Das Boot, Season Two, on MHz Choice

This season could be called “the Hunt for Reich October.” U-boat captain Johannes von Reinhartz is sick of collecting medals for torpedoing civilian passenger ships. He wants to end the war and if that also ends National Socialism, so much the better. He is supposed to ferry Gestapo saboteurs to the New England coast, but instead, he intends to pop up in the middle of Manhattan’s harbor, where he will turn over his U-boat and its Enigma machine to the American authorities. However, the Kriegsmarine’s most psychotic U-boat captain has been ordered to stop him in season two of creators Johannes W. Betz & Tony Saint’s Das Boot, which premieres today on MHz Choice.

It has been over seven years since Hulu streamed season one and only season one (out of four total). That is a long time in between seasons (for Americans), but it is surprisingly easy to pick up the flow of the next batch of episodes. Inexperienced Captain Klaus Hoffman was cast adrift, presumed to his death, after deranged Captain Ulrich Wrangel rallied his crew to mutiny. Instead, Hoffman managed to reach shore, finding his way to the office of Samuel Greenwood, the son of an American industrialist trying to keep his business ties to Germany under wraps. The junior Greenwood represented half of the highly classified prisoner swap Hoffman’s U-boat conducted. Now, the American hopes to extract information to help his father bid for defense contracts.

Although briefly imprisoned for leading the insurrection, Wrangel is reinstated to hunt down von Reinhartz, once his betrayal is exposed. Wrangel assumes von Reinhartz’s honor will be his undoing. Conversely, von Reinhartz expects Wrangel’s recklessness will eventually lead him to overplay his hand. While von Reinhartz initially hopes to keep his crew in the dark, he recruits radio operator Frank Strasser as an ally. Strasser yearns to reunite with the daughter he sent to safety abroad. His sister Simone, a translator for the SS and a secret resistance member, is more idealistic, but it will cost her dearly.

Like season one, the action shifts back and forth between the aquatic warfare in the Atlantic, land-based intrigue—either the Resistance’s tragic drama in France or the espionage-saboteur thriller that develops in New York. Fittingly for a series titled Das Boot, the submarine-based storyline is the tightest, tensest, and grabbiest, while the Resistance arc is the weakest. Yet, it still has its merits. It also features Vicky Krieps (whose stature has grown considerably since the series originally aired in Germany), as Simone Strasser.

Arguably, the New York sections happen to be a surprisingly smart and engaging departure from season one. Although sick of war, Hoffman feels compelled to return to Germany. To that end, he falls in with German spy Friedrich Berger, who has forged an alliance with the German Bund and anti-British Irish officials in the police and local government. At one point, writer Colin Teevan clearly implies Tammany Hall was treasonously sympathetic to Germany. That would sound inconceivable, but a Mamdani appointee was just caught trying to forge an alliance with the Iranian regime, so apparently history repeats itself.

Regardless, Clemens Schick is terrific as the disillusioned but still crafty von Reinhartz. Likewise, Stefan Konarske makes a worthy rival as the sweaty, unhinged Wrangel. Similarly, Pit Bukowski is spectacularly twitchy as Pips Luders, a U-boat engineer imploding from the guilt resulting from his crimes during the mutiny.

Rogue Heroes Season 2, on MGM+

Eight decades after WWII, many in the United Kingdom now question why Lt. Col. Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne never received his nation’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross (VC), nor has any other member of the Special Air Service (SAS), the commando unit he led throughout North Africa and Italy. In fact, no subsequent SAS commando has received the VC, which is strange, considering their valorous history. The hit show prompting these questions also offers an obvious explanation. The snobby officer class happily let the SAS fight and die on their behalf, but they never considered the highly effective but ill-disciplined unit proper soldiers. The disdain was mutual, at least it is throughout the second season of creator-writer Steven Knight’s Rogue Heroes (a.k.a. SAS Rogue Heroes), still adapted from Ben McIntyre’s nonfiction book, which premieres tomorrow on MGM+.

At the end of season one, Lt. Col. David Sterling, the co-founder of the SAS and then-Major Mayne’s commanding officer had been captured and interned in an Italian POW compound. Consequently, he has far less screentime in season two. However, Mayne more than capably picks up the slack. He also gets a new Sterling, Lt. Col. Bill Sterling, who is much more a proper officer according to the way top brass thinks. Of course, Mayne considers him an aristocratic dilettante. Nevertheless, the new Sterling is a better, more conscientious advocate for the SAS, or the SRS (Special Raiding Service), as they are temporarily renamed, than Mayne realizes.

Regardless, Montgomery and Allied command continues sending the SAS/SRS on foolhardy advance missions, paving the way for the regular army’s Italian invasion, because they keep surviving, killing many Germans and fascists in the process. Given their track record, Eve Mansour, the Algerian-born Free-French spy, who also happened to be David Sterling’s lover, hopes to rendezvous with Paddy Mayne, hoping to support his efforts and possibly glean some intel for De Gaulle regarding the expected invasion of France. Surely, the SAS (as they insist on calling themselves) will be in thick of any such operation.

One way or another, the SAS/SRS keeps rolling, but they are all not completely immune to the horrors of war, just the increasingly in/famous Paddy Mayne, who does not merely laugh in he face of death—he double-dog-dares it. There is no question Mayne is the star of season two and Jack O’Connell runs with it.

Indeed, O’Connell swaggers, snarls, and howls like a champion. You would almost think O’Connell was classically trained, given Mayne commanding bravura poetry recitations—one of the commando officer’s many eccentricities that worries Staff Sgt Jim Almonds, his designated conscience and voice of reason. That is a tough duty to draw.

It is also hard sharing the screen with O’Connell, but Corin Silva and Theo Barklem-Biggs shine developing season two’s other standout characters, Almonds and Sgt. Reg Seekings. Indeed, Barklem-Biggs would generate awards buzz in a more perfect world for the way he portrays Seekings’ PTSD (as we would call it today), as well as his righteous fury at the civilian casualties resulting from the National Socialists’ ruthlessness.

Atlantic Crossing: FDR & the Princess, on PBS

It is too bad Poland and the Baltic Republics did not have a supply of exiled princesses to send to flirt with FDR. If they had, post-war history might have been much happier for Eastern Europe. Fortunately for Norway, their Crown Princess forged a critical personal and strategic connection with the President. That much is true, but the surrounding history gets a generous stretching in creator-director Alexander Eik’s Atlantic Crossing, which premieres this Sunday on PBS.

During a pre-war goodwill tour of America, Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha made quite an impression on Pres. Roosevelt, especially the latter. As a result, the president is delighted to give her asylum after the Germans invade and occupy Norway, particularly since Prince Olav was evacuated to London, in order to liaison between the cabinet in exile and the British military. Soon, FDR even has the royal children calling him “godfather,” but he is still adamantly opposed to taking any military action in Europe.

Of course, Norway is desperate for aid, so the princess works behind the scenes to make Roosevelt more of an internationalist-interventionist. Initially, all the time she spends with Roosevelt rather irks the peacenik first lady, but eventually even she warms to Princess Martha’s charms.

Atlantic has already stirred up a hornet’s nest of historical controversy for the rather liberal dramatic license it takes. Churchill certainly gets short shrift for his concerted effort to woe FDR to the Allied cause. Yet, arguably, admirers of the Roosevelts have even more to gripe about. Essentially, the show reduces the Lend-Lease act to a heartsick sugardaddy’s box of chocolates. The truth is FDR is one of the greatest presidents in American history, precisely because he was such a disciplined wartime commander-in-chief. What kind of legacy is left when you take that away? Prolonging the Great Depression and court-packing?

The eight-part series also goes from Pearl Harbor to the Yalta Conference in the blink of an eye. We guarantee it did not feel like that to Americans who lived through the war. In fact, the first three episodes are probably the most absorbing, because of the way they depict the unrealistic belief Norway’s neutrality would keep it out of war and the desperate consequences of its military unpreparedness. Yes, this is the part where I draw parallels between the denial and appeasement of the 1930s and our similar policies towards the overtly hostile CCP today.

World on Fire: WWII Breaks Out, in 7 Episodes

They are called “world wars” because they swept across nations, continents, and social classes. It was pretty much all-hands-on-deck for the United Kingdom in 1939. Both the well-heeled Chase family and the working-class Bennett family will become deeply involved in the war and awkwardly intertwined with each other in the seven-part World on Fire, created and written by Peter Bowker, which premieres this Sunday on PBS.

Aspiring jazz singer Lois Bennett and Harry Chase met and probably fell in love as anti-fascist activists, despite his snobby mother Robina’s efforts to break them up. Instead, the Foreign Office severs their romance by posting Harry (a gifted linguist) in Poland. While in-country, he has a fling with Kasia Tomaszeski, a pretty waitress. Nancy Campbell, a hawkish American radio journalist in the Martha Gellhorn mold, convinces Chase to marry Tomaszeski, to save her from the brutality of the inevitable National Socialist occupation. However, she crosses him up, sending her little brother Jan in her place. That certainly surprises Mother Robina.

To further complicate matters, Bennett is pregnant with Chase’s child, but she wants nothing to do with him or his family. Her father, Douglas Bennett (who became an ardent pacifist after suffering PTSD during WWI) is more pragmatic. He also has a wayward son to worry about. To avoid prison time, punky Tom Bennett enlisted in the Navy, but that will soon bring him into harm’s way.

Meanwhile, Campbell returns to Berlin, where she starts investigating the National Socialists’ euthanasia policies, while chafing against the restrictions placed on her by her minder/censor. It is personal for Campbell, because of her affection for a neighbor’s daughter, who suffers from epilepsy. She is also concerned about the safety of her nephew, Webster O’Connor, a doctor at the American Hospital in Paris, who is in secret romantic relationship with Albert Fallou, a French North African jazz musician.

Phew, that pretty much covers the scorecard of principal characters. Of course, their lives will intersect in multiple ways, well beyond Harry Chase’s tomcatting. Frankly, the Harry-and-Lois sudsy angst gets tiresome fast. On the other hand, Campbell’s struggle to report the truth is really smartly written, high-stakes drama. It also suddenly holds real world relevancy, given Mainland China’s recent expulsion of American journalists.

Frankly, Helen Hunt does some of her best work (maybe ever) as Campbell. She plays her with appropriate Rosalind Russell sharpness, but also conveys her vulnerability in scenes where her character is trying not to be vulnerable. Zofia Wichlacz is also terrific as Tomaszeski, who will be profoundly changed by war. Fans of Polish cinema will also appreciate the presence and gravitas of Tomasz Kot (the tragic co-lead in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War) portraying Tomaszeski’s veteran father, Stefan.

WWII in HD on DVD

It was a different era, when the entire American media and political establishment recognized the fate of the world depended on an Allied victory. Thanks to advances in technology, WWII would also be the first war extensively documented on film. Even though color stock was available, most of the familiar video images of the war were recorded on cheaper black-and-white film, for newsreels and the like. However, a surprising amount of color stock was used by military cameramen, recording reels of archival footage that remained virtually unseen for decades. Scouring film vaults and military museums around the world, the History Channel tracked down a wealth of color film which they restored, preserved, and eventually assembled in a ten hour documentary special. Following its five night November premiere on the History Channel, WWII in HD (trailer here) is now available on DVD and Blue-Ray.

WWII in HD is billed as an effort to make the war more immediate and accessible to contemporary audiences through high definition color images. However, it is driven by compelling narratives that track the course of twelve diverse Americans through the war. Some are relatively well known like war correspondent Richard Tregaskis, whose Guadalcanal Diary is still recognized a classic of war reportage. Others are less celebrated but lived no less interesting lives, like infantryman Roscoe “Rockie” Blunt, an aspiring jazz drum that fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate a German concentration camp.

Although there is a surfeit of video footage for today’s wars (nearly all of which being in color), it is doubtful the same abundance of primary sources—diaries, memoirs, and original letters—will be available to future archivists, post-e-mail. It is a shame, because despite often coming from mean circumstances, each of the twelve profiled individuals are quite eloquent describing their war experiences in letters home, likely conscious these could be their final recorded words.

While WWII in HD covers both theaters, it might somewhat favor the Pacific, where color film was in greater use among military cameramen. Considering how much more attention has generally been given to the European front, particularly the D-Day invasion in films like Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day, WWII in HD offers some valuable perspective, pointing out American losses were greater at Okinawa than Normandy. This is a case where color probably better captures the inhuman conditions endured by the American forces, while facing an enemy whose strategy was to inflict as much pain as they possibly could.

Though many of the interview subjects eschew the term “Greatest Generation,” WWII in HD generally supports that honorific. Each of the focal characters was fully committed to victory, including the journalists. Clearly emotionally invested in the men he covered, Time-Life war correspondent Robert Sherrod, as voiced by actor Rob Lowe, asserts: “these guys feel like family to me after what we went through on Tarawa.”

WWII in HD is very well put together, featuring some remarkable visuals, but especially sensitive viewers should be warned some scenes are notably graphic, including footage of liberated concentration camps and the mass suicides of Japanese civilians at Okinawa. Throughout, clearly rendered maps and Gary Sinise’s authoritative but sensitive voice give it all cohesion (and the actor also brings a great deal of credibility with military audiences, having often toured USOs with his Captain Dan Band and serving as executive producer of Brothers at War, a sympathetic portrait of soldiers in Iraq and their families at home).

Respectful and informative, WWII in HD will definitely give viewers a visceral sense of WWII fighting conditions, particularly in the Pacific. Effectively marrying words and images, it is also a frequently moving tribute to the Americans who served in harm’s way. Happily, cable-free households can now catch up with it on DVD.

Dresden: a German City Gets Its Close-Up

Dresden
Directed by Roland Suso Richter
Koch subtitled 2-DVD set

If a WWII drama is titled Dresden it is probably a safe bet there will eventually be some Allied bombs falling from the sky. Dresden, the German miniseries broadcast in America on the History Channel (and now available on DVD), does indeed climax during the devastating bombing of the German city, but remains quite compatible with American audiences’ perspective on the war.

Director Roland Suso Richter has demonstrated an affinity for projects about twentieth century German history expressing a sense of national self-awareness. His previous miniseries, The Tunnel, re-cut to feature length for the international market, is an excellent fact-based Cold War thriller about an effort to dig beneath the Berlin Wall to rescue loved ones from the Communist East. In Dresden the hero is actually Robert Newman, a British bomber pilot shot down over enemy territory and the villains are all Germans. Hardly unusual for an English language production, but from German television it seems fairly bold.

Newman (who speaks fluent German, but with an identifiable accent) is sheltered by Anna Mauth, a German Nurse who does make a sympathetic heroine. However, her family, like most of the other German characters, is far from likeable. Her father can tell which way the winds of war blow and has been selling his hospital’s morphine allotments on the black market to pay for a new clinic in Switzerland. Anna’s doctor fiancé lacks the moral courage to stand up to his prospective father-in-law. Her coquettish sister works for the National Socialists and uses her fearsome connections to intimidate others for sport.

Of course, Newman and Anna Mauth fall in love. In many ways, Dresden is a throwback to the sweeping miniseries that were Richard Chamberlain’s stock-and-trade, giving viewers romantic melodramas wrapped in the sweep of history. However, it does not shy away from sensitive issues, like the Holocaust. Laura Miller explains in a review of Frederick Taylor’s study of the bombing, it was actually an unexpected opportunity of escape for the few surviving Jews in Dresden, who were to be “relocated” the next day. To the credit of director Richter and screenwriter Stefan Kolditz, Dresden addresses these events directly in one of its subplots.

Historian Taylor also takes issue with traditional characterizations of the bombing as a horrific attack without sufficient military justification. It is here that Dresden does in fact display a German bias. As presented by the filmmakers, the British plan the attack as an effort to slake Stalin’s bloodlust, choosing the city on the basis of: “high urban concentration, flammable [sic] construction, narrow streets.”

Like the ship in Titanic, the city of Dresden is one of the stars of the miniseries. The production design is impressive, first recreating the city’s splendor and then leveling it to the ground. It is in its graphic depictions of ghastly death in the so-called bomb shelters that Dresden covers new ground, setting it apart from other WWII productions. Dresden is also refreshingly notable for making a Catholic priest one of the few sympathetic Germans, besides Anna Mauth.

The British Light turns in a strong performance as the strong, silent (by necessity) hero and the German cast is convincing throughout. At times the melodrama may seem a little over-ripe, but it sucks viewers in just the same. Throughout the film, it seems like the drama is accompanying a fair amount of soul searching regarding the country’s National Socialist past. Altogether, it makes for fascinating viewing.