Episode 1 - “Design for War”

Summary

EP1 was Victory's pilot episode: the first to be edited to final form and scripted, and the first shown to Rodgers, whose initial three themes SONG-SEAS, SUB, and DEATH-DEBRIS (see chapter 4) reference EP1 footage. Bennett's score was his first to be written and recorded, and his holograph has as many timing-related revisions and adjustments as does any later installment.

Henry Salomon's earliest series outline of 1951 had projected an opening that reached back to the aftermath of WWI. The idea was later discarded and his planned EP1 became “Prologue: up to Spring 1940,” to be followed up with three “Anti-Submarine” chapters, then posited as EPs 2, 3, and 17. In the end, though, the intended EP1 prologue and EP2 were compressed into a single episode, the first of the three “Anti-Sub” programs that became EPs 1, 3, and 16. EP1 thus highlights Germany's provocative moves of 1939– 40: a campaign to dominate the Atlantic with its U-boats, and its aggressive European territorial expansion to the east and west.

“Design for War” begins with a full minute of no-narration underscoring. At first, the tranquil Rodgers SONG-SEAS tune is in cello and bassoon, with gentle violins and woodwinds above. The locales are all seascapes, lacking shorelines or signs of human life. At 1:21 we hear Rodgers's SUB for the very first time as a submarine's periscope appears from the depths: an Atlantic U-boat is stalking a cargo ship. The U-boat submerges and fires a pair of torpedoes, which strike the victim craft at 1:59 as the German sailors celebrate in the depths. The narration finally begins, soberly establishing the series’ poetic tone: “War has begun. Ships are sinking. Men are dying. It is September 1939.”

Next at 2:20 are several German warships, accompanied by musical example [A] (see this chapter's end). This is Bennett's own creation—I’ll call it his “SUB-extension”—which dovetails so nicely with SUB that listeners might figure it to be part of Rodgers's own melody: “(2:18) While German Panzer divisions race toward Warsaw, the German navy … prepares for … the Battle of the Atlantic.”

Rodgers's SUB returns at 2:46 in the orchestra's strings, now in counterpoint with the debut of Bennett's own ersatz-German melody, GER, which recurs regularly in Victory. Shown next are busy German shipyards, evidence of Hitler's high priority for U-boat development and production within his Kriegsmarine.