to leave a viewer a little dazed. The "chapters" are less linear. We don't get "The Leaders", "The Commanders," "The Weapons", and so forth of Series One. There are fewer maps and they contain fewer details.
And, in this case, most viewers will miss the initial chapters on politics and maps desperately. Not being a historian or a political scientist, I could never quite get a clear picture of the internal squabbles among the nations that determined their places in the post-war world. These are the "Balkans" we're talking about.
Each of the countries described seems to have had competing factions, sometimes the result of decisions about national boundaries made near the end of the Great War. In Jugoslavia, for instance, the Orthodox Serbs hate the Catholic Croats, the Christians hate the Muslims, and the Chetkniks hate Tito's partisans. When armed by the democratic Allies, one group was as likely to turn against another ethnic or religious group as against their German occupiers. May I make an editorial comment here? We seem still to be at it.
This episode might make a splendid introduction to World War II for those unfamiliar with its general contours. The battles on both the Eastern and Western fronts are described, as is the air war over Germany and its Axis cohort.
It's chiefly during the last third that attention is given over to the Balkans. I don't know why we so rarely hear about the war in the Balkans. I suppose it was confusing enough that, in some cases, we might not know which group we should root for. And if there's anything that serves as a greater irritant to Hollywood -- or to the human mind -- than ambiguity, I'm not certain what it is. Better to put it out of our consciousness. And it's easy not to think about. I doubt that many college students could walk up to a blank map of Europe and put his finger on Bulgaria. And they produce such fine Easter eggs.
It clarifies the way in which the Soviet Union acquired its satellite states like Rumania and Hungary. The Russian troops marched in, liberated the citizens, and then never left. They saw to it that puppet governments were set in place.
And this episode is filled with facts we usually give little thought to. As the Soviet troops approached the border, the Polish Home Army, which was well organized and well armed, and which had been harassing Germans in order to make the Soviet advance easier, rose openly against its German occupiers, expecting the Russians to cross the border and join them. The Russian troops were in a position to do so, but were ordered to stop and refit, rather than intervene. Stalin even denied permission for American or British cargo planes to use Soviet airstrips to refuel in order to provide material to the rebelling Poles, who were ultimately defeated. Thousands of Polish activists were killed during the uprising, and more than 200,000 civilians died, about the population of a city like Buffalo, New York. With the Poles dead and the Germans gone, Stalin simply walked in and occupied the country. How can civilization produce people like Hitler and Stalin?
It's a pretty blunt, candid narration too. Mistakes on all sides are freely described or at least mentioned. It may come as a surprise to some to find that Hitler's troops were greeted as liberators when they invaded parts of the Soviet Union. Some of the Soviet minorities like the Georgians, Ukranians, and Cossacks, weren't communists and were perfectly happy to be rid of their Soviet dictator. But this perception was rapidly reversed when the Nazis treated the people they'd just "liberated" as not much more than inferior slave labor.
The emphasis throughout is on the fighting on the Eastern front, as it should be. But that fighting was extraordinarily bitter. The suffering of troops and innocent civilians alike was appalling. We often hear Sherman's remark that "War is all hell." And we nod in the firmest of agreements with it. But why is it that we can't seem to stop killing those who disagree with us or those we just dislike for ideological reasons or those who simply look different. I suspect no one is especially anxious to find the answer to a question like that because it's unlikely to be flattering to the human race.
