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The War of the World
Mondays at 10 p.m., beginning June 30
on WKAR-HD and WKAR-23
"The War of the World" Sheds New Light on World War II
World War II, we have been told all our lives, was our greatest triumph, the moment when the forces of light — the Western democracies and the U.S.S.R. — prevailed over the forces of darkness — the Nazis and other Axis powers. It was a conflict that began in Europe in September 1939 but became global only with the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. It ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan in August 1945.
Or did it?
In The War of the World, historian and host Niall Ferguson investigates the precise causes of extreme violence in the 20th century and redefines World War II as the central act of an epic struggle between rival empires. Only by adopting such morally questionable tactics as strategic bombing and brutal treatment of prisoners, Ferguson maintains, were the Allies able to turn the tide of the war. The three-part series airs on three consecutive Mondays at 10 p.m., beginning June 30.
“This series is all about seeing the 20th century through new eyes,” says Ferguson, history professor at Harvard University, senior research fellow at Oxford University, senior fellow at Stanford University and author of the acclaimed 2006 book The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred. “It’s important to remember that no matter how advanced a society gets, it’s always possible to be drawn into organized lethal violence. We don’t always need a Hitler or a Stalin to trigger a world war.”
Stephen Segaller, executive producer of The War of the World, says, “The series challenges our assumptions about a century’s worth of brutal conflict. In light of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and eastward shift of global power toward China, Ferguson makes a case for looking deeply into the past to achieve insight into the future. By looking beyond individual wars or regions, he enables us to see the larger and more powerful historical trends of our volatile age.”
The series considers the unparalleled stretch of violence as a single, unrelenting “war of the world” that began with Japan’s invasion of Russia in 1904 and continued through the Korean War all the way to an ongoing “Third World’s war.”
Episode one, The Clash of Empires, posits that economic volatility, ethnic conflict and empires in crisis combined to spawn the 20th century’s bloodiest conflicts, leading to the rise of the brutal regimes of Germany, Japan and Russia, the “age of genocide” and a preoccupation with racial purity. Episode two, A Tainted Victory, cites the horrors of World War II to show how, in order to win, the Allies acted with the same savagery as their enemies, thus attaining a “tainted victory.” Episode three, The Icebox,” describes the Cold War as a continuation of the “war of the world” in which millions died in proxy wars conducted by the two superpowers. The end of the Cold War led to great new dangers and challenges and presaged the rise of the East.
“Could the ‘war of the world’ replay itself in the 21st century?” Ferguson asks in The War of the World. “To avoid history’s repeating itself, we need to understand the root causes of the last 100 years’ war.”
published: June 24, 2008
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