Ken Burns explores ‘the worst war’

WASHINGTON POST

With stark images and deadly sounds, Ken Burns’s landmark PBS World War II documentary depicts what the filmmaker calls “the worst war that ever happened to humans.” He traces the events of 1941 to 1945 with vintage photos and film, enhanced by personal recollections of survivors on the front lines and on the home front: in Waterbury, Conn.; Luverne, Minn.; Mobile, Ala.; and Sacramento.

“It is emotionally wrenching. You see it in the faces. Some of them are just now opening up about it,” he said. “I could not have made this film 10 or 15 years ago. They were not talking then. And I could not make it five years from now; they’ll be gone.”

“The War” will air over seven nights beginning at 8 p.m. on PBS 45/49.

EPISODE 1: A Necessary War

Sunday. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, America was forced into the war that had begun in 1939, and millions of young men joined the armed forces. This episode includes the Battle of Midway; the presence of German U-boats menacing the East Coast; and the outmanned, underequipped U.S. forces facing the Japanese army at Guadalcanal.

EPISODE 2: When Things Get Tough

Monday. Allied troops tried to foil Germany’s attempted occupation of most of Western Europe, making some progress after George S. Patton assumed command in 1943. Thousands of American airmen flew daylight bombing missions.

EPISODE 3: A Deadly Calling

Tuesday. Upon seeing Life magazine photos and color newsreel footage of battles, many Americans realized the toll the war was taking. Allied forces were stuck in mountains south of Rome, unable to penetrate German lines.

EPISODE 4: Pride of Our Nation

Wednesday. On D-Day — June 6, 1944 — Allied troops, 1.5 million strong, invaded France. Nearly 1,500 Americans died after landing at Normandy. Burns said the words of one soldier, speaking six decades later, are central to the episode’s impact. “He says, ‘the greatest thing I ever did in my life was getting those 12 men off the beach,’ ” Burns said. “To have someone 65 years later know that was the bravest thing he’s ever done, he knew it then, and it almost didn’t matter what else he ever did.”

EPISODE 5: FUBAR

Sept. 30. American soldiers entered some of Germany’s most heavily defended terrain, where tens of thousands fought in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest from 1944 to 1945. “This episode introduced me to two battles that never should have been,” Burns said.

EPISODE 6: The Ghost Front

Oct. 1. When Allied bombers had secured Iwo Jima, they began an air assault on Japan. In Europe, the Battle of the Bulge (1944-45) was the deadliest of World War II. Burns found a defining episode in that battle. “There’s a wonderful moment when an African American soldier suddenly realizes he is more American than anyone else there,” he said. “They’re all dressed in American uniforms, but he has had to bear the burden of Jim Crow and here he is fighting this war.”

EPISODE 7: A World Without War

Oct. 2. This segment, which includes the surrender of the Nazis, the death of President Roosevelt and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, all in 1945, shows “the way in which our soldiers dealt with what you think would be a uniformly positive thing, coming home,” Burns said. “Each man had to take the things he had seen and done, the memories of friends he had left, never to see them again, and figure out how to deal with the rest of their lives, to return to normal. And it was a new, very different, normal.”