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The World At War (TV Series)
''The World at War'' is a 26-episode British documentary television series that chronicles the events of the Second World War. It was produced in 1973, at a cost of £900,000 (), the most expensive factual series ever produced. It was produced by Jeremy Isaacs, narrated by Laurence Olivier and included music composed by Carl Davis. The book, ''The World at War'', published the same year, was written by Mark Arnold-Forster to accompany the TV series. ''The World at War'' attracted widespread acclaim and now it is regarded as a landmark in British television history. The series focused on a portrayal of the experience of the conflict: of how life and death throughout the war years affected soldiers, sailors and airmen, civilians, concentration camp inmates and other victims of the war. Overview Jeremy Isaacs had been inspired to look at the production of a long-form documentary series about the Second World War following the BBC's broadcast of its series ''The Great War'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeremy Isaacs
Sir Jeremy Israel Isaacs (born 28 September 1932) is a Scottish television producer and executive, opera manager, and a recipient of many British Academy Television Awards and International Emmy Awards. He won the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1986, the International Emmy Directorate Award in 1987 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 1985. He was also the General Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden from 1987 to 1996. Isaacs was knighted in the 1996 Birthday Honours "for services to Broadcasting and to the Arts." Early life Isaacs was born in Glasgow from what were described as "Scottish Jewish roots". He grew up in Hillhead, the son of a jeweller and a GP, and is a cousin to virologist Alick Isaacs. He was educated at the independent Glasgow Academy and Merton College, Oxford, where he read Classics. He did his National Service in the Highland Light Infantry. Television career Isaacs began his career in television when he joined Granada Television in Mancheste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allies Of World War II
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during the Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Its principal members by 1941 were the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China. Membership in the Allies varied during the course of the war. When the conflict broke out on 1 September 1939, the Allied coalition consisted of the United Kingdom, France, and Poland, as well as their respective dependencies, such as British India. They were soon joined by the independent dominions of the British Commonwealth: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Consequently, the initial alliance resembled that of the First World War. As Axis forces began invading northern Europe and the Balkans, the Allies added the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Greece, and Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union, which initially had a nonaggression pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet, (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the RAF as "Butch" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) RAF Bomber Command during the height of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Born in Gloucestershire, Harris emigrated to Rhodesia in 1910, aged 17. He joined the 1st Rhodesia Regiment at the outbreak of the First World War and saw action in South Africa and South West Africa. In 1915, Harris returned to England to fight in the European theatre of the war. He joined the Royal Flying Corps, with which he remained until the formation of the Royal Air Force in 1918. Harris remained in the Air Force through the 1920s and 1930s, serving in India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Harris took command of No. 5 Group RAF ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minoru Genda
was a Japanese military aviator and politician. He is best known for helping to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was also the third Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. Early life Minoru Genda was the second son of a farmer from Kake, Hiroshima Prefecture, north of the city of Hiroshima. Two brothers were graduates of Tokyo University, another brother graduated from Chiba Medical College, and his youngest brother entered the Army Academy. Genda graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1924 and took flight training for 11 months in 1928–1929, graduating with honors to become a fighter pilot. Early military service Genda was assigned to the aircraft carrier in 1931. He was well known in the navy, and in 1932 Genda formed a demonstration team at Yokosuka, leading a division of biplanes around the country, conducting aerobatic demonstrations. Known as "Genda's Flying Circus", the team, consisting of Genda, Yoshita Kobayashi and Motoharu Okamu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Galland
Adolf Josef Ferdinand Galland (19 March 1912 – 9 February 1996) was a German Luftwaffe general and flying ace who served throughout the Second World War in Europe. He flew 705 combat missions, and fought on the Western Front and in the Defence of the Reich. On four occasions, he survived being shot down, and he was credited with 104 aerial victories, all of them against the Western Allies. Galland, who was born in Westerholt, Westphalia became a glider pilot in 1929 before he joined the Luft Hansa. In 1932, he graduated as a pilot at the ''Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule'' (German Commercial Flyers' School) in Braunschweig before applying to join the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic later in the year. Galland's application was accepted, but he never took up the offer. In February 1934, he was transferred to the Luftwaffe. In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, he volunteered for the Condor Legion and flew ground attack missions in support of the Nationalists under Francisco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitsuo Fuchida
was a Japanese captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and a bomber observer in the Imperial Japanese Navy before and during World War II. He is perhaps best known for leading the first wave of air attacks on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Working under the overall fleet commander, Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, Fuchida was responsible for the coordination of the entire aerial attack. After the war ended, Fuchida became a Christian convert and evangelist, traveling across the United States and Europe to tell his story. He later settled in the U.S. (although never taking American citizenship for himself). Some of Fuchida's wartime claims have been challenged as self-serving by historians, including his claimed advocacy for a third wave attack on Pearl Harbor. Early life and education Mitsuo Fuchida was born in what is now part of Katsuragi, Nara Prefecture, Japan to Yazo and Shika Fuchida on 3 December 1902. He entered the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Etaj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Eden, 1st Earl Of Avon
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 until his resignation in 1957. Achieving rapid promotion as a young Conservative member of Parliament, he became foreign secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy. He again held that position for most of the Second World War, and a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, Eden succeeded him as the leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister in 1955, and a month later won a general election. Eden's reputation as a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in 1956 when the United States refused to support the Anglo-French military response to the Suez Crisis, which critics across party lines regarded as a historic setback for British foreign policy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell (; 27 February 1912 – 7 November 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. He was the eldest brother of naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell. Born in India to British colonial parents, he was sent to England at the age of eleven for his education. He did not like formal education, but started writing poetry at age 15. His first book was published in 1935, when he was 23. In March 1935 he and his mother and younger siblings moved to the island of Corfu. Durrell spent many years thereafter living around the world. His most famous work is ''The Alexandria Quartet,'' published between 1957 and 1960. The best-known novel in the series is the first, '' Justine''. Beginning in 1974, Durrell published ''The Avignon Quintet,'' using many of the same techniques. The first of these novels, '' Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness,'' won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1974. The middle novel, '' Constance, or Solitary Prac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James "Jimmy" Doolittle
James Harold Doolittle (December 14, 1896 – September 27, 1993) was an American military general and aviation pioneer who received the Medal of Honor for his daring raid on Japan during World War II. He also made early coast-to-coast flights, record-breaking speed flights, won many flying races, and helped develop and flight-test instrument flying. Raised in Nome, Alaska, Doolittle studied as an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1922. He also earned a doctorate in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1925, the first issued in the United States. In 1929, he pioneered the use of "blind flying", where a pilot relies on flight instruments alone, which later won him the Harmon Trophy and made all-weather airline operations practical. He was a flying instructor during World War I and a reserve officer in the United States Army Air Corps, but he was recalled to active duty during World War II. He was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz; ; 16 September 1891 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government following Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies days later. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II. He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding , and was taken prisoner of war by British forces. While in a POW camp, he formulated what he later called ''Rudeltaktik'' ("pack tactic", commonly called "wolfpack"). By the start of the Second World War, Dönitz was supreme commander of the ''Kriegsmarine'' U-boat arm ( (BdU)). In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of (grand admiral) and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Dönitz was the main enemy of Allied naval forces in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jock Colville
Sir John Rupert Colville, CB, CVO (28 January 1915 – 19 November 1987) was a British civil servant. He is best known for his diaries, which provide an intimate view of number 10 Downing Street during the wartime Premiership of Winston Churchill. Family background Colville came from a politically active and well-connected family, although, as he stated in the introduction to his published diaries, he was the younger son of a younger son and so did not inherit family wealth. His father was the Hon. George Charles Colville, who was secretary of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the younger son of Charles Colville, 1st Viscount Colville of Culross, a Conservative politician who served as Master of the Buckhounds and Tory Chief Whip. His mother was Lady Cynthia, a courtier and social worker. She was the daughter of Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe, by his first wife, the former Sibyl Graham, daughter of the Graham Baronets of Netherby. Colville never knew ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Wayne Clark
Mark Wayne Clark (May 1, 1896 – April 17, 1984) was a United States Army officer who saw service during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. He was the youngest four-star general in the US Army during World War II. During World War I, he was a company commander and served in France in 1918, as a 22-year-old captain (United States), captain, where he was seriously wounded by artillery, shrapnel. After the war, the future Chief of Staff of the United States Army, US Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, noticed Clark's abilities. During World War II, he commanded the United States Army North, United States Fifth Army, and later the 15th Army Group, in the Italian campaign (World War II), Italian campaign. He is known for leading the Fifth Army when it captured Rome in June 1944, around the same time as the Normandy landings. Clark has been heavily criticized for ignoring the orders of his superior officer, British General (United Kingdom), General Harold Alex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
