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Peter Hankoff (foreground) and driver-production assistant Lech Lacowski filming in a killing field in Lithuania where German Einsatzgruppen conducted mass exterminations during World War II. Photo courtesy Peter Hankoff.

History is made up of two things: troublemakers and real estate.

Any history buff can quickly name some documentary film that he or she regards as a favorite and can probably list several that should be on must-see lists. But how do you make a documentary on subjects like the Holocaust or the Nazis, topics that can re-open not-so-old wounds? Why do documentaries matter to us, and how are modern trends, from computer-generated graphics to the Twitter phenomenon, affecting how these films are made?

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ArmchairGeneral.com discussed these and other questions with documentary writer and producer Peter Hankoff, whose credits include Nazi Scrapbooks from Hell: The Auschwitz Albums and the recent Hitler’s Hidden Holocaust, both of which aired on the National Geographic Channel. The interview took place on August 5, 2009.

ArmchairGeneral.com: What led you to the genre of documentary filmmaking?

Peter Hankoff: I was a screenwriter for a long time, but you know, in Hollywood 50 is the new dead. Younger actors, younger writers. About eight years ago, a friend needed a screenwriter on a documentary about steelworkers for the History Channel’s A Day in Their Lives series and asked me to do it. "Empire State Building Ironworker" won the Gabriel Award, which the Catholic Church gives for filmmaking that depicts family values.

I just took my skill set as a writer, the ability to put things together, and applied it to creating documentaries. I’ve always loved history—especially World War II—so historical topics are what I tend to get assigned. Part of my job is to keep history alive.

My work has been done pretty much exclusively with Creative Differences Productions. I like working there because it’s like the old studio system: Here’s your budget, here’s what we need, go get it done. It’s not a widget factory. They know that I know the difference between a B17 and a B29. Younger editors often don’t know the difference between such things because they don’t have the reference points.

Don’t get me wrong—I give great credit to editors in documentary making. They burn through a lot of footage to get the film’s point across, but they don’t always know exactly what it is they are looking at. The last thing I want is people like your readers writing to tell me I’m wrong. You won’t see a B29 over Europe in one of my films.

ACG: Do documentaries offer viewers things they can’t find in other mediums?

PH: You get more perspective in a documentary. If you tell it right, viewers don’t get just one side. It gives them a window into the past, especially if it uses old footage.

Often, it’s some little thing in the background that really gives you the story. In Hidden Holocaust, we used one well-known, often-used film that shows Einsatzgruppen, the mobile German units that went into Poland and the Soviet Union to conduct mass executions of Jews and anyone else the Nazis termed undesirables. What struck me in the film footage were little details like a dog running around in the middle of the shooting. The banality of it is even more chilling.

History is made up of two things: troublemakers and real estate. The humanness of history comes out more in the documentary, especially if the filmmaker is coming from a forthright place.

The truth is that most leaders throughout history have been bad people. It starts with your bad boss, and history is made up of a lot of bad bosses. For example, when I was working on A Day in Their Lives: Conquistador (2001) as a consulting producer, my research showed the Conquistadors and the Aztecs deserved each other. Both were pretty ruthless.

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