The actor took on his first project about the historical conflict back in 1998, when he was cast in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.
Tom Hanks has been “wrestling” with why he keeps turning to the Second World War for “poetry, solace and enlightenment”.
The actor took on his first project about the historical conflict back in 1998, when he was cast in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.
Since then, Tom has produced war miniseries Band of Brothers, The Pacific and Masters of the Air, as well as starring in naval war thriller Greyhound.
He can next be heard narrating The History Channel documentary World War II with Tom Hanks, and opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about how he’s become associated with projects about the Second World War.
He mused: “I’ve been wrestling with this just recently. I’ve been asking myself at nighttime, in those moments of the soul, why do I keep turning to it again and again for that combination of poetry and solace and enlightenment?”
After pondering the question, Tom decided it must be because of the parallels between the world back then, and the world today.
He continued: “It has to be more about the palpable choices that we face here in 2026 as opposed to, look what those tough guys did back in the 1930s.
“Along with all that comes the tactile decisions that every human being had to make at that time to get involved that is no different from the sort of tactile decisions that we have to make today about getting involved.”
While Tom acknowledged that the personal choices to be made in World War II were as “blatant and obvious as the difference between freedom and slavery”, everything comes down to a choice, “no matter what the war is”.
He said: “There were two forces out there that said we are racially superior to anybody else, or we are theologically superior to everybody else, because of what is inside our blood. Is that in existence anywhere today? Well, yeah.
“So in that regard, it always comes down to some kind of personal choice that we’re going to have to make no matter what the war is.”
Tom also executive produced World War II with Tom Hanks – a 20-episode series which will see the actor and Pulitzer prize winning historian Jon Meacham cover “every major event of the worldwide conflict”.
Tom Hanks ‘wrestling’ with WW2 fascination
