A Conversation with Laurence Rees and Robert Dallek about the new PBS documentary: The Making of WWII Behind Closed Doors
Editor’s Note: The three-part television series WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, (described in the news article, “New Film on Secret Meetings of World War II Will Premiere on PBS in May”) juxtaposes conventional documentary elements with dramatic recreations to offer viewers a new perspective on the war through the prism of hidden meetings of Stalin—first with the Nazis and then with Roosevelt and Churchill. The film premieres on PBS on May 6. The award-winning filmmaker Laurence Rees (Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State), historian and author, Robert Dallek, who served as one of the academic advisers on the film, and producers from KCET Los Angeles, which co-produced the film with the BBC, talked about the making of the film, and a transcript of their conversation is reproduced below:
KCET: What does the series offer that is new?
REES: The series offers something new in a number of respects. Huge elements of the series were only made possible because of documents that were discovered in the [Soviet] archives in the 1990s. We would never have been able to know the details of a lot of these meetings if it hadn’t been for the fall of communism. A number of these documents, which were released during the following years, are now no longer in archives that are freely accessible.
We’ve also been able to have access to the most extraordinary eyewitnesses. Most of the people who appeared in this series have never before talked publicly about what happened. The Soviet secret policemen, the people who were part of the regime—all of these people before the fall of communism—were denied a voice. They simply couldn’t say the truth about what had actually happened.
DALLEK: There is a constant interest in World War II. It is remembered as the last good war and the opening of the Soviet archives deepens our understanding.
As they say, the devil is in the detail, and it was the detail that the film was able to get at that gives us a fuller, richer understanding of what tensions were like among our allies during World War II and the relationship between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill.
With the passage of time, the eyewitnesses and others in Russia are much freer to speak about the abuses of the Soviet government toward the East Europeans and toward their own citizens after World War II. This new openness makes a film like Behind Closed Doors very timely....
Read entire article at AHA Perspectives on History
KCET: What does the series offer that is new?
REES: The series offers something new in a number of respects. Huge elements of the series were only made possible because of documents that were discovered in the [Soviet] archives in the 1990s. We would never have been able to know the details of a lot of these meetings if it hadn’t been for the fall of communism. A number of these documents, which were released during the following years, are now no longer in archives that are freely accessible.
We’ve also been able to have access to the most extraordinary eyewitnesses. Most of the people who appeared in this series have never before talked publicly about what happened. The Soviet secret policemen, the people who were part of the regime—all of these people before the fall of communism—were denied a voice. They simply couldn’t say the truth about what had actually happened.
DALLEK: There is a constant interest in World War II. It is remembered as the last good war and the opening of the Soviet archives deepens our understanding.
As they say, the devil is in the detail, and it was the detail that the film was able to get at that gives us a fuller, richer understanding of what tensions were like among our allies during World War II and the relationship between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill.
With the passage of time, the eyewitnesses and others in Russia are much freer to speak about the abuses of the Soviet government toward the East Europeans and toward their own citizens after World War II. This new openness makes a film like Behind Closed Doors very timely....