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