Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain

This is a rather long historical series produced by the BBC and released here through WGBH in Boston.

It's probably the most thorough examination of that period in 1940 that I've seen on television or in a theater, at least the equal of the esteemed "Battlefield" series. There is a lengthy and informative sketch of the context of Britain's air war, given partly through narration and newsreel or combat footage and partly through interviews with some of the participants. I never knew the British public had such doubts about Churchill when he took office at the age of sixty-five, or that he slept for half an hour at a time with a black bandage over his eyes and then worked until the early hours of the morning. That observation comes from his secretary at the time, and other bits are contributed by a WAAF who was promoted from driving only staff cars to driving trucks. (They were both pretty cute and they still have an abundance of style.) It's subjective, of course, from their point of view, but their point of view is merely part of the larger historical collage. It's far beyond being any kind of flag-waving, jingoistic propaganda piece.

The United States at the time was strictly isolationist. The phrase was, "we aren't going to pull Europe's chestnuts out of the fire again." An isolationist organization called "America First" was led by Charles Lindbergh. None was more isolationist than our ambassador to the UK, Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president. (It didn't help that he was Irish.) The rumor spread that Churchill was nothing more than an erratic drunk. Looking back, naturally, it's easy to condemn the defeatists whose attitude was that Hitler was winning and would continue to win, and that we just have to learn to get along with dictators. It sounds traitorous now. But at the time, Hitler had done nothing BUT win. The Nazis had occupied France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Luxemburg, and Poland. They had even occupied some of the British Islands in the English channel. The US was neutral. Russia had signed a pact with the Nazis. They'd never been stronger and Britain was on its knees. If the past is prologue, the patient's prognosis was grim.

Some of the information we get is ignored in most tales about the Battle of Britain. For instance, Hitler made an offering of peace. Britain would be safe from attack and would keep all of her colonies. In return, she would allow Germany free reign on the continent. Some of Churchill's cabinet were all for it. It just seemed like common sense. But Churchill rejected the offer out of hand, which led to some resignations. Another incident not usually dealt with is the evacuation under fire of British and French troops from Boulogne at the tip of the Cotentin peninsula, smaller but no less hectic than the more famous evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk.

I always find it dramatic when a shot of the French battlefield in 1940 -- all spotted, blurry, and black and white -- dissolves into a video clip of the same battlefield taken from the same spot today. One's feelings are liable to be mixed. Yes, a relief that the slaughter is over and that the gutted fields are now green and fresh again. But it also leads to a realization that in many ways the world is reduced to a state of less complexity in war time. What glorious simplicity. We hate them, and we all pull together against a common enemy. And finally a kind of melancholy that those peaceful grassy valleys and the sense of mission aren't likely to co-occur. Humans seem to be stuck between a facile simplicity and a state of tranquility and aimlessness. We seem to bounce back and forth between the two and find both of them distressing.

It's nicely directed and edited throughout. Some of the former soldiers stroll through the sites where they once fought and sometimes were wounded. It's moving, seeing an infantryman, now old, gazing at the crater formed by the very mortar shell that had crippled him sixty years ago. Not that any of them choke up. These are Brits. Some of the anecdotes are amusing and ironic. After the tank battle at Arras, which the Germans won, a second lieutenant is lost in the dark and he and his driver are trying to regain the Allied lines if they still exist. Finally they dimly make out a line of vehicles ahead. There are no lights, of course, and the driver bumps into one of the trucks. A horde of German soldiers jump from the truck and their officer curses out the British lieutenant, clears a path for him, and tells him to get the hell out of the way, not knowing the tank and its crew are the enemy.

Yet, as long as the program is, its view is limited to that of high-echelon political shenanigans and low-level observers. That is, the personal outweighs the systemic. There is no discussion at all of the weapons used by each side. There is no description of which units are moving where. And there isn't a map or any other graphic in sight. But all that stuff is already widely known or can be looked up. The approach used in this episode is a necessary one because by the time you see it most of the interviewees who have recorded their observations will be gone.

These comments are based on Part I. I don't expect Part II to be much different in style. If it is, I'll edit this review.

While there have been many documentaries about the Battle of Britain in 1940, this one for PBS is by far the most complete and well done you can find. I just can't imagine any better. The show is divided into two segment--each about 105 minutes. The first concerns the beginning of WWII and last just before the major German onslaught on Britain in the Summer of 1940. The second section, from the battle until the Germans let up--realizing that they cannot win such a battle.

The film consists of mostly interviews with survivors--and the youngest were about 80 at the time the film was made. In other words, these are recordings of various testimonies just before the voices would forever be silenced by old age. I liked how the interviews were quite varied. Not only soldiers and politicians, but newspaper reporters, kids, a remarkable woman who was in a torpedoed ship transporting children to Canada and many more. Their accounts are so very compelling--you can't help but be affected. And this is what makes this film different. It does NOT play like an episode of "World At War". There is little narration, no maps, charts and little discussion of the battle plans or politics. Instead, it's all individual stories--fascinating and a great piece of history. Well worth seeing.

By the way, although it's not a major problem, I thought the film spent too much time talking about the Spitfire fighter--especially since MOST used during the battle were the older but almost equally capable Hurricanes--the real plane that won the Battle of Britain.