World On Fire, BBC iPlayer

Looks as if they're hoping for a third series, so many unfinished stories. Enjoyed it, though. Made a change from the usual detective or thriller dramas.

I can't get over how good Lesley Manville was. She was such an awkward, prickly and stiff upper lip posh, British type 'lady'. Sir James was lovely.
I really hope there's a series three. I want to know how they all got on.

I nodded off the last 10 minutes or so last night, so shall have to re-watch the end. Just saw Kasia jumping out of a plane.

It zipped about from one scene to another so many times I couldn’t keep up.

Not on tenterhooks till series 3, if there is one.

Lesley Manville is terrific and it's not an easy role

She is, and must be a good actress to deliver that script without laughing!

I found series two very disappointing when compared to season one. I doubt if I will be watching the next series.

The stiff upper lips do wobble a bit!

It is the way the scenes are presented that is boring, not the events themselves. They do not serve to move the plot on or develop the characters, and i am sure they are intended to point up the differences between the awful events and the dull times.

I'm watching on iPlayer as I missed it first time round. It's really good. Lesley Manville is terrific and it's not an easy role.
I'd not complain about potentially boring bits as that's something that was often written about during the war. Lots of nothing much then all systems go.

eazybee

I am finding this drama harrowing and boring in equal parts; the scenes last night seemed very protracted. Robina's speeches about a woman's place was ridiculous, and I wonder what will happen to her son if the body of the German prisoner is discovered with his hands still tied?

Robina's speeches were ridiculous, women at home were helping in the war effort, as well as keeping the home fires burning!

Surely her son would have had enough sense to remove the rope from the German? He really is a drip, though, so perhaps not.

We have been following and enjoying this, but now we're finding the chopping and jumping from one scenario in short order to another rather frustrating.

Unlike some on here, we would still give it the thumbs up and look forward to the next series if there is one.

I am finding this drama harrowing and boring in equal parts; the scenes last night seemed very protracted. Robina's speeches about a woman's place was ridiculous, and I wonder what will happen to her son if the body of the German prisoner is discovered with his hands still tied?

Clawdy

I thought last night's was good, but rather dark and sad. Didn't realise it ends next week, can't see how they will tie up each storyline.

They won’t, it will be left all open-ended for next series.

I thought last night's was good, but rather dark and sad. Didn't realise it ends next week, can't see how they will tie up each storyline.

I’m glad next week’s is the last episode.

Far too much jumping about.

Fighting in the desert, sorry that Sergeant Stan didn’t make it, then we leap to a roast chicken dinner in Lesley Manville’s dining room, followed by the nurse and wounded pilot drinking cider in a straw filled French barn, then Lois nursing a motherless baby in her tent in Egypt.

Plus Kasia interrogating a Polish spy as part of MI5 or something, before a convenient suicide.

Goodness knows what will happen in series 3, assuming it gets commissioned.

My friend born in the 1930s did too, but not everyone was happy with the Nazis and their plans.

I knew that in Germany at that time women were encouraged to have large families and rewarded if they had more than a certain amount. Not sure if how many.
Also that girls of about 14 spent about a year with another Family to learn about children, cooking, looking after a home etc to prepare for marriage.
My mum born mid 1920 s
grew up under the nazis too.

LaCrepescule

I don’t doubt the Lebensborn programme because it did exist. It’s just that young women weren’t actually raped and their children taken from them. I don’t like it when facts are misrepresented.

Were they forcibly raped in the tv programme? I don't think so. They looked very keen to participate.

The children were taken and adopted by "good Aryan couples".
If that was not the case, why were so many trying to trace their birth parents all those years later?

My mum doesn’t deny it but she grew up in Nazi Germany and has a fair idea of what went on.

I don’t doubt the Lebensborn programme because it did exist. It’s just that young women weren’t actually raped and their children taken from them. I don’t like it when facts are misrepresented.

it seems that everything which may have happened in World War 2 is being squeezed into each episode!

Rather like Ten Pound Poms, every possible eventuality covered in six episodes!

Thanks for the link Callistemon. The lebensborn scheme definitely existed, as you rightly say. LaCrepescule’s mother may well have been too young to know much, if anything, about it at the time, but no excuse for denying it now.

I'm sorry to hear that Lacrepescule it must be painful to watch.

I missed the first series so I don't really know what's going on but it seems that everything which may have happened in World War 2 is being squeezed into each episode!
It's watchable anyway.

I’m rather Kasia hair envious too. It’s gorgeous.

LaCrepescule

My mother is German, born in 1931 so grew up in Nazi Germany. The Lebensborn plot line in the series isn’t based on fact which makes me quite cross. I wonder why the writers thought it was ok to distort history?

It is fact.

elibrary.westminster.gov.uk/client/en_GB/wcc/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:1201899/one?qu=Oelhafen%2C+Ingrid+von&ic=true&ps=300&h=0
Written by a child born of the Lebensborn programme.

Hans Kaminski, the freelance researcher who discovered the files, said yesterday that at least 7,000 children were born under the project, which ran from 1935 until 1945. Most are still alive.
www.theguardian.com/world/1999/nov/19/johnhooper
Guardian, 1999

German school children were not taught about the horrors the Nazis perpetrated on others, until well after the war.
They are now, of course.

Calendargirl

I find myself admiring Kasia’s immaculate hair.

It always looks beautifully styled and ‘swingy’, and quite a modern cut for the war years, I would think.

Never out of place, never looks greasy or messy, whatever she’s doing.

A real blonde bombshell.

Yes, altogether an unusual hairstyle for a young woman in the 1940s.
Even the Pageboy was curled under.