“It’s our founding myth”: PBS’s “World on Fire” challenges the story of the Second World War we know

In the new seven-part drama series from PBS Masterpiece “World on Fire”, writer and creator Peter Bowker portrays World War II on several fronts to show the insidious and devastating effects of German forces across Europe. From the occupation in Poland in 1939, the story follows several families as the pervasive presence becomes a horrible reality, which pushes ordinary people to moral dilemmas and to make devastating sacrifices.

Bowker’s grandmother was a war artist, and she inspired the character of Lois Bennett (Julia Brown), a frank and independent British girl whose father Douglas (Sean Bean) became a pacifist after his previous war experiences. Meanwhile, Lois’ brother, Tom (Ewan Mitchell), is an unhappy man who finds himself in the middle of the conflict, his father’s worst nightmare.

Lois’ darling Harry Chase (Jonah Hauer-King) is a translator based in Warsaw, where his affection turns to the Polish waitress Kasia (Zofia Wichlacz) whose own family must decide to flee before the Germans take over or empty and hope for the best. But Harry wants to take Kasia safe to his home in England, where his disapproving right-wing mother Robina (Lesley Manville, Oscar nominee) is much more sympathetic to those in power than ordinary people.

And then there is the American radio correspondent Nancy Campbell (Oscar and Emmy winner Helen Hunt), who is stationed in Berlin but struggles with her precarious position to spread the truth about what’s going on. His nephew Webster (Brian J. Smith) is in Paris, but he has reasons to be reluctant to leave despite his warnings.

Together, these stories are woven over the course of a year, crossing Europe from Warsaw to Dunkirk, Berlin to Paris and Manchester. “World on Fire” has already been renewed for a second season.

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Salon spoke to Bowker about his inspirations for writing the series, period research, journalism, and the enduring threat of nationalism. The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

While we in America were involved in the Second World War, this was not necessarily fought on our own territory, with the exception of Pearl Harbor and Japanese internment, which carries its own trauma. The story must go much further in Europe, however, and is personal to almost everyone. What were your family experiences that were related to you?

In the United Kingdom, this is our founding myth because although most wars are more ambiguous, it was particularly unambiguous. As this generation dies, there is a kind of idealization of war. And I guess this drama is partly to try to resist that and to recover the flesh and blood of these people because I think it makes their heroism all the greater if you show them as imperfect human beings.

In terms of my personal history, my father was in the RAF regiment, which is like the little piece of the RAF (Royal Air Force) army. Two big clues to the tone of the play – my father was shot dead by a Japanese sniper in Burma. And he was left for dead and he was recovered by the Red Cross, but by the time the Red Cross had recovered him and he had been treated, my grandmother would already have the telegram saying that he is missing, presumed dead. She heard nothing for two months, then he appeared on the doorstep, injured, but recovered. You have to keep in mind that it was Manchester in the 1930s, and I don’t think the women were emotional. Said, “Ooh, Eric, your hair needs to be cut.” So this euphemism in there is interesting for a playwright. This stoicism, but also it’s funny and it’s affectionate.

And then my grandmother on my mother’s side was a variety artist in the north of England with the woman I grew up calling my aunt Anna, who was an English African woman, born in Doncaster in 1912. They formed a duo of varieties and they called themselves The Two Shades. I think it’s a pun on ghosts. But clearly, one was black and the other white. These were the most obvious in terms of building blocks for the drama. It is such a strange idiosyncratic story.

The main motivation was to get this generation back, and I did a lot of reading. There is Richard Yates’ novel “A Special Providence”, and it feels comforting in its contemporary tone and in the language people use. So I wanted to do a costume drama that didn’t look like a costume drama, I guess.

Have you done any other more anecdotal research? Have you spoken to people of this generation other than your parents?

Well, my father has been gone for a long time, but my main path was the diaries. The Imperial War Museum in London was simply amazing what they could discover. You know, I would literally say, “Can I have three types of verbatim reports of Dunkirk sons in the field?” The archive is amazing. I mean, with something like that. You need to make sure that the material does not shape you, because it spreads and spreads. And, and so that is how I tried to capture the vernacular of the time.

You mention that this history of the Second World War is less ambiguous insofar as we agree on who the bad guys were. However, nationalism is not dead and seems to be on the rise with Brexit, on the rise everywhere, echoing themes from that era. With this account of the Second World War which has already been broadcast in the United Kingdom, have these discussions resumed?

Well, what interests me is that between the time I started writing it in 2014, between now and now, it became a more relevant story, it became more news. You know, there is a situation where countries have engaged in international cooperation to defeat the Nazis. The Soviet Union and the United States didn’t have much in common, but they found common ground.

So it seems more relevant to me. I mean, the baffling thing for me about the WWII position in the UK is, on the far right, you literally get British fascists making Hitler greetings next to a war memorial. These guys are not very ironic, but that is the way they are used to support a narrow nationalist view. It just seems ridiculous to me.

But what interests me too is how, because we can accept who were the good guys, then as a playwright, it opens the window to look at moral ambiguity. Like Piers Morgan, who is outrageous on an almost daily basis, was outraged by someone suggesting that Winston Churchill was a white supremacist in his beliefs. Well, Max Hastings, who is a conservative historian, says exactly the same thing. And he says that what is part of his racial certainty made him fight the war the way he waged it.

There is an irony at the heart of this. This is interesting and nuanced. This does not make him less brilliant as a warchief. I find it more interesting that he had this desire, and most white politicians of that time would have believed in the white man’s racial superiority. You know, just like Churchill believed in eugenics as much as [the Nazis]. It was considered a respectable ideological belief. So I think there is a whole way of looking at them and saying, “Well, those beliefs and human flaws that make him more interesting and engaging and, ultimately, greater acts of heroism than improbable. ” But it’s easy, in the age of Twitter and clickable bait, to ask yourself, “How dare you?”

People cannot always see how terrible a situation is right now. The state of our countries did not happen overnight, but gradually to the point that some people got used to this reality without questioning it. Did you try to describe with regard to the different characters who would not flee – whether Paris or Warsaw – despite all the evidence indicating a worse existence if they stayed?

Obviously, you cannot exchange dramatic irony too much, because there is history, but it is certainly the intention to show that these things invade us. It’s not like a day when you wake up and have a decision to make. “Are you going to collaborate with us? Or are you going to get involved?” It doesn’t happen like that. We want and expect things to explode and we want and expect things to improve or not get worse.

One of those people who sees more clearly is Nancy, the reporter for Helen Hunt, who is sort of an amalgamation of the American war correspondent William Shirer and her English counterpart, Claire Hollingworth, who was the first to tell the story of history of the German invasion of Poland. . It’s fascinating to see the amount of collaboration Nancy has to do with the German censor Schmidt (Max Riemelt). So what did you learn in your research about what this line was? There have been several times where I have been surprised that she gets away with things she said during her broadcast.

That was what was interesting in William Shirer’s diaries. . . about its broadcast. He was always surprised that he didn’t literally mind his open reporting on the intimidation and deportation of the Jewish people. But that mattered to them when he – and in the drama too – hinted at a shortage of carp at Christmas, because it was part of the German Christmas dinner. So he could never guess where they were going to oppose. But also interestingly, he said he could often use a tone of voice and signal disapproval in his shows.

Furthermore, I think that is what allowed the British to reject Claire Hollingworth’s suggestion that the Germans did not follow the rules. You know, there’s a sort of hairy superiority going on with, “Well, that’s how we do it.” You know, this is not a gentleman’s agreement to the way we are waging war, to which the blitzkrieg and everything seemed paid. As war grew, there was certainly a feeling that it would take place a lot on the grounds of the First World War because the upper echelons of power across Europe had more in common than they often did this with the people they served.

What also struck me was the obviously slower pace of reporting, which writes a story several days before sending a dispatch, relative to, say, instant supply and demand for content on the Internet . It’s war, but where is the emergency?

Absolutely, yes, the nuanced consideration, it just isn’t available now really. It is available in newspapers, but no one buys newspapers, and at the time there was a lack of hysteria in journalism. It was not the “cut and paste” mentality of taking a quote out of context, tweeting it, and it was the job done. There was a friend of mine when he left his job at The Guardian, he realized that part of the job was that someone had to change everything every night just by watching Twitter.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it because of the speed at which any message goes. But during World War II, it would take days before it died out. So when Claire Hollingworth, the British journalist, saw Nazis at the border, she said to the British, “I can hold on [story] for three days. “And they were probably thinking,” Hysterical woman, you must have seen something else. The Germans couldn’t do something like this. “And then they directed it, and it still hasn’t really had a major impact. So obviously it’s a bit of a gift for a playwright because the outward signs of this era of journalism is so alluring and beautiful.

By creating the character of Harry Chase, he is in a sticky love triangle. At first I looked and thought, “Is this going in” Mrs. Wilson’s territory? This mini-series where Ruth Wilson had a grandfather spy bigamist“I think there really is something about this time of war, men who go abroad and lead a double life, get involved emotionally away from home.

It somehow embodies what I really wanted to do, that is to say that I wanted all of my characters to be imperfect and yet capable of individual heroism and also to change.

I wanted to have a character that we weren’t necessarily going to like or at least approve of at the start. He’s a pretty pampered boy who’s always had his own way, and he’s attractive and then he’s not even loyal [to his girlfriend]. But I also think for Harry, in a strange way in Poland, what he finds is a family warmth that is totally lacking in his life [in England].

And that’s why I guess we left the leave with Lois a little more ambiguous, that she somehow pushed it away. And now I know it sounds a bit like Ross saying, “We were on a break,” but he’s young, he’s far from home. And I don’t think he knows himself at all. I think he thinks he can fix things he can’t. And maybe her love life is one of them.

Harry’s mother, Robina, is played by Lesley Manville, who can deliver any line, and she gets some of the best / worst. It’s a family that says horrible things, and they adopt fairly reliable and often racist ideas. How was it to write?

I am alarmed by the ease with which I write horrible right-wing characters. It was a joy to write. We always had Lesley in mind, and the character of Robina would be very, very mindful of manners. And I’m always interested when someone was very fat on manners could say the most disgusting and outrageous things. It’s always them.

Writer Jimmy McGovern said to his writing students, “I want you to walk away and write the monologue from the perspective of the person with whom you disagree who most justifies their beliefs.” Make an argument for beliefs that are not your own. And that’s sort of what the drama should do. I like the fact that Robina is, I have this thing that the older generation doesn’t think they can change, yet they do change. And young people think they can change everything. So, between them, there is a change. But I think it’s interesting to explore where this state of mind comes from for her. . . what pain is it really channeling, what feeling of disappointment is it channeling?

Manville throws a dream in this role. Did you have a say in choosing it?

Yeah, I mean, sort of because I’m well established now and I can sort of emphasize it. I was involved in most of the casting decisions. And in fact, I had to call Sean [Bean] because he was a bit unsure. And her main concern was – Sean Bean said to me, “Are you dying?” And I said, “No, you live,” and he said, “I’m going to do it.”

The seven-part world premiere of “World on Fire” will take place on Sunday, April 5 at 9 p.m. AND on PBS.