Jump to:
Spoilers (1)
The producers considered replacing seventy-year-old Robert Mitchum with fifty-nine-year-old James Coburn, due to concerns that Mitchum was too old and ill to reprise the role of Victor "Pug" Henry.
The series performed disappointingly in terms of viewing figures compared to The Winds of War (1983).
Most Captains in the U.S. Navy were in their thirties or forties during World War II. Robert Mitchum turned seventy during the filming of this series.
Ralph Bellamy was eighty-three when he played President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died at the age of sixty-three.
During a break in filming, Robert Mitchum played a role intended for John Huston, who was dying of pneumonia and emphysema, in Mr. North (1988).
The one thousand four hundred ninety-two page script included two thousand seventy scenes, three hundred fifty-eight speaking parts, seven hundred fifty-seven locations around the world, and employed more than forty-four thousand actors, actresses, and extras.
In the "death camp" segment, there is a shot of several nude "bodies" showing women's breasts. This was the first time that nudity was shown on network television in prime time.
Costing over one hundred ten million dollars, it was, at the time, the most expensive miniseries ever.
Paramount, who financed The Winds of War (1983), passed on financing this sequel, so ABC paid for it.
The scenes at Hitler's Reich Chancellery in Berlin, were shot in and around the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.
Pat Hingle served in the U.S. Navy, in the Pacific Theater, which means he served under the command of Admiral Halsey, whom he played in this miniseries.
Sir John Gielgud worked eight months on this project.
E.G. Marshall previously played General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Ike (1986). This is also his second time in a Herman Wouk adaptation. He previously played the prosecutor in The Caine Mutiny (1954).
When the series was shown on the ITV network in the UK in the late 1980s, several of the graphic concentration camp scenes were shown out of sequence. This was to ensure they were transmitted after the 9:00 p.m. "watershed". There is an unwritten rule that potentially "offensive" images are never shown before this time.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill are played in this film by Ralph Bellamy and Robert Hardy, respectively. Both actors had played those roles in other films as well. Bellamy not only played the role in The Winds of War (1983), but also in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). Hardy previously played Churchill in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) and The Woman He Loved (1988). He would also subsequently play the part in Bomber Harris (1989). Hardy has also played President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Sir John Gielgud took over the role of Aaron Jastrow from John Houseman. Gielgud was one of several actors who passed on the role of the law professor in The Paper Chase (1973), before Houseman was cast.
The authenticity of the selection scenes at Auschwitz were helped by several former inmates of the camp, who were given advisory roles and appeared as extras, thus reliving their own experiences more than forty years later.
The miniseries was criticized for downplaying Soviet atrocities. The Soviets had invaded Poland and Finland in 1939 before invading the Baltic States in 1940.
Final film role for Howard Caine, who portrayed British Lord Beaverbrook. Arguably Caine's best known role was in Hogan's Heroes (1965), where Caine portrayed Nazi Gestapo Major Wolfgang Hochstetter.
This was the first production to be filmed on-location inside Auschwitz, after Dan Curtis lobbied the Polish Communist government for permission to film. A full scale replica of Krematorium II was built alongside the original site, as the building had been destroyed by the Nazis at the end of 1944.
Although the U.S.S. Northampton is portrayed with the second main gun turret located aft of the bridge, which is incorrect, all of the World War II U.S. heavy and light cruisers that could have portrayed the ship had either been scrapped; converted and scrapped; mothballed; or preserved as a museum ship. It appears that a ship was offered for use during filming, and had to be converted. The ship used could not have physically had a second main gun turret included forward, as this is pretty obvious, so it had to be added to the aft section behind the bridge.
Edmund Pegge believes he was not asked back to play Burne-Wilke because of a blunder with a pipe during filming of The Winds of War (1983), so the role was given to Michael Elwyn instead.
Jane Seymour took over the role of Natalie from Ali MacGraw. Both of them were connected by marriage to a star of The Great Escape (1963). MacGraw was married to Steve McQueen, and Seymour was married to Michael Attenborough, son of Sir Richard Attenborough.
The role of Werner Beck was offered to Ronald Lacey.
Brian Blessed said on a UK chat show, that he was initially offered one of the Auschwitz roles, maybe the John Rhys-Davies role. but turned it down, as he thought it would be too depressing.
Spoilers
Byron ultimately finds his son Louis in England, courtesy of an Royal Air Force program to find adoptive homes for Jewish orphans. That program existed in real-life. Jane Seymour's first husband, Michael Attenborough, had two aunts who were adopted through the program.
