DOCUMENTARIES: ARMISTICE (2008) / LONG SHADOW (2014)

 

I really enjoy a well-made documentary, one that is both informative and has good production values. I especially like it when the documentary turns my understanding of a topic and turns it inside-out and with good reason. And this is what both of these WWI documentaries by David Reynolds do for me. 

Parenthetically,  he is also a historian of WWII, and his documentaries on Hitler's Soft Under-belly (the Mediterranean campaign) and on Stalin (Man of Steel) are also equally well-done.

What Armistice does really well is break down the military / political situation on the Western Front and establIshes the centrality of Eric von Ludendorff in all areas of the German offensive during WWI, both in-theater and at the home front, and both how he nearly won the air, but more importantly ultimately lost it, based on both his strategic and tactical brilliance, but more importantly based on his own personal character flaws.

The Long Shadow traces the consequences of WWI on the political and intellectual history of the twentieth century and beyond. It is easy to overlook WWI in the shadow of WWII. The First World War lacks the same kind of clear narrative and explanation for it that the Second World War possesses. It lacks the kind of heroes and more importantly kind of villains that WWII has. But it can be argued, as Reynolds does, that it is the more consequential of the two. Not solely based on its immediate aftermath, but in its lingering influence beyond its immediate horizon on the political and social mores that came into being in the post-war environment. In it, he focuses on three major intellectual changes that we might take for granted as being from natural law and common sense, but are really direct consequences from the idealism and trauma that shaped the First World War. Those being: the anti-war and peace movement, popular democracy and suffrage, and the idea of national self-determination as a normative ideal for international law. And, of course, through Treaty of Versailles, the ultimate inevitability of WWII.

Grade: I'd give both of them a solid A. If I had to favor one over the other, I'd give Armistice the edge. It made me see the conflict and personalities involved from an entirely different angle. The Long Shadow echoed my own thinking, but in such a detailed and orderly way as to be IMO supremely persuasive.