The Second World War in Colour Book

Picture the lasting images of the Second World War: the Nazis invading Paris, Stukas dive-bombing the beaches of Dunkirk, the Blitz, Pearl Harbour, the Battle for Stalingrad, D-Day, Iwo Jima, the fall of Berlin, Hiroshima. What do they all have in common? Answer: we've only ever seen them in black and white stills and newsreel footage. The reasons for this are obvious, the effects less so. Black-and-white creates a distance, a historical divide. The fighting is somehow safer in archive form. Indeed, when we do see films, such as SavingPrivate Ryan, that are supposed to be almost exact re-enactments, part of the emotional impact is lost, not because it is Tom Hanks stepping ashore but because it is Tom Hanks in colour stepping ashore. The very medium that is meant to heighten the sense of reality ends up diminishing it.So one's first impression on opening Stewart Binns and Adrian Wood's immaculately researched book of colour photos is disbelief. Those American GIs hanging around on Weymouth pier with the barrage balloon hovering overhead? They must be Spielberg extras. And those engineers minesweeping the beach at Viareggio on a glorious spring morning, with the mountains behind stretching enticingly into the skyline? Some kind of surreal picture postcard, surely.But as you turn the pages, your eyes acclimatise to the different perspective. A picture of Hitler taking tea at his Berghof mountain retreat loses some of its status as historical record and takes on the same characteristics of a 1990s PR stunt involving Slobodan Milosovic being nice to kids. In short, even though there are few action photos, the war comes uncomfortably close to home. The bad news is that a book like this invariably needs words to accompany it and the stories here have a rather bolted-on feel. They're all taken from personal diaries and testimonies and might have been effective in another context but here feel at odds with the pictures and add nothing to our knowledge of the war. But the pictures are another story. Look and learn. --John CraceRead More