What I watched: The twenty-second episode of Crusade in Europe, a documentary series adapted from Dwight Eisenhower’s book of the same name. The adaptation was done by Fred Feldkamp, and narrated by Hugh James and Maurice Joyce. This episode aired at 9:00 PM on ABC on Thursday, September 29, 1949, and is available on DVD and Amazon Prime.
What I thought: Eisenhower and his generals meet to figure how to get to the German capital from its western border. We see Goebbels nervously pacing around ruins, seeming to know the end is near. Berlin was starving, but refused to surrender. American radio stations broadcast German-language appeals to give in, which we are told was very effective in encouraging villagers to allow Allied capture.
This time, the decision is made to move quickly, with the goal of forming a barrier around the productive Ruhr region. The strategy works even better than intended, with the two army groups meeting just a week after setting out, capturing an even wider area than originally planned. The entire German army in the Ruhr – 23 divisions — is forced to surrender.
Patton’s army discovers a Nazi treasure trove, containing a massive pile of ho. Eisenhower tours his first concentration camp, called here a “horror camp.” Eisenhower tells us that he was shocked beyond words — although Joyce’s narration remains level-toned. He tours “every corner of the camp” in case he needs to later testify that it was not just propaganda.
With the front line moving swiftly, other units investigate German towns and villages. If any spies or German soldiers in disguise are found, they’re executed by firing squad — one example of which we see. American prisoners of war are finally freed,. We hear a rare first-hand account, as a former POW tells his story directly to the camera. (He mumbles in monotone, so you can be sure he’s not an actor.) With Anglo-American and Russian forces converging on Berlin, they must work together in order to avoid friendly fire.
In April, the Battle of Berlin begins. The Russian forces under Zhukov all but flatten the city. (You can almost hear the narrator’s disappointment that it wasn’t the Americans.) After twelve days, the German capital falls, the swastikas are dynamited, and the Red flag flies above Berlin. We are reminded that American air forces did plenty of softening up. All that’s left is the formalities, as the various German commands surrender one by one: first in Italy, then in Northwestern Europe. then finally the whole army at May 7. The war is over, if you want it.
What I thought: For an episode that deals with the final moment of Allied victory, “Overrunning Germany” makes for pretty grim viewing. Everyone, everywhere is suffering: the starving denizens of concentration camp, the terrified Germans, the prisoners of war lining up to be executed. As the camera pans over German ruins, my thoughts are not drawn to exult at a triumph of good over evil, but rather at the horror and misery inflicted on so many people of all nations by the genocidal ambitions of a few.
In a tone we’ve heard as far back as Tunisia, back when Westbrook van Voorhes was still doing the narration, Crusade wryly notes how these victories punctured German narratives about the invincible Nazi soldier. There’s a tremendous emphasis on the physical weakness and youth of Nazi soldiers, a weakness that in Crusade appears as a reflection of their moral weakness
The series never gloats, and it certainly gives the viewer enough material to sympathize with the enemy if they want to. (The firing squad scene is particularly hard to watch.) But it is also not shy in reminding them that many of these same people had years earlier celebrated the same type of suffering visited on helpless populations. As in “Rise and Fall of a Dictator“, the defeat of the Axis Powers represents a kind of fairy-tale moral comeuppance, a just resorts for indulging the evils of fascism.
Even a practiced turner of the other cheek like myself may be likely to agree that every German deserved it after seeing the footage from the death camps contained in this episode. This is actually Crusade‘s first reference to Holocaust, which apparently warranted not even a footnote in any of the series’ context-providing featurettes. I wasn’t expecting Lanzmann’s Shoah, but considering the prominence that Nazi persecution of the Jews justly has in contemporary WW2 narratives, it’s strange to see it given less amount of time than dry footage of treaties being signed.
The narration we do have about the Holocaust is strangely allusive, with no reference to who exactly was victimized. Perhaps Feldkamp felt that the viewer would be less horrified if they knew it was Jews targeted, let alone communists and queers. For these people, the end of the war was a relief but not a triumph. They had not overthrown their torturers, only been the beneficiaries of a mostly unrelated invasion. For some, this experience of helplessness in the face of evil would lead them to devote their life to kindness or theological questioning. For others, their suffering would curdle into a sense of humiliation that could only be remedied by the hyper-nationalism of Zionism or Stalinism.
But the power of documentary film is that, despite the series’s relative disinterest in the Holocaust, the images it does capture still express all the horror of genocide. The same is true for the misery of Germans, no matter how much we might think they deserve it. Of course, whether this suffering is received with sympathy depends on the viewer. But it is still etched into those grains of film, and no amount of blithe narration can obscure it.
Coming up next: Kukla, Fran and Ollie go to the library.
The Eternal Couch Potato 