History Channel will debut World War II With Tom Hanks, a 20-part documentary series, on Memorial Day 2026, the network announced. The series traces the conflict from the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939 to the Japanese surrender in September 1945.
Tom Hanks and Jon Meacham executive produced the project, created in collaboration with the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The producers describe the series as the first docuseries to take such an all-encompassing, global perspective since The World at War aired on ITV in 1974. Hanks calls World War II "the largest event in human history."
The numbers underline the scale: 20 episodes across every major theater of the war, a sweep covering six years of combat, diplomacy and displacement from September 1939 to September 1945. The involvement of the National World War II Museum and a Pulitzer-winning historian signals an effort to pair interviews, archives and scholarship rather than a single-nation tale.
The project arrives at a particular moment. The producers frame it as a comprehensive global look at World War II at a time when the American-led postwar order is beginning to fragment, Holocaust denial and far-right politics are on the rise, and the lessons of the war are at risk of being forgotten. That context is why the series is timed for Memorial Day, when public attention traditionally turns to service and sacrifice.
There is built-in friction in the pitch. The series bills itself as the first global docuseries of its kind since 1974, but the visible creative leadership is closely associated with American war stories. Hanks has been linked repeatedly to cinematic and television efforts about the conflict — Saving Private Ryan, Greyhound, Band of Brothers, The Pacific and Masters of the Air — raising the practical question of how a single production will balance national narratives within a global frame. Jon Meacham, who brings a historian’s credentials, has at times punctured solemnity with a wry aside — "Dork Wikipedia" — underscoring that scholarly weight and popular memory will need to be held in tension.
The series also carries personal stakes for its lead producer. Hanks has spoken about how his interest in the war began when he was 10 and saw his father recognize an old Navy acquaintance in a Safeway supermarket. He has said his father was in the Navy and that his life was put on hold for "four and a half, five years." That family recollection is threaded through the project: it is not simply about dates and battles but about the interruption and aftermath that shaped generations.
How the series answers those competing demands — global scope, scholarly rigor, and the intimate human stories that animate public memory — will determine whether it reshapes what viewers understand about the war or simply restates familiar narratives. The immediate fact is simple and unambiguous: on Memorial Day 2026 the History Channel will begin broadcasting World War II With Tom Hanks, a 20-part attempt to map the conflict from September 1939 to September 1945 and to hold its lessons before a public the producers say is at risk of forgetting them.
