It Happened Here is a ‘rewrite’ of history, an alternative time track, a paraphrase, as it were, of recent historical events. What would have happened if Operation Sea Lion – the Nazis’ plan to invade England in 1940 – had succeded? (…) Remarkably, It Happened Here’s newsreeels and documentary-style narrative technique contained not one feet of period or stock footage. Every shot was original. For the ersatz First World War newsreel, for example, Brownlow used a 1922 hand-cranked 16 mm Kodak camera to re-create the “look” of hand-held, grainy images. Andrew Mollo provided his own collection of original military uniforms and equi- pment and collectors contributed a variety of trucks, taxis, private cars and buses (according to Brownlow, wartime London buses are about the rarest vehicles on wheels). (…) The film’s presentist view of history that so struck viewers in 1965 is, if anything, even more disturbing today. Historian Linda Holt reports that, when the film was presented in Berlin in May 1996, German audiences were purportedly disturbed, because, among other reasons, it was an unwelcome reminder of the persistence on the Nazi ideology at home and abroad.

John C. Tibbets, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, June 2000