The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

American troops fight heroically in a distant land against an unfamiliar enemy whose numbers far exceed their own.  Meanwhile their leaders, blinded by hubris and a determination to remake the world, decide to press the attack recklessly in a way that may result in an epic worldwide conflagration. 

Sound familiar?

The Korean War lasted three years, killed off 35,000 Americans and 3 million Koreans, and involved the armed forces of 16 countries.  It was the first hot war in the American battle against communism and almost careened into worldwide nuclear conflagration.  It pitted commanders in the field against commanders in the White House, and many so-called “great men” of history—Truman, MacArthur, Mao, Stalin—against each other. 

“The Coldest Winter” tells the story of the Korean War based on the newest work of history from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam.  The film, like the book, is based on interviews with American, Korean, and Chinese veterans, politicians, journalists, and other eyewitnesses, and on the raw materials recorded in their wartime notebooks, letters home, published an unpublished memoirs, photos and films.  Just as important as the film itself, the accompanying media Intelligent Television is producing will allow viewers first-hand access to many of these materials so that they may explore, on their own, the terrain of the Korean War and its relevance to the present day, as well as the career of Halberstam himself, from his days as a cub reporter in Nashville to his work in Vietnam, and finally to a deep concern about war today.

The emotion of “Band of Brothers” connects with the heroism in “Saving Private Ryan”; and in the television tradition of “Vietnam: A Television History,” the immediacy of war and policymaking in crisis is brought to the documentary screen. 

“The Coldest Winter” opens on September 15, 1950, with the American invasion of Inchon, an overwhelming application of military force, brilliantly executed, that brought a premature sense of triumph into American foreign policymaking toward the war.  The film then brings to life the strategic and tactical decisions that followed—a series of horrible failures and miscalculations in Washington, at regional command headquarters in Tokyo, and in the field—where intelligence was ignored or made to fit policy, and where justifying previous mistakes and satisfying the egos of the mistaken somehow became more important than implementing the best strategies for victory. 

“The Coldest Winter” centers on the deadly November-December 1950 battle at the Chosin Reservoir—the bloodiest battle of the war, and indeed one the most violent patches of fighting in the history of American warfare—where American troops were caught in the worst military ambush in their history, and suffered the worst defeat they had experienced since, as one observer put it, the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Many of the veterans interviewed are decorated members of the First Marine Division, which had led the invasion of Inchon, and the U.S. Eighth Army, the military unit that would govern the U.S. presence in Korea for years afterwards.  Some had fought in World War II in Europe and in the Pacific, including in the bloody Battle of the Bulge or at Peleiu, and some would go on to fight again in Vietnam, But to a man, no one had never seen a battle like this one.  It was a heroic fight against massively overwhelming Chinese forces in a dark mountain wilderness—where temperatures rarely rose above zero, and were usually 20 below.  Fourteen Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to veterans of this battle alone.  The “madness” of General Douglas MacArthur’s offensive, as Halberstam describes it, ignored every reality—the reality of the terrain, the terrible cold, and the nature, size, and commitment of the enemy, and ultimately ended in the retreat of American and United Nations troops from North Korea. 

As a two-hour film, “The Coldest Winter” is centered on many eyewitness accounts and archival photographs and film, including rare color film from throughout the war.  The producers combine traditional narration, contemporary voices from soldiers and others caught in the events, interviews with veterans of Inchon and Chosin, and Halberstam’s own voice to bring a new sensory experience to the telling of wartime history—and a fresh sense of relevance for the television viewer of today.  Film of the battle, though hard to find, is available; this archival material and the interviews that are conducted for the film will be made available to the public for the first time to annotate and mix online. 

“The Coldest Winter” is a gripping cinematic tale of the Korean War that has powerful echoes of the present conflict in the Middle East.  As an extended multimedia interactive presentation, “The Coldest Winter” will also pay homage to David Halberstam’s extraordinary career, which tragically ended in a car crash in 2007.  Halberstam felt that his book The Coldest Winter would be his crowning achievement.  Intelligent Television hopes to match its literary success with a new form of documentary/media project that will present the vision of an author and a filmmaker, while allowing viewers to investigate the materials on their own.

“The Coldest Winter” is being co-produced with Jigsaw Productions, the documentary film company founded by Alex Gibney.  Mr. Gibney’s film, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” won the 2008 Academy Award for best documentary film.