I firmly believe Peaky Blinders perfectly portrays how war PTSD can turn a person a 180 degrees (& Tommy Shelby more than proves it)

Steven Knight's crime drama series Peaky Blinders, set in 1920s Birmingham, aptly captures the horrors of the war and how it changes a person.

Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby, the ruthless gang leader, is a war veteran who has just returned from World War 1 with his fellow soldiers in Season 1. The violence perpetuated by him and his brothers (Arthur and John) resulted from the chaos and horrors they witnessed in World War 1.

I believe that the show masterfully captured the post-war psyche, especially in Season 1, where the characters have just returned from the war. Tommy is often plagued by sleepless nights, hallucinations and night terrors, and even Aunt Polly notes the change and toll the war has had on the men.

More on the war PTSD in Peaky Blinders in our story.

Exploring war PTSD and its various forms in Peaky Blinders

While the show is largely a story about the rise and the violent past of the titular gang, Knight's crime drama also stays true to its historical context and background.

Set in the 1920s, just after World War 1, the side-effects of the Great War are hard to miss in the opening episodes of the series, one where the soldiers who returned from the war were forever changed. In the show's guide book, By Order of the Peaky Blinders, Knight said:

“Men came back from World War One traumatised. I wanted to give the very first episode of Peaky Blinders a theme of wildness that focused on the men coming back from the horrors of the First World War. Commandos who had come back from there with PTSD — some of their recollections later shaped the personalities and demons of Tommy and Arthur Shelby.”

PTSD took various forms in the BBC drama, mainly in Tommy, but even in Arthur, John, and other fellow soldiers like Danny Whizz-Bang. Danny, an important character suffering from PTSD, even murders a man in cold blood while having one of his war-induced hallucinations.

I also think the gory and bloody violence featured in abundance in the show is itself a consequence of the war, which led to a deadening of emotion and made soldiers capable of committing this violence so easily. For Arthur and John, war PTSD brought immense aggression and rage, which made them wild animals, ready to blind their enemies with razors at any instance.

Exploring Tommy Shelby's war PTSD in Peaky Blinders

While Tommy Shelby was better than his brother Arthur and Danny in masking his war PTSD in Peaky Blinders, he, too, was plagued by it, as clear from his hallucinations and night terrors in Season 1.

But over the years, and after Grace's death, Tommy's war PTSD became even more harrowing. In the Season 4 finale, after Luca's death, Tommy is seen having some moments of quiet at his house, when a gunshot sound immediately triggers his trauma, and he gets to the ground, covering his head.

His mental health gets more disturbing from there on, and he teeters on the edge, drowning himself in alcohol and opium in his house, and occasionally, even his son Charlie sees him in such a condition.

Even in Peaky Blinders Season 6, Tommy has one of his PTSD episodes, where he hallucinates about the first Prussian soldier he killed in the trenches. In the episode, he hallucinates fighting the soldier, mimicking his actions from the war.

Seeing the once ruthless gangster degraded to such a condition is pitiful, and the show aptly captures how the war trauma can change a person.

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Also Read: When Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders proved once again how he runs the show

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