KNOWING THE UNKNOWN WAR
Summer seems to have come late this year. In fact so far as the
calendar is concerned it isn't even summer anymore, but the long
weekend starting tomorrow is now forecast to be the hottest string
of three days yet. So I probably won't get very many of my outdoor
projects done. Most important is tranferring water from the shed
tank to the house tank, which might take up the early morning time
when I might otherwise write these posts. So I'll try another
before work post, and end up again frustrated with its rushed
quality as well as my late start to the work day.
I finished all twenty hours of The Unknown War, the late-1970s
English-language soviet documentary on their involvement in the
Second World War. You expect a documentary like that to have its
quirks, and it does deliver them, most particularly the
suddenly-colour "today [formerly German occupied city now behind
the iron curtain] is a [superlative] modern city" scenes at the end
of most of the episodes, after showing the hellish landscape that
such cities had been reduced to during the fighting. The
celebration of 1970s city views that are filled by stereotypically
bland concrete soviet appartment buildings is particularly
cringe-worthy. The fact of those territories liberated from the
Nazis then coming under the rule of soviet-satellite governments is
covered with a predictable tone of inevitability, even where vague
reference is made to contests with the leadership of unwilling
local partisan groups.
But so far as covering the fighting of the war itself, from the
German invasion into Russia to the defeat of the Nazis and finally
one episode on fighting the Japanese army in their occupied regions
of China (overall the least-known part to me), it does a fine job.
It seems that the soviets had a large documentary unit filming
right through the war, and although some of the scenes show a
serious likelihood of being staged, there is a huge amount of
clearly genuine footage there too. Remarkably the vast majority of
the twenty hours really is filled with period footage, which might
not be to everyone's taste (especially how it shows no concern with
including the grizzly bits), but suits me fine. The way each
episode covers a particular sub-topic of the war from beginning to
end, you certainly get the overall flow of the conflict, from
German invasion of Russia to German retreats and defeat, hammered
in to the point of tedium. But on the other hand it's a useful way
to look at different perspectives without the distortions of
working them into a combined narrative, and topics that seem
skipped over in early episodes are usually accomodated with a full
hour of coverage later on.
The series does willfully celebrate the collaboration with American
and British armies during the war. Documenting their physical task
of supplying Russian forces with supplies and weapons, and going so
far as including footage of various western political speaches at
home in support of the Soviet government, which look bizarrely
contradictory compared to cold-war attitudes. You get a real sense
of public manipulation going on from that, and it vagely brings to
mind "Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia" from George
Orwell's 1984, written of course when such events were still easily
remembered.
As I mentioned, the second-last episode describing the Russian army
fighting the Japanese in China is probably the part that was least
known to me. I certainly knew of it, but the degree of Russian
involvement is surprising, in fact it hardly mentions the
involvement of Chinese military forces at all. Though perhaps
writing out the involvement of the nationalist government, or Mao's
communists as well, could have been a political move. I didn't
realise that the Japanese leaders in China actually kept fighting
after the Emperor of Japan surrendered to the Allies, continuing
the war there for some weeks after the nuclear bombing on Japan by
the Americans that's generally documented as securing the end of
the matter in western coverage. You can sense a certain bias there
from the other direction.
https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Unknown_War:_Set_1
https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Unknown_War:_Set_2
Clearly I should finally read the copy of Edgar Snow's Red Star
Over China that's been sitting on my shelf for years, and see if it
enlightens me about some more of the Chinese story of fighting
Japanese occupation (then capitalist occupation). On the other hand
I've decided to take a break from the more academic books for now,
and try a personal account of a captured RAF pilot who escaped a
German POW camp in Escape to Live by Edward Howell. It seems it was
a popular book once, with one webpage even claiming the existance
of a BBC documentary series that I'd like to find called
"Deliverance" where the author retraced his escape route.
Also on the topic of unknown history, I did get a little curious
about documentaries on the early history of Israel, given the
current war (now almost more of a political siege) in Gaza. Of
course you can start the story of conflict there about as far back
as you care to go, but my general understanding has been that the
modern story began with the British establishing the area for
Jewish population after the First World War, then it really got
going after WWII, backed then mainly by the Americans. But this
documentary, framed around a rediscovered 1913 Zionist documentary
film, shows how the settler movement, and the beginnings of
resulting conflict with the arab population, both got started a bit
earlier than that:
https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=1913:_Seeds_of_Conflict
- The Free Thinker
