Convert 8-bit Ansi codepage data to UCS-2 wide chars, on the Windows command line with the free Open Source tool Swiss File Knife.

sfk atow [-tofile out.txt]

convert 8-bit Ansi codepage text to UCS-2
16-bit character binary data.

options
  -codes       print character codes
  -be          big endian output
  -nobom       write no BOM header
  -i           read from stdin
  -codepage=n  change codepage.
               more under: sfk listcodes

command chaining support
  uses text from a previous command.

aliases
  sfk ansitoucs    same as atow

see also
  sfk wtoa   wide chars to Ansi
  sfk utow   UTF-8 to wide chars

examples
  sfk load in.txt +atow -tofile out.txt
    load 8-bit Ansi text from in.txt
    and write wide char data to out.txt
  sfk atow in.txt +hexdump
    show a hexdump of ucs output.