In 1989, when Europe was being transformed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the expansion of satellite communications, La Sept, a Franco-German TV channel, came into being. Histoire Paralèlle, a TV show hosted by Marc Ferro with newsreels shown in both countries, 50 years before, became the most watched program of the station, comparing the images the ways in which German and French started the war, as it should be seen and experienced by their fellow citizens. The program became a socialized process of understanding and historical rewriting, besides standing before the conflict between memory and history, a question that guided the historiography of the 1990s. This article analyzes Histoire Paralèlle, examining the relationship that it established with the historiography and filmic production of the historian. Therefore, its theoretical assumptions are re-discussed and historicized in the context of Ferro’s works and through the analysis of three of his programs.
