The Winds of War

Author Herman Wouk was pessimistic about a film adaptation because he had been unhappy with earlier adaptations of his novels Marjorie Morningstar, The Caine Mutiny and Youngblood Hawke; he was convinced by Paramount and ABC that a miniseries would allow his epic story to be fully realized.

Wouk demanded unusual contractual control over the production, including influence over the production itself and veto power over which products could be advertised and how many commercials would air.

I, Claudius screenwriter Jack Pulman was originally hired to adapt the novel and worked with Wouk for months on an outline, but after Pulman died suddenly in 1979, Wouk wrote the teleplay himself.

Lee Strasberg was publicly announced in February 1981 as playing Aaron Jastrow but had to withdraw before filming any scenes due to ill health, and died in 1982; he was replaced by John Houseman.

John Houseman later had to withdraw from the sequel miniseries War and Remembrance due to his own ill health and died in 1988; he was replaced by John Gielgud.

Author Herman Wouk himself has a cameo appearance as the Archbishop of Siena.

Principal photography began on December 1, 1980 aboard the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California and wrapped on December 8, 1981 with the recreation of the Attack on Pearl Harbor filmed on US Navy vessels at Port Hueneme, California.

The production was shot at 404 locations across Europe, California and Washington state over 14 months, using a 962-page script with 1,785 scenes and 285 speaking parts, involving 4,000 camera setups and a million feet of exposed film.

Despite its massive scale, the 206-day shooting schedule finished four days ahead of schedule.

Scenes were filmed aboard the USS Peleliu and the USS Missouri, the latter still in mothballs at the time, and the opening scene subtitled 'Berlin' was actually filmed in and around the Hofburg in Vienna.

Train scenes at the beginning of part 6 were filmed at the Orange Empire Railway Museum using Ventura County steam locomotive number 2, a 2-6-2 type.

Nazi concentration camp survivor Branko Lustig served as an associate producer on the miniseries, and later worked on Schindler's List.

The production used stock footage from other films, including battle scenes from Tora! Tora! Tora!, for the Pearl Harbor attack sequence and the German attacks on the Soviet Union.

The miniseries drew 140 million viewers for all or part of its eighteen hours, making it the most-watched miniseries up to that time, surpassing the previous record holder, Roots.

Critic Tom Shales of The Washington Post panned the miniseries as 'bulbous and bloated,' joking that a first-year film-school student could cut three or four hours from it without hurting the flow.

Despite mixed reviews, the show was praised for its historical accuracy, correctly depicting details such as Hitler's reported reaction 'Now what?' upon hearing of the British and French declaration of war on September 3, 1939.