''The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century'' is a 1996
documentary series that aired on
PBS. It chronicles
World War I over eight episodes. It was narrated by
Salome Jens. In the UK, the programme was renamed ''1914-18'' and was narrated by
Dame
''Dame'' is an honorific title and the feminine form of address for the honour of damehood in many Christian chivalric orders, as well as the Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom, British honours system and those of several oth ...
Judi Dench.
The series won two
Primetime Emmy Awards
The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the Primetime ...
: one for
Jeremy Irons for
Outstanding Voice-Over Performance, the other for Outstanding Informational Series. It was funded in part by the
National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1997, it was given a
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
.
Production
The documentary series was produced by KCET/Los Angeles along with the
BBC and the
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military ...
in London. It took five years to make
and cost five million dollars.
Blaine Baggett was the executive producer and
Jay Winter was the chief historian.
It aired in the United States on PBS in November 1996.
In contrast to the 1964 BBC production titled ''
The Great War'', which focused primarily on the military and political aspects of the war, this 1996 documentary, in keeping with more recent trends in historiography, used a wide variety of types of sources to cover social, cultural, economic and personal perspectives on the war in addition to the military and political.
[Cigognetti, L. and Sorlin, P. (2010) "History on Television: The Problem of Sources" in Bell, E. and Gray, A. ds''Televising History: Mediating the Past in Postwar Europe'', New York: Palgrave Macmillan.]
Voice cast
*
Jürgen Prochnow as
Kaiser Wilhelm II
*
Martin Landau as
Woodrow Wilson
*
Malcolm McDowell as Charles Stockwell
*
Ian Richardson as
David Lloyd George
*
René Auberjonois
René Murat Auberjonois (; June 1, 1940 – December 8, 2019) was an American actor and director. He was best known for portraying Odo on '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'' (1993–1999). He first achieved fame as a stage actor, winning the Tony Aw ...
as
Jean Jaurès
*
Paul Mercurio as Cyril Lawrence
*
Liam Neeson as
Adolf Hitler
*
Ralph Fiennes as
Wilfred Owen
*
Michael York as
Harold Owen
William Harold Owen (5 September 1897 – 26 November 1971) was the younger brother and biographer of the English poet and soldier, Wilfred Owen. He was born at the home of his paternal grandparents in Canon Street, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, where hi ...
*
Jeremy Irons as
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...
*
Natasha Richardson
Natasha Jane Richardson (11 May 1963 – 18 March 2009) was an English actress of stage and screen. A member of the Redgrave family, Richardson was the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director/producer Tony Richardson and the granddaugh ...
as
Vera Brittain
*
Louis Gossett Jr. as
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...
*
Jane Leeves as Caroline Webb
*
Marion Ross as
Käthe Kollwitz
*
Nastassja Kinski as
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg (; ; pl, Róża Luksemburg or ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, ...
*
Martin Sheen as Frank Golder
*
Udo Kier as
Armin T. Wegner
Armin Theophil Wegner (October 16, 1886 – May 17, 1978) was a German soldier and medic in World War I, a prolific author, and a human rights activist. Stationed in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Wegner was a witness to the Armenian geno ...
*
Yaphet Kotto as Kaphe Kamar
*
Ned Beatty
Ned Thomas Beatty (July 6, 1937 – June 13, 2021) was an American actor and comedian. In a career that spanned five decades, he appeared in more than 160 films. Throughout his career, Beatty gained a reputation for being "the busiest actor in ...
as Herbert Hoover
* Timothy Bottoms as Silver Parrish
* Helen Mirren as Margaret Randa
* Rupert Graves
* Elya Baskin as Yakov Yurovsky
* Leslie Caron as Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse), Czarina Aleksandra Romanov
Episodes
# "Explosion" – Covers the causes of the war, focusing on international tensions resulting from rapid economic, technological, and social changes, as well as how the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria sparked a continent-wide war.
# "Stalemate" – Covers the German army’s initial advance through Belgium and France which was stopped at the First Battle of the Marne, Battle of the Marne and quickly followed by the armies digging extensive systems of trenches.
# "Total War" – Examines how the war spread geographically and extended beyond the front lines to civilian populations, including the Turkish massacre of Armenian civilians.
# "Slaughter" – Focuses on the battles at Verdun, the Somme, and Passchendaele.
# "Mutiny" – Examines the growing despair on all sides, culminating in revolution in Russia and a mutiny among a large portion of the French army.
# "Collapse" – Covers the German army’s failed offensive in spring 1918 attempting to end the war before the United States army arrived in large numbers, and the resulting collapse of the German government.
# "Hatred and Hunger" – Covers the continuing blockade on Germany as the Allies drew up the Treaty of Versailles, with considerable focus on
Woodrow Wilson’s role in the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Paris Peace Conference.
# "War Without End" – Examines the cost of the war and its continuing reverberations through the rest of the 20th century.
Awards
The documentary was a critical success and received several awards:
* Two Emmy Awards
* Alfred Du Pont Journalism Award
* George Fopster Peabody Award
* Producers Guild of American Vision Award
* International Documentary Association: Best Limited Series Award
Book
A book of the same title, by Blaine Baggett and Jay Winter, was released along with the broadcast of the television series in 1996. Like the television series, the book covers social, cultural, economic and other issues in addition to the political and military aspects of the war. Though the book is a companion to the television series, it is written to stand on its own as a history of the war.
References
External links
PBS website for the series*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
Peabody Award-winning television programs
1996 American television series debuts
1996 American television series endings
1996 British television series debuts
1996 British television series endings
1990s British documentary television series
Documentary television series about World War I
English-language television shows
1990s American documentary television series
BBC television documentaries about history during the 20th Century