A Close Look At War: Ken Burns film tells hard and brutal tales from World War II and raises a host of PERSONAL MEMORIES

BORN AN ENGLISHMAN, I was a little put off by the first episode of “The War,” the seven-part film on the biggest conflict in human history by Ken Burns, the U.S.’s most esteemed documentary filmmaker. It is now being shown on public television. My feelings toward the episode were due to its one-sentence dismissal of Britain’s lone stand against the Axis powers from the fall of France in June 1940 until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union one year later. If Britain, too, had fallen in 1940, world history for the past 67 years would have been immeasurably different. With Britain out of the way, Hitler would have been free to attack the Soviet Union sooner than he did and with all his forces. He could well have succeeded. This would have left the U.S. with an awful choice: Remain in isolation and tolerate a triumphant Hitler or try to defeat him with no major ally, ...