In 2000, an unusual motion was passed in the House of Commons. It noted the inaccuracies in the new Hollywood movie U-571, recognised the true history of the capture of an Enigma machine by HMS Bulldog in 1941, and “regrets that Hollywood has chosen to distort the truth and detract from the valour of the British sailors concerned by appropriating the story for its own financial gain”. The motion followed a lengthy debate amongst Britain’s ministers of parliament that had been instigated by public outcry about the film, which claimed to tell the story of the Allied capture of Enigma. The motion was followed by a minister writing to President Clinton, who acknowledged the film was fictional. In that oh-so British way, the highest authority in the UK had objected to an American film, the equivalent of a rap on the knuckles for Hollywood.
It is lamentable then that twenty-six years later a British film has decided to prostrate itself in front of the United States with a determination to please their cinema-going public. That Pressure is focussed on selling in the US rather than the UK there can be no doubt. That they have decided to do it by almost completely selling out the British contribution to D-Day makes it an even more bitter pill to swallow.
Watch Dan Snow and I discuss the actual events in the 72 hour build-up to D-Day
For a film that claims to be the “untold, true story of D-Day”, Pressure is lousy on historical accuracy. Right from the off, the actual story of what happened and the depictions of those involved are heavily adjusted in order to concentrate the story into one place and one brief period of 72 hours. A lot of this is normal in film nowadays, with the need to condense characters and places to make a story fit into a 90 minute film. We don’t for instance hear of Sverre Petterssen, leading meteorologist with the Met Office. Similarly Eisenhower’s staff and advisors are reduced to Kay Somersby. The three meteorological teams operating across the UK providing weather data to Stagg are reduced to a single team and two personalities in the same office. It simplifies the history, but it’s understandable. The usual array of inaccurate details are on display – British troops patrolling the grounds of Southwick House with Bren guns carried at the alert position, AA guns seemingly positioned to shatter nearby windows and so on. They don’t detract from the film, but do leave you wondering.
Pressure goes beyond this and adjusts the historical record more significantly in order to create certain story arcs (it might be fair to call them cliches). At the start of the film Eisenhower is shown at the scene of Exercise Tiger, where a disastrous miscalculation has seen Allied warships actually shell their own men on the beach during a training exercise for D-Day. He takes the responsibility on his own shoulders (and seems to get the blame from other characters later in the film), which becomes a haunting problem for him and heightens the pressure he subsequently feels when struggling to decide what is best for his men when D-Day is set to launch. In reality, although Eisenhower did witness part of Tiger, he did not see the accidental shelling and doesn’t even see fit to mention the exercise in his memoirs. His aide Harry Butcher only mentions how depressed the supreme commander was by the slow pace at which the infantry cleared beach obstacles on 28 April (a day after the accident). No blame was ever attached to Eisenhower for the events of Tiger.
Similarly Stagg arrives at Southwick House (depicted by Mentmore Towers in the film) as a last minute addition to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, apparently at Churchill’s insistence, because someone needs to make a weather forecast. D-Day is 61 hours away when he arrives, but he finds the existing meteorological team more intent on entertaining themselves than getting any weather data at all. Stagg makes himself unpopular with the team by instructing them to get on with their jobs and gather data from across the country and Atlantic, and quickly falls out with his arch rival Irving Krick, who seems to have been the defacto head until now. Krick relies on analogue data for his forecasts – ie. he looks at past patterns in weather and uses historical data to predict how the weather will change based on what it did the last time a certain weather pattern developed. He has been a long time advisor to Eisenhower (from North Africa onwards), who resents having to rely on the new arrival instead.
In reality Stagg joined COSSAC in November 1943, before it morphed into SHAEF in January 1944. His appointment was made by the Allied Chiefs of Staff who agreed that the supreme commander’s chief meteorological adviser should be British, as they would hopefully have a better understanding of the weather patterns likely to prevail over the Channel. It is doubtful he ever met Churchill, but was certainly known to Eisenhower who had in fact set a series of practice tests for Stagg over the spring, and by May had a high degree of confidence in him. Krick was never at Southwick – he was based with the US 8th Air Force HQ at Widewing in Bushy Park, London. Contrary to being a long-term aide to Eisenhower, he only left the US in early 1944 to join the air force’s HQ, and he may have briefly met Eisenhower there when SHAEF moved to Bushy Park in March 1944. There is no evidence they had ever met before then or that Eisenhower had any opinion of him.
While Stagg is busy making himself unpopular, Eisenhower is getting to grips with his own commanders, which in the film is basically Montgomery. The two had first met in 1943 and both had been appointed to their respective positions in SHAEF at the very end of the year. Despite this, Damien Lewis’ Montgomery seems to still be trying to rattle Eisenhower’s cage right up to the launching of the invasion, never missing a chance to stick the boot in Eisenhower’s gut about his lack of combat experience or battlefield command.
The film progresses in this vein, with Stagg offering his first forecast to much cynicism from the generals. After Krick goes behind his back Eisenhower launches into a tirade against his senior meteorologist, who starts to become overwhelmed with the weight of events and starts stalking the corridors of Southwick House like a haunted man. For the critical scene – Stagg’s prediction of the weather on 5th June delivered late on the 3rd – he wanders into the meeting, dishevelled and seemingly with little more than his gut instinct, to fight with Krick and try and convince the generals. Personalities clash in outright shouting matches as they decide what to do.
This is where the film truly destroys itself in my opinion. In a story where there are no Germans and the plot hinges on an entity with no persona (the weather), you still need an antagonist or bad guy. Sadly, the filmmakers have decided that Montgomery will be that bad guy. To put it simply, if the real Montgomery had behaved in the way the film depicts he would have been sacked. Montgomery may have been vain and difficult to work with, but he was also a professional. The fictional depiction of him in Pressure will sadly only reinforce the negative stereotype of Montgomery (one that is unfortunately already held by many Americans). His bullying of Stagg and publicly humiliating his commanding officer in front of his assembled senior officers goes well beyond his character and anything that happened in real life. His seeming indifference to, or lack of understanding of the weather, is similarly baffling. He had enough experience under his belt to know the disastrous effects that weather could have on a battle and his demand that the navy “get my men onto the beach somehow, anyhow and leave the rest to me” was seemingly written by a scriptwriter with no real knowledge of the man.
The actual delivery of Stagg’s forecast was a far more professional affair. After lengthy discussions with the forecasting teams, Stagg delivered his forecast to Eisenhower and his staff and then withdrew from the room. It is true that there had been some disagreement between the various weather centres, and Krick and the Widewing team were optimistic about better weather on the 5th – but they also agreed to abide by whatever forecast was put forward to Eisenhower (and of course they weren’t present to disagree with it). But the closest this disagreement came to being argued out in front of Eisenhower was in the form of a simple question asked by Air Chief Marshall Tedder, who queried of Stagg “will you tell us whether all the forecasting centres are agreed on the forecast you just gave us?”, to which Stagg replied that they were. Eisenhower then took a quick straw poll from his generals, and then decided postponement was most likely going to be necessary – a decision that was ratified in the early hours of the 4th. Rather than violently disagreeing with Eisenhower, Montgomery had simply answered that he thought they should go, but he did not force the point. Put simply, there were no histrionics of any sort, and the debate about the accuracy of the forecast was played out by people over telephones, not in front of the generals.
Eventually Stagg is proven right when a full on thunderstorm rolls over Southwick. But then a faint glimmer of hope is revealed in some weather readings from Ireland and Stagg goes on the hunt for more evidence, enlisting the help of the chastened Krick who is given a chance to redeem himself and restore joint Anglo-American unity when the forecast is given to Eisenhower. The invasion goes ahead but, to the annoyance of any British historian, is seemingly a purely American affair, with only GIs seen leaping from landing craft. Meanwhile a series of farcical scenes at Southwick show the generals gathered around a wireless while operators make laughable calls like “come in Utah, are you receiving me Utah?”
Pressure is based on a historical event, but the actual story has been significantly rewritten in order to create a standard movie narrative. It’s a perfect ‘man against the establishment’ tale. Unpopular with his peers and his commanders, Stagg must somehow convince them that he is right and save the day/battle/world. Eisenhower is the tortured leader, ultimately good but struggling and in need of guidance. Krick is the ‘good enemy’ who needs to be convinced he is wrong, but is allowed to redeem himself in the end, while Montgomery is the evil enemy who simply needs to be defeated. Somersby is the maternal figure who quietly unifies everyone from behind the scenes. It’s a standard Hollywood-hyped drama in the same vein as Operation Mincemeat and it can’t really be described as a ‘true story of D-Day’ when it is so far removed from the genuine history. The setting is accurate enough (there was a weather forecast before D-Day), but the various characters’ set-up and the actual situations depicted within the film bear hardly any resemblance to real events.
It’s a shame we couldn’t have had an attempt to tell the real story in a more documentary like fashion – more Tora, Tora, Tora than Pearl Harbor – but the reason we have a glitzy Hollywood version is obvious. For a British-made film, Pressure’s clear desperation to appeal to the US is frankly embarrassing. Released in the States in June in time for the D-Day anniversary but left until September in the UK, overemphasising the US landings from the sea and the air while only showing British soldiers guarding the HQ, and finally vilifying one of Britain’s most famous (if not the most famous) general of the war, Pressure sadly tells us that the era of protesting misleading American cinema is well and truly over.
Stephen Fisher 