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But the world of print provides only part of the evidence of sharpening interest in the war. Novels such as The Boys from Brazil, The Eagle Has Landed and Soldier of Orange have found their way into the movies, and Ken Follett's Eye of the Needle is about to—even as he puts together yet another World War II saga. If World War II films have naturally been less numerous than books, they have also—ever since George C. Scott swaggered across the screen in Patton in 1970—tended to be more spectacular and ambitious. TV is cluttered with World War II documentaries and dramas, ranging from the recent six-hour reprise of Ike's war years to perennial showings of The Commanders. The popular real-life espionage book A Man Called Intrepid is only one that has been translated into a television series. Last September, 80 stations all over the country began regularly feeding out a 25-episode presentation of World War II: G.I. Diary, a journal of obscure heroism. Undoubtedly, however, TV's varied World War II material was highlighted by 1978's blockbusting 9½-hour series Holocaust. Now all networks, in the words of CBS Special Projects Director Mae Helms, are "trying to come up with their own Holocaust. "
It is impossible not to wonder why the nation has got caught up in such a welter of war lore. True, some keen public curiosity needs no special explanation. After all, most Americans now over age 34 experienced the war in civvies if not in uniform: the war is their own story. There are, however, some other specific reasons for the new intensity of interest.
Partly, it is because an abundance of fresh information has become available lately through the disclosure of previously secret documents. Britain took the wraps off its secrets in 1972, and the U.S. did the same in stages completed in 1975. Authors promptly went lurching after never-told-before stories. A notable example came out last month with a most unwieldy title: Ultra Goes to War: The First Account of World War II's Greatest Secret Based on Official Documents. The secret: how the Allies did and did not use intercepted German coded information.
The U.S. shift away from confrontation with Russia to its present policy of détente has also impelled many scholars to take a fresh look at the cold war, that byproduct of World War II. Many of the origins of the cold war sprang from decisions made during hostilities. The Allied decision to halt Patton on his dash toward Berlin, for example, isolated the German capital and made it a focal point of confrontation in the postwar era. Says History Professor Robert Dallek of U.C.L.A.: "We have to go back. Where we are now is a direct result of what evolved during that time." To his own surprise, Dallek's newly published F.D.R. and American Foreign Policy, 1932-45, has sold, instead of a few volumes to scholars as might have been expected, 10,000 copies in three months. Says the author: "It's a hot topic."