{"id":2305,"date":"2026-05-25T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/05\/25\/tom-hanks-just-cant-quit-world-war-ii-and-its-keeping-him-up-at-night\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T15:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:30:00","slug":"tom-hanks-just-cant-quit-world-war-ii-and-its-keeping-him-up-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/05\/25\/tom-hanks-just-cant-quit-world-war-ii-and-its-keeping-him-up-at-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Hanks Just Can\u2019t Quit World War II (and It\u2019s Keeping Him Up at Night)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tThe Second World War is to the History Channel what hurricanes are to the Weather Channel and sharks are to Discovery. But on Memorial Day, the cable stalwart will debut a documentary series altogether more ambitious than any of the stand-alone History Channel WWII docs Tony Soprano used to binge. World War II With Tom Hanks<\/a><\/em> brings to bear all the gravitas of its titular narrator, America\u2019s undisputed chief chronicler of the conflict thanks to roles in films like Saving Private Ryan<\/em> and Greyhound<\/em> and the HBO trilogy he produced: Band of Brothers<\/em>, The Pacific<\/em> and Masters of the Air<\/em>. Executive produced by Tom Hanks, 69, and Pulitzer-winning historian Jon Meacham, the 57-year-old author of numerous acclaimed presidential biographies, the 20-part project covers every major theater of the war, from the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939 to the Japanese surrender in September 1945. Created in collaboration with National World War II Museum in New Orleans, it is the first docuseries to take such an all-encompassing, global perspective since 1974\u2019s masterful The World at War<\/em> on ITV, narrated by Laurence Olivier. By airing in 2026, World War II With Tom Hanks<\/em> benefits from the clarity that time can bring to history, in the form of footage and accounts that have come to light over the past 80 years. It also comes at a moment when the American-led postwar global order is beginning to fragment, Holocaust denial and far-right politics are on the rise, and the lessons of the war are at risk of being forgotten. Hanks and Meacham joined THR<\/em> for a Zoom conversation about the war Hanks describes in the first episode as \u201cthe largest event in human history.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tPulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham, an executive producer on the show; Hanks, who serves as narrator and executive producer.<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA&E Television Networks; A&E Television Networks LLC\/Art Streiber<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tHow did you two meet? Had you worked together before this project?<\/strong> \t<\/p>\n

\tJON MEACHAM<\/strong> We have mutual friends in Tim McGraw and his wife, Faith Hill. And we all met up right after President [George H.W.] Bush died. And I remember we spent about an hour trying to one-up each other with dork anecdotes. So this has now produced 20 hours of dork anecdotes.<\/p>\n

\tTOM HANKS<\/strong> You know what? A lot of those anecdotes I got out of Studs Terkel\u2019s The Good War<\/em>, which was nothing but reminiscences of the guys that were there. I read that not long after high school. And I distinctly remember thinking, \u201cGeez, what would I have done in the same circumstances?\u201d And Jon is great for those kinds of anecdotes. I\u2019m delighted to know an anecdote that he is not aware of. Makes me feel like a million bucks.<\/p>\n

\tMEACHAM<\/strong> Jon Stewart<\/strong> once called me a \u201cDork Wikipedia,\u201d and I insisted on taking it as a compliment.<\/p>\n

\tTom, your fascination with the war and that period seems to have begun well before <\/strong>Saving Private Ryan<\/em><\/strong> or even <\/strong>A League of Their Own<\/em><\/strong>. What is the origin? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> Oh yeah. My dad was in the Navy, and he saw no real danger of it, but his life was put on hold for that for four and a half, five years. I was 10, and I was with him in a Safeway, the supermarket. And my dad looked at a guy and said, \u201cBrian Gallagher?\u201d And Brian Gallagher looked at him and said, \u201cBud Hanks?\u201d And they had not seen each other since they were in the South Pacific together in World War II. And I just saw these two men \u2014 they\u2019re gods to you when you\u2019re 10 years old \u2014 and they had a conversation then that was in such deep code that was not unlike moments I\u2019ve heard again and again from an awful lot of veterans, who say, \u201cWell, here\u2019s something you have to understand.\u201d You try to get these guys to talk about their war years, and for a long time, they wouldn\u2019t do it because, Hey, I was just a guy.<\/em> \t<\/p>\n

\tHow do you account for the fact that you keep returning to the Second World War as both an actor and a producer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> I\u2019ve been wrestling with this just recently. I\u2019ve been asking myself at nighttime, in those moments of the soul, why do I keep turning to it again and again for that combination of poetry and solace and enlightenment? And I divined that it has to be about today. It has to be more about the palpable choices that we face here in 2026 as opposed to, look what those tough guys did back in the 1930s. Along with all that comes the tactile decisions that every human being had to make at that time to get involved that is no different from the sort of tactile decisions that we have to make today about getting involved. The kinds of personal choices that had to be made in World War II were as blatant and as obvious as the difference between freedom and slavery. There were two forces out there that said we are racially superior to anybody else, or we are theologically superior to everybody else, because of what is inside our blood. Is that in existence anywhere today? Well, yeah. So in that regard, it always comes down to some kind of personal choice that we\u2019re going to have to make no matter what the war is.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tAmerican soldiers, including former New\u202fYorker editor Gardner Botsford, approached Omaha Beach, Normandy, on D-Day, June 6, 1944.<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNational Archives and Records Administration<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tJon, right before you joined the call, Tom was talking about how he\u2019s constantly reading about World War II for pleasure and wondering what that said about him. How do you balance the telling of such a traumatic event with the desire to entertain? <\/strong> \t<\/p>\n

\tMEACHAM<\/strong> Maybe \u201cpleasure\u201d is the wrong word. Horace once defined poetry as literature that both delights and instructs, and \u201cdelight\u201d in the Latin just means \u201cdivert,\u201d right? It takes you out of the workaday world. So, I wouldn\u2019t feel guilty if that\u2019s what you\u2019re asking. My first encounter with the war was my grandparents \u2014 both my grandfathers fought \u2014 and then at an absurdly early age, I read Herman Wouk\u2019s novels The Winds of War<\/em> as well as War and Remembrance<\/em>, and continue to read them every three or four years. Tom, did you know him?<\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> I didn\u2019t know him. But, you know, he kept writing well into his 90s. He kept cranking out these books. I ended up reading a ton of Herman Wouk. He was quite a talented novelist across the board.<\/p>\n

\tMEACHAM<\/strong> In any case, Wouk calls those two novels together a \u201chistorical romance.\u201d And that\u2019s, to some extent, what I think about literature, art, about the war. That it is a dramatization of the starkest stakes we\u2019ve ever known. Literally. And it is illuminating maybe more than diverting. History at its best is illuminating.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tThe gates to Auschwitz today, preserved as a memorial by Poland. Notes Hanks: \u201cWe now are dealing with a rise of revisionist history, with people making money off of saying there was no Holocaust in World War II. It\u2019s all a sham. How does that happen?\u201d<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBoris Spremo\/Toronto Star\/Getty Images<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tTom, are those questions you think about? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> I don\u2019t think there is anything that we have done that has quote-unquote glorified war, although, quite frankly, it\u2019s very cinematic. You know, one of the things about Band of Brothers <\/em>or The Pacific <\/em>and everything we ever do is it kind of looks like a fun camping trip. There are times around the campfire and, you know, a good cup of hot cocoa. \t<\/p>\n

\tMEACHAM<\/strong> If it wasn\u2019t for those damned Japanese!<\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> But there was a guy that was one of the original Easy Company guys, because we went up and we added the actual old men, the actual veterans themselves, to the top of each episode of Band of Brothers<\/em>. And he put it in this way where I just thought, \u201cWell, what would I have done if I was 19 years old or 20 years old?\u201d He said, \u201cHey, we were attacked. This wasn\u2019t like Vietnam or Korea. They were trying to kill us from the get-go. And what was I supposed to do? What we all had to do. There was something I could do no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tCrewmembers of the Japanese battleship Fuso, moored in the background, in May 1943 in Kure, Hiroshima. <\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPictures from History\/Universal Images Group\/Getty Images<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tThis series premieres on Memorial Day and is being presented as part of the celebration of America\u2019s 250th anniversary. Jon, do you feel any tension between the commemoration of \u2014 as it\u2019s frequently depicted \u2014 the victory of democracy over the forces of fascism and the recognition that America\u2019s track record on promoting peace, freedom and democracy is spotty at best?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tMEACHAM<\/strong> I think you put your finger on it: There\u2019s a distinction between celebration and commemoration. Look, the reason we were a target on Dec. 7, 1941, and the reason that Hitler<\/strong> declared war on us on Dec. 11 was because of the tradition that grew out of what happened 250 years ago. The Declaration of Independence was an assertion that the rule of law and individual sovereignty would create a world in which politics was not a perpetual battlefield for the strong to dominate the weak, but that it was an arena where we would contend against each other. We would have rivals and opponents, but we wouldn\u2019t have enemies. And that was anathema to the march of the dictatorships in the 20th century. I\u2019m doing a biography of Eisenhower right now \u2014 and in 1964, he went back to Normandy with Walter Cronkite on the 20th anniversary of D-Day. And he\u2019s sitting on the wall there at the major cemetery above Omaha Beach. And he\u2019s reflecting on what it all means. And he says, \u201cYou know, Walter, these men bought time for us to get this right.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tWe have to wonder whether today\u2019s America \u2014 particularly under a president who has looked upon the graves in Normandy and allegedly called them \u201csuckers and losers\u201d \u2014 would make the same decisions today to confront those anti-democratic forces. Do you have faith it would? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> Wow. The reason I would say yes is because we have this extraordinary built-in machinery that doesn\u2019t just let us choose our leaders, but it allows us to get rid of the leaders that have not done their job well. But the question is, have we learned the lessons of World War II enough to have them permeate our decisions and our moral choices today? I think it\u2019s, you know, 50-50? You tell me. We also now are dealing with a rise of revisionist history, with people making money off of saying there was no Holocaust in World War II. It\u2019s all a sham. How does that happen? Well, the reason that exists is because we have freedom of the press, and we have the freedom of assembly, and I have confidence that that works to the good more often than it works for the malevolent.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tU.S. soldiers on Bougainville island, in the Solomon Islands, in March 1944<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNational Archives and Records Administration<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tIn the making of this documentary, did you learn anything about the war that you didn\u2019t know before \u2014 or didn\u2019t know the full extent of? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\tMEACHAM<\/strong> To me, seeing the imagery of the Eastern Front was \u2026 I probably should have seen it before, but I hadn\u2019t. You wonder why the Soviets resented us? Watch this. I think that the scope and scale of what the Soviet Union did from June of 1941 until the end is just mind-boggling. [It is estimated that more than 20 million Soviet people were killed in the war, including approximately 10 million soldiers, compared with around 400,000 U.S. military casualties.] \t<\/p>\n

\tHow about you, Tom? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> Alas, I have not been able to see the series in total, so I can only really react to the moments that I was in the recording studio and what I was saying. But I would say that two things stand out. One was just how powerful the Japanese navy was. It was huge, and their ability to take over the vast Pacific in a relative wink of an eye caused a lot of the fears for the American mainland. After Pearl Harbor, they just assumed that Seattle and San Francisco and San Diego were going to be invaded and we were going to lose. The other aspect was the Holocaust. There was a ton of footage here that I had never seen, or that I\u2019ve now seen in its totality, as opposed to a judicious edit before you really see what happened.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tU.S. Marines of the Fifth Marine Division raise the American flag in Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945. Says Hanks about his fascination with World War II and its veterans: \u201cYou try to get these guys to talk about their war years, and \u2026 they wouldn\u2019t do it because, Hey, I was just a guy.\u201d<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCirca Images\/GHI\/Universal History Archive\/Universal Images Group\/Getty Images<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tJon, what do you make of the criticism, frequently heard, that the West knew about the concentration camps well before they admitted to but didn\u2019t do anything?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tMEACHAM<\/strong> So there are degrees of knowing. There\u2019s no question, as early as 1942, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a declaration warning Germany not to pursue this path, this course. If you look at the newspapers of the era, there were a lot of stories. There was word coming back out. The Holocaust Memorial is excellent on this. I believe that we did fail on refugee policy, and one wishes that there had been more attempts at rescue, but the prevailing view of the military authorities was the way to save everyone\u2019s life, including Jewish lives, was to defeat Germany, and any move, any diversion of resources from that central mission was the wrong thing to do. The moral utility of this conversation, the reason to call Churchill and Roosevelt and others to account, is to remind ourselves that if even the most heroic people in the past could get something so wrong, we need to be forever vigilant about what we\u2019re getting wrong in our own time. \t<\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> The lesson to take from this, I believe, is what would we do now, given the same circumstances, the same kind of information?<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tA German supply convoy in August 1941 in a marketplace in a Russian town advances to the Eastern Front.<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tG\u00fcnter Buss\/picture alliance\/Getty Images<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tIs this the final word on World War II for you or are you going to keep returning to it and wondering why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tHANKS<\/strong> Oh, every time I read a book, I come up with something else I want to option in order to try to turn it into a movie or miniseries.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tAirplanes of the Egyptian Air Force, guarding the Great Pyramids during the Second World War<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tThis story appeared in the May 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Second World War is to the History Channel what hurricanes are to the Weather Channel and sharks are to Discovery. But on Memorial Day, the cable stalwart will debut a documentary series altogether more ambitious than any of the stand-alone History Channel WWII docs Tony Soprano used to binge. World War II With Tom Hanks brings to bear all the gravitas of its titular narrator, America\u2019s undisputed chief chronicler of the conflict thanks to roles in films like Saving Private Ryan and Greyhound and the HBO trilogy he produced: Band of Brothers, The Pacific and Masters of the Air. Executive produced by Tom Hanks, 69, and Pulitzer-winning historian Jon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,164,60,404],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hollywood","category-movie-features","category-movies","category-tom-hanks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}