The History Channel is a popular method of presenting history and informing the viewers about the past. Many people find it more interesting than reading books especially when scenes are dramatized showing suspense and action. Before the History Channel, people who did not like reading books got their historical knowledge from Hollywood films and TV stations. When Hollywood makes its movies based on history, they take great liberty with the facts and twist them into making a good story. No Hollywood movie is historically accurate.
How accurate is the History Channel’s portrayal of history? I decided to do a critical analysis of the History Channel’s portrayal of the World Wars based on academic research from an extensive library of books, and to my consternation I realized that I was not too impressed by the standard of history produced by the History Channel with regards to this program.
I looked at the History Channel’s portrayals of Hitler, Stalin, and Churchill in World War 1 and then did extensive research using good academic sources to see how accurate the History Channel was.
These are the results of my investigation.
How accurate is the History Channel’s account of Adolf
Hitler’s First World War experience?
The account starts off accurately with the identification of Hitler’s correct regiment, the 16th Bavarian, and the fact that they were fighting against the British at Ypres in October 1914. Hitler is correctly identified as a runner, although in October of 1914 he was still a front line soldier.
However, we soon stumble upon the first inaccuracy with the gas attack on the German trenches in October 1914. The British did not use gas until the end of 1915. The same scene shows Hitler shaving off his moustache. There is a
plethora of photographs of Hitler sporting a grand moustache throughout the war. This shaving of his moustache is too early. There is an account by a contemporary of Hitler who stated that Hitler was ordered to shave his
moustache due to British mustard gas attacks in 1917.
The scene now moves to Vienna which is portrayed quite accurately. Both of his parents are said to be dead, he is living in a doss house, he had been rejected by art school, and that he was a loner. They are correct in that they have him painting postcards and pictures to get some money, but Adolf did not do the selling, he left that to his assistant.
After war broke out in 1914, one of the historians on the program claims that Hitler “tried out for the Austrian army, failed his medical exam, and was rejected by the Austrians.” This is absolute nonsense. Since 1910 Hitler had been avoiding the Austrian draft system not wishing as a German to be part of an army that had a mixture of races. One of the reasons why he left Vienna for Munich in 1913 was to avoid the draft. He was eventually tracked down by the police, returned to Austria, and he did fail his medical exam on the grounds of health. The next claim that Hitler joined the German army because they would accept anyone is ludicrous.
Hitler had to petition the King of Bavaria for permission to join a Bavarian regiment. He was accepted. He writes in Mein Kampf that he opened the document with trembling hands and that no words of his could describe the elation of being accepted. Hitler was a very competent soldier, something which the History Channel readily acknowledges. He liked the discipline and did not grumble about the war. They also acknowledged that the runners’ job was quite dangerous with a high mortality rate and that Hitler often exposed himself to danger.
The History Channel then comes up with one of the greatest urban legends of the First World War and accepts it as fact. This was the supposed meeting of Adolf Hitler and the most decorated British private of World War 1, Henry Tandey, where Tandey has Hitler in his sights and elects not to shoot him. The story is set in the right place, Marcoing in France, where Tandey won his VC (Victoria Cross), but then things start to go awry. The History Channel places the event in 1914, when it would have taken place in 1918. Hitler is shown to be wounded, but this
event occurred at the Somme in 1916. The whole story is implausible for a number of reasons. For a start there are two recognition scenes of Tandey by Hitler occurring 20 years apart. The first is in October 1918 where Hitler
supposedly recognized the man who let him go from Tandey’s VC announcement in the British newspapers.
The second is from 1938 when Hitler has a meeting with the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Hanging on the wall at Berchtesgaden was a painting by the Italian artist Mantania depicting a scene From the Menin Road in 1914 which has Tandey carrying off a wounded soldier. Hitler told Chamberlain that he recognized Tandey as the man who let him live because he would not shoot an unarmed man. Anyway, Bavarian regimental records indicate that on the day this supposed meeting took place, September 28th, 1918, Hitler was returning back from leave and was stationed 50 miles away. The History Channel is correct that Hitler was wounded in a mustard gas attack in October 1918 which led him to be hospitalized in Germany where the news of the German surrender on November 11, 1918, devastated him.
What the History Channel doesn’t tell us is the wound that Hitler received when a shell exploded near the dispatch runners’ dugout at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He spent two months in hospital near Berlin and was then sent
to Munich before he wrote to his commanding officer begging to be returned to the front. Secondly, the History Channel does not mention his promotion to lance corporal prior to his return to the front in 1917. Finally, they do not mention his decorations. Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class in 1914 and the Iron Cross 1st Class in 1918. Both were for bravery and the award of the first class was very unusual for a man of Hitler’s rank.
Personally, on a scale of one to four, with one being mythology and four being factually correct, I would rate the History Channel’s account of Hitler’s participation in World War 1 as a three. The gist or essence of the time he spent in the trenches probably reflects what had actually happened, but there are a number of inaccuracies with regards to the timing of the fact.
How accurate is the History Channel’s portrayal of Hitler’s rise to power in the Nazi Party and the Munich Putsch?
Hitler was in a hospital when the war ended having been gassed by the British in October 1918. He was devastated when he heard the news. Like many Germans he believed Germany had been stabbed in the back by the new republican government in Berlin who were referred to as the November Criminals.
In Germany at the end of the war a struggle took place between right wing Nationalist and left wing Marxist groups which led to much street fighting. Gradually with the help of the Army, the right wing was successful. The Army kept a close watch on any left wing groups in case they posed a threat.
The History Channel starts in Munich in 1919 with an out of work Adolf Hitler begging an Army officer for work. Not a good start by the History Channel because Hitler was still in the Army working as a political officer against pacifists and Marxists. The officer tells him to examine the German Workers Party and make a report on it. The place is the Sterneckerbrau Beer Hall and the date is September 12, 1919. The HC has got this right, but not what happens next. The narrator says that Hitler attends secret meetings over many months held at undisclosed locations throughout the country. In reality, Hitler goes to one meeting at a known place attended by 25 people. Hitler realizes that this party are nationalists and anti-Semitic like him. Hitler is about to leave when a Bavarian Separatist states that Germany must break apart. At that, Hitler is roused to fury and launches into the separatist who wants Bavaria to join with Austria. Hitler is a staunch German nationalist.
The next scene is dated March 1920 and has Hitler leaving the Army to work full time for the German Workers’ Party where he stands out because of his fiery rhetoric. The Hisory Channel (HC) has left out a lot. The German Workers’ Party had been founded by a Munich locksmith named Anton Drexler. It was working class, nationalist, and anti-Jewish. As Hitler was leaving the meeting in September, Drexler thrusts a pamphlet into his hand and a few days later Hitler received a postcard inviting him to meet the committee with the view of joining the party.
Hitler meets the committee of four people in a dimly-lit room and after a couple of days he decides to join as its seventh member believing that the party was so small that he could thrive in it. He was made head of propaganda where he is good at getting people at to join the party. He is an excellent speaker and in February 1920 spoke before 2,000 people at the Hofbrauhaus. The HC has him shouting,” We call ourselves the National Socialist Party,” reflecting the decision taken in the same month by Hitler and Drexler to rename the party the German National Socialist Workers’ Party, Nazi Party for short.
The next scene sees him wanting to emulate Mussolini’s March on Rome and seize power for himself. HC has left out an awful lot. Before that happens, Hitler has to gain control of the Nazi Party, build up a force of strong-armed fighting squads known as the Brown Shirts or SA to intimidate his opponents, and join with other right wing Bavarian groups for a march on Berlin against the Republican Government.
Hitler’s seizure of control of the Nazi Party is the source of the fallacy, “Remember to vote everybody. Remember that Hitler only won by one vote.” People confuse this with Hitler becoming leader of Germany in 1933. In fact this saying stems from when he became leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or the Nazi Party in 1921, and it was by all but one vote! For the past few months Hitler had been slowly taking over the party. When he was away in Berlin, the other members of the committee tried to take control of the party once again. Hitler returned and offered to resign. He was the main income for the party and acceptance would mean the end of the party. The committee had to back down. Hitler now demanded dictatorial powers and the retirement of the committee. In a meeting at the end of July, the 554 paid up members of the Nazi Party met in the hofbrauhaus and elected Hitler as leader or Fuhrer of the party by a 553 votes for and one against. Hitler was now sole and undisputed leader of the Nazi party.
Hitler’s SA now became an important part of the party marching with banners and fighting with socialists and communists, defending Hitler from attack when he was speaking, and attacking the meetings of other speakers.
The end of the History Channel’s program concentrates on the Munich Putsch which took place on November 9th, 1923 and which ended in Hitler being imprisoned. On the night of November 8th, the HC has Hitler leading the Nazis into a Munich beer hall where top government officials were meeting. He fires his pistol in the air and then attacks the people for betraying Germany.
Most of the HC’s account of this episode is oversimplified. Hitler does burst into the Munich beer hall with 25 armed men, he does fire a pistol in the air, and he does appeal to the crowd to join him. However, the government officials he is haranguing are not the members of the republican government in Berlin, but the local Bavarian government that he believes is about to double cross him.
The republican government in Berlin at the end of the war was faced by threats from the left wing Marxists and right wing nationalists like the Nazis. In addition, many state governments like Bavaria also had strained relations with Berlin. Hitler hoped to exploit this. He thought he could unite all the anti-Berlin groups and with the support of the Bavarian government and army he could march on Berlin and topple the government of the country. He had even enlisted the support of the old general Ludendorff in his venture.
The Bavarian government, Hitler, and the Republican government in Berlin, however, were part of a three-way quarrel. The Bavarian government and the Berlin government; Hitler and the Berlin government; the Bavarian government and Hitler. The Bavarian government had banned some of Hitler’s meetings, but when the Berlin government ordered Bavaria to curb Hitler’s attacks on them, they refused.
An uneasy alliance was now formed between Hitler and the Bavarian leaders, but neither side trusted the other. The plan was to march on Berlin, but the German Army had decided to back the Berlin government and so the Bavarian leaders began to distance themselves from Hitler. Fearing that Bavaria was going to secede from Germany instead, Hitler burst into the meeting at the beer hall on the night of November 8, 1923. After his dramatic entrance, he pushed the leaders into a side room and threatened them into joining him. Getting nowhere with the leaders, he went back into the hall and bluffed the crowd that their leaders had joined him. The arrival of Ludendorff and the resultant cheers so impressed the Bavarian leaders that they came out and seemingly joined him, but then slipped away in the confusion.
The HC has made a mistake in that he is not addressing the leaders of the Berlin government, but he is trying to get the Bavarian leaders to join him in giving birth to a new Germany.
Hitler leading the crowds to take the city by force is complete balderdash. The HC has mixed up two different events, the intended march on Berlin and the march through Munich on November 9th to win the support of the army.
One notable absentee from the HC’s Munich Putsch is General Ludendorff. By not referring to him at all, the HC has changed the intent of Hitler’s march through Munich.
Despite the apparent success at the Beer Hall on the night of November 8th, it was clear by the morning of the 9th that all was not well. The Bavarian government had denounced the promises forced on them the night before and had mobilized the army and police against Hitler. Ludendorff now convinced Hitler that the situation could be retrieved if they were to march on army HQ where the mere presence of Ludendorff would restore the situation. 3,000 Nazis now marched to the center of the city led by Hitler and Ludendorff. They were confronted by the police who had blocked off the entrance to the Odeonsplatz. It is not sure who fired the first shot, and the shooting only lasted for one minute, but by the end, 16 Nazis and 3 police had been killed. Only one man kept his head, Ludendorff, who marched erect and unperturbed through the police lines and on into the Odeonsplatz. But nobody followed him. Hitler at this crucial moment lost his nerve and fled. He was arrested on the 11th, two days later.
Despite the HC’s contention that Hitler was trying to take the city, his march never intended to use force. It was a demonstration intended to win the police and army over to his side. The last thing Hitler wanted was a shootout with the army. He wanted a revolution with the support of political and military authorities. It was a demonstration and not a coup.
Hitler was jailed for five years, but spent only nine months in prison. He then deliberately built up the failure of November 9th into one of the great propaganda legends of the movement.
I would give the HC’s account on the Nazi party and Munich Putsch as a two. The general outline of what he did was more or less correct, but the whole thing has been oversimplified, misunderstood, with the usual glaring omissions. In the Stalin account, as you will soon see, they left out Trotsky, in the account of the Putsch, they left out Ludendorff.
How accurate is the History Channel’s account of the
First World War career of Winston Churchill?
The History Channel accurately presents Winston Churchill’s aristocratic background as the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and son of Lord Randolph Churchill. In January 1915 he is also accurately portrayed as the First Lord of the Admiralty, meaning that he was in charge of the British navy. At the beginning of 1915 Churchill came up with a bold and daring plan to break the deadlock on the Western Front by sending ships through the Dardanelles, which was in the possession of the Ottoman Empire, and into the Black Sea to open up a supply route to Russia which could then mount an offensive in the east to relieve the stalemate in the west. It was a disaster in planning and
execution which led to Churchill being relieved of his post and which caused him to leave the government and join the army to atone or make up for the disaster. This is how the History Channel portrays it, but once again the account is littered with inaccuracies.
The first error occurs where Churchill informs the naval leaders that the fleet will push through Gallipoli. Gallipoli is a peninsula on the northern side of the Dardanelles Straits. The fleet had to push through the
straits and not Gallipoli. The next mistake is when the narrator informs us that the intention of breaching the straits and sailing into the Black Sea is to open up a second front against the Germans in Russia. The History Channel seems unaware that the Russians have been fighting the Germans in this area since August 1914 and had suffered a huge loss at Tannenburg. The task was to send aid to the Russians in the form of military equipment
and not start a second front.
The next mistake is egregious. It portrays an allied fleet of over a hundred ships which is termed an amphibious invasion trying to breach the straits on January 15th, 1915. It was not an amphibious invasion and it was not on January 15th. It was a purely naval venture to push through the straits and on into the Black Sea. The forts guarding the Dardanelles had been bombarded in February, and now on March 18, 1915, Churchill ordered his fleet of a hundred vessels, many of them obsolete, through the straits. The History Channel has confused this with the amphibious invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula which will take place in April 1915. The scene shows the anxious Churchill at the Admiralty in London as he awaits the outcome. It was a disaster as the fleet hit a minefield which destroyed a number of ships and caused the naval commander at the scene to call off the enterprise.
When the next contributor, Max Hastings, makes his contribution, he is not talking about this disaster, but another disaster that Churchill had little to do with, the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign which was mainly an army operation. Churchill had virtually nothing to do with Gallipoli except that he was on the war council as First Lord of the Admiralty.
Churchill is shown being forced to resign from the Admiralty. This actually took place in May 1915 and was a political move by the Conservative Party who considered him too dangerous to be given such responsibility and who would not join the coalition government unless he was removed. It was also payback time as Churchill had defected
from the Conservative Party many years before. The History Channel claims he did not want a desk job, but his desk job was the Duchy of Lancaster which kept him on the war council for another six months.
With the Gallipoli Campaign also failing, Churchill decided to resign his post and rehabilitate his reputation by departing for the Western Front. He arrives in November 1915 and spends most of the time in the first two months behind the lines visiting the frontline from time to time.
The PM (prime minister) thought he should command a brigade as a brigadier general, but in the end he had a settle for a battalion (1,000 men) and the post of lieutenant colonel. In early January he took control of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers who had suffered greatly at the Battle of Loos. At first his men were not too happy that Churchill was their commander, but he won them over with his lax discipline. On January 27th, 1916 the battalion took over its 1,000
yards of front at Ploegsteert in Belgium. In the History Channel film we see Churchill fighting in the trenches and leading his men in a charge into no-man’s land. However, no offensives were launched in this sector when Churchill was there, although there was constant shell fire and forays into no-man’s land. Churchill’s headquarters was a battered barn behind the trenches. The battalion rotated 6 days in the trenches and 6 days in the reserve. He did once come under machine gun fire crawling through no-man’s land to a forward listening post and his HQ was frequently shelled. Indeed on one occasion a bit of shrapnel hit a bit of a lamp battery he was fiddling with. So his stay, though somewhat dangerous, was not as dangerous as the History Channel portrays.
In March he had two weeks leave, made a speech in Parliament, but was rebuked on his return for his undue leniency with the men. When the brigadier left, Churchill was passed over for promotion and so he decided that it was time to leave the front and go back to government. Churchill’s six months at the front ended in May 1916. Of course, the History Channel seems to be unaware of this and has him in 1919 just returning from the front and seeking political office when he had already been home three years and had been Minister of Munitions since 1917.
I would rate the History Channel’s portrayal of Winston Churchill as a two on a scale of one to four with four being accurate and one being complete utter rubbish. They are correct in that Churchill was the First Lord of the Admiralty and that he was removed from his post and that he served on the Western Front to atone for his mistakes. However, they are wrong with respect to the details, incorrect dates, confusion of the Dardanelles Campaign with the Gallipoli Campaign, reasons for his removal from office, and a hugely embellished account of his time at the front.
How accurate is the History Channel’s account of Joseph Stalin in World War 1?
Whereas the portrayal of Hitler by the History Channel is decent and the Churchill account is satisfactory, the depiction of Stalin is inexcusably lamentable.
The scene starts off with a train carrying a secret weapon that will destroy Russia from within. That weapon, sent by the Germans, is the Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. However, what the History Channel has failed to mention is that a revolution has already taken place in Russia. Indeed, in 1917 there are going to be two revolutions in Russia and the History Channel is going to be focusing only on the second one.
In February 1917, the Tsarist regime collapsed when it could not cope with the social and economic problems of an unsuccessful war. It started when troops in Petrograd refused to fire on demonstrators which spread to a widespread mutiny. In the confusion, two self-appointed groups assumed control of Russia. One was the Duma, the parliament, and the other was the Petrograd Soviet, representatives of workers and soldiers. Contrary to later legends, the Bolsheviks (Communists) had little to do with this phase of the revolution. Indeed, it was because the Russian Provisional Government continued the war that the Germans sent Lenin back to Russia to end it.
The next scene shows Lenin strutting down the platform to meet his old friend Joseph Stalin, equal leaders. Now come a whole series of mistakes or errors. Lenin could not have been sent back to topple the Tsar because he had already been toppled by the February Revolution. The rosy meeting between Lenin and Stalin is fake. The History Channel version comes from Stalin’s official biography in 1940. They are described as the two great leaders of the revolution joyous to meet each other after their long separation. In reality there was a whole group of Bolshevik leaders who joined the train before its arrival in Petrograd and it is not even known if Stalin was one of them. What is known is that Lenin berated and excoriated his welcoming committee for supporting the provisional government. Lenin’s plan was radical and consisted of seizing power as soon as possible, taking land away from its owners and giving it to the people, and ending the war. We know that Stalin at first opposed Lenin’s radical plans and even spoke against them. It took a few weeks for Stalin to accept Lenin’s proposals.
The scene, the plotting of the coup, is all incorrect. Lenin had thought of risking a coup in July, but the Provisional Government had sent forces to crush the Bolsheviks. Lenin once more had to flee the country assisted by Stalin. He was back by October when the Provisional Government was in turmoil. It was now that Lenin seized his opportunity. The one man who was most influential in the overthrow of the Provisional Government and who was leader of the coup is not even in the History Channel program. This man was Leon Trotsky. It was Trotsky and not Lenin nor Stalin that led the revolution.
The storming of the Winter Palace is shown as the symbolic moment of the Bolsheviks seizing power. The truth is far more amusing. Trotsky had ordered the palace to be taken as the Provisional Government supposedly ruled from here. What actually happened was a small group broke into the palace, got lost inside the huge building which was practically deserted, and finally came across some members of the Provisional Government in the breakfast room and arrested them.
There is no mention of Trotsky in the History Channel’s version. The figure of Trotsky has been replaced by Stalin. Stalin had not played the leading role in the Bolshevik revolution, and from 1929 he had been able to create a revised version of events by altering records, censoring memoirs, and bringing in filmmakers to change history. It was important for Stalin to be seen as playing a leading role in the revolution and an equal of Lenin. People who disagreed with Stalin’s version or had even participated in the events of the revolution disappeared in Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.
It seems the specter of Stalin must have haunted the makers of this program as they faithfully follow the Stalinist, incorrect, version of the revolution.
I would grade this part of the program as a one out of four with four being superbly accurate and one being almost a myth. What they had right was the return of Lenin, the Bolshevik coup, and the symbolic role of the Winter Palace. Wrong was the Stalin and Lenin reunion in the train station, the total omission of Trotsky, and the role of Stalin to replace Trotsky.
I can conclude that the History Channel is a good way of getting people interested in History and it does in some cases give a good general idea, but to base arguments on such material is to set oneself up for failure. Factually it is often incorrect with regards to details and it in no way replaces good honest research from respected textbooks.