37 Days - 1st class graded assignment, 72/100. Review of the 3-part BBC series \"37 Days\" PDF

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1st class graded assignment, 72/100. Review of the 3-part BBC series "37 Days" detailing the outbreak of the First World War. Part of the Public History half module which is now incorporated into the core module History in the Making....

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37 Days Why Documentary-Dramas Make Great Entertainment, but Terrible History In 1914, over a period of just under six weeks, events happened in Europe which would throw the world into a devastating conflict. In 2014, the BBC aired a mini-series commemorating these events. 37 Days is a praiseworthy work of entertainment, but it highlights the issues of how we tell history on the television screen. 37 Days is so named because of the time period it follows. The introduction states that “on the 28 th June 1914, Europe was enjoying a prosperous peace, 37 days later the nations were at war”. It was on the 28th June 1914 that Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated; and on the 4 th August 1914 (i.e. 37 days later) Britain declared war on Germany. This drama closely follows the relations between the British foreign office and the other European powers as diplomacy broke down and war began. The series is categorised as a documentary, but it is presented as a drama. This highlights a real issue which has happened since the dawn of historical entertainment, the thought of the writers may have been along the lines of “well, we can’t know exactly what was said, but we imagine it went a bit like this…” It is dangerous to trust this type of presentation as historical fact. In his own description of the making of the documentary-drama, writer and producer Mark Hayhurst wrote: “I traced every conference, every telephone call, private letter and telegram swirling around Europe. This helped me understand what my main characters would have known and said. I was also keen not to break any major timelines in the plot.” 1 Whilst his thorough pursuit of historical understanding is beyond important and certainly admirable, it must be noted here that “main characters” and “the plot” are not historiographical terms. Facts are what matters in history, plot is the key to fiction, and it is in television dramas such as these where the lines begin to dangerously blur between the two. Closely followed is Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, and how he deals with the growing international tensions. For the purpose of dramatic narrative, it is essential to choose such a crucial player in the events as the central focus, and the steady and thoughtful - albeit seemingly quite tired - role of Sir Edward Grey in the drama reminds us of the traditionally British attitude of why the war was to be fought. We had obligations to our allies and a role as Europe’s largest power to protect smaller countries such as Belgium, so therefore we had to step in. With hindsight, it is very easy to look back on the First World War as an unnecessary conflict for Britain to get involved with, but Sir Edward Grey’s character plays a good role in reminding us why, for himself and many of the nation’s leaders around him, entering a war at that time appeared to be an understandable decision. The portrayal of events from the German perspective is basically the traditional narrative: the Germans wanted war, the Kaiser was crazy, so they started it. Nothing about our classic British understanding of history is investigated in this portrayal and questioning the role of Germany as the “enemy” does not seem to cross the minds of the writers. The real issue is that the story told here is limited to two-sides. It creates a British vs. German narrative with little regard to the widespread global conflict. The world crisis began with a Serbian shooting an Austrian, and yet no Serbian or Austrian diplomats are shown in the drama. One of the key reasons given for why the British had to enter the war were our naval obligations to the French, 1 37 Days: Changing my Perspective of WWI by Mark Hayhurst http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/entries/438cb4d0-d8f8-37d0-a436-b9d6fa04bcc7

and yet the entire series only includes one French character. These 37 days had diplomatic incidents involving the Russians, French, Austrians, Germans, Serbians and British, with crucial interactions throughout the continent, but only the British and German foreign relations are properly explored. Of course, the series is too small to delve deeply into every different perspective, but the matters are oversimplified into portraying the Serbians as an inconsequentially small nation, the Austrians as a puppet of Germany and the Russians are shown as nothing more than insane. There was surely more to the actions of these states than this. A lot of time is left over for the exploration of the British cabinet of July 1914. Herbert Asquith, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill all appear as recognisable classic figureheads of the era, but their portrayal is not as one may first expect. Winston Churchill is presented as a warmongering tory in a liberal government who is always up for a fight. The credits of the final episode remind us that he was removed as first Lord of the Admiralty in 1915 and fail to mention his future tenure as Prime Minister. This is a refreshing way to see Churchill, especially considering that, from what we can understand by reading the general narrative of his personal history, this man was not the great hero of British patriotism during this earlier stretch of his career. However, exploring the opinions of Britain’s old heroes during this crisis does not add much to our understanding of the causes of the war, it only serves to assist the BBC’s audience with some recognisable characters. The reason why portraying drama as historical fact is so hard is that a story requires a beginning, middle and end. 37 days chooses the 28th July 1914 as the beginning and the 4th August 1914 as the end, then deals with the middle. Limiting our understanding of the origins of war to this short period therefore overemphasises the speedy escalation of the outbreak of war and ignores the growing tensions which had been developing towards a conflict across Europe over the past decades. Important treaties made in the years before are discussed and mentioned, the backstory is clear with characters such as cousins Wilhelm II and Nicholas II, but a lot of the international build up to war cannot be covered within such a limited timeline. History does not have a natural beginning, middle and end like a television series requires, events evolve over centuries in various interchangeable ways, but to make a historical drama requires a starting point. It is sometimes difficult to properly establish a beginning, the series does it well, although it could have benefited from presenting an understanding that most historians regard the origins of the war developing as early as 1870. History is in many ways better explained on screen through interviews and archive footage, compiled into documentaries, because this allows debate and balanced opinions to be shown, rather than a visual description of “this is how things were.” The problem is, that this type of thorough historical programming does not engage viewers on the level of a drama which can keep them hooked, give them an antagonist and a protagonist and put every major question down to a simple answer. Viewers typically enjoy being told things in a simple story of how things happened, and a well investigated study of a time period will not bring in the viewers that a series like this does. That is why 37 days takes such a black and white approach to history and oversimplifies its problems. One memorable quote from the final episode is when Sir Edward Grey asks, “what does it mean to lead a democracy into war?” Churchill replies: “I don’t know. Never been done before.” This is not true history, to suggest that Britain at that point was a democracy is wrong, considering all males over 18 did not get the vote until 1918, by the end of the war. But who cares? This is a great Churchill quote. Sometimes it is dangerous that how history is told can be so different from how history happened. All this said, 37 Days is a very good piece of television, creating a re-enactment of international politics in the build up to the war engaging enough to help any casual viewer gain a greater interest

in the time setting. However, it does portray a traditional pro-British storyline which some might argue is nothing more than another round of propaganda. We are presented here as the mediators who could not be wrong, the reluctant defenders of national sovereignty within Europe. This is history as we want to remember it, not history as it was. Although the series ends with the harrowing description of the consequential war by a Scottish officer who had worked in the foreign office until he was sent away to fight, there is no tone of regret in the drama that Britain joined in. It was Germany, Austria, Serbia and Russia’s fault. We were the pioneers of European liberal democracy. We only fought because we had to....