Apocalypse World War II

 

 

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I've watched this on National Geographic channel and just had to have a copy of of this program. It has footage not seen on any other footage of WWII and covers topics missed by all other documentaries.

This is absolutely awesome. We started watching parts of this documentary in history class. I decided it would be fun to buy it. We had started watching it in French (french immersion), as it is originally a French film. The images are stunning and the footing is phenomenal. One thing I love is that the movie is not at all biased. Although it is from France, the producers did their best to show every view point. It is fantastic.I am just on the third disc. The war is impeccably covered from start to finish. This is great! Buy this movie. It is a wonderful document. Every single scene was filmed at the time (nothing was re-shot in a studio). Re-coloured scenes!
A must have for every WW2 fanatic.

An antimilitarist, I am a great appreciator of WWII documentaries. And as a teacher of visual media, I'm especially appreciative of this one. I've watched it three times online, but the part on Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the war is not accessible "for reasons of copyright," so I must have my own copy, which I'm in the process of ordering here. The new footage makes for a more balanced view -- i.e., neither Britain nor the US is celebrated as the war's "star," and we get to see much more Russian footage than we're used to. And since it's been a long time since we've come to understand that the French capitulation rather than the French resistance was the norm, it's good to have that covered more clearly. (Well, this is a French production, after all.) Footage from private sources adds a human touch to a profoundly inhuman event.

WWII docs should be able to draw you into the gut-wrenching fear and horror of it, since it was the most fearsome and horrible of wars to date. It helps if this horror is accompanied by a superb soundtrack -- and this one is the best I've heard. The bombs, guns, and tank-treads sound as if they were all on the original footage, not dubbed in years later. The brilliant Japanese composer Kenji Kawai has written a heart-pounding, appropriately apocalyptic musical score. Those who know Kawai's work will recognize him twelve bars into the first episode. Most of the old black-and-white footage is colorized, which has a way of making the events more immediate.

I am hoping that the version for sale here is not the American one, narrated by Martin Sheen, as the British narrator is excellent -- very much in the tradition of the reserved Sir Lawrence Olivier, narrator of The World At War, probably the first WWII documentary series ever produced. This narrator, apparently actor Steven Cree -- clearly not liked by some American reviewers -- pronounces the German and French names and phrases quite flawlessly. (Most American narrators of the World Wars make me cringe in this regard.) Cree does, however, make a couple of minor flubs with the German -- one of which is rather quirky, if you know the language. He notes that Hitler was known as "die Führer" (feminine -- instead of "der Führer") -- amusing, given that Hitler was the leader of the most hyper-masculine, hyper-militarized, hyper-misogynistic regime in modern history. Well, the mistake was probably in the script, not Cree's fault.

Students often ask me to recommend WWII docs, and I would have to include *Apocalypse* as the best extended overview of the war in Europe (the war in the Pacific is treated as more of an afterthought). But I also recommend The Nazis: A Warning From History for a history of the Nazi movement and the NSDAP. And Auschwitz: Inside The Nazi State is also well made and up-to-date, and it doesn't focus exclusively on that particular death camp. It makes good use of the recently recovered blueprints of Auschwitz -- the ones that Netanyahu waved around at the UN while doing his Holocaust-mongering shtick. But no matter how good the documentaries, you can't beat the written histories -- especially the work of Richard Evans, Ian Kershaw, and Christopher Browning. There are, of course, many excellent German historians, but not all are treated to excellent translators.

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