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Product Details

Actors:	Laurence Olivier, Anthony Eden, Averell Harriman, Albert Speer, Siegfried Westphal
Format:	Box set, Black & White, NTSC
Release Date:	2004-08-24
Aspect Ratio:	1.33:1
Audience Rating:	NR (Not Rated)
Category:	DVD
ISBN:	0767065751
Label/Manufacturer:	A&E Home Video
UPC:	733961713749

Product Description

Sir Jeremy Isaacs highly deserves the numerous awards for documentaries he has earned: the Royal Television Society's Desmond Davis Award, l'Ordre National du MÃ©rit, an Emmy, and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. His epic The World at War remains unsurpassed as the definitive visual history of World War II.

The Second World War was different from other wars in thousands of ways, one of which was the unparalleled scope of visual documents kept by the Axis and Allies of all their activities. As a result, this war is understood as much through written histories as it is through its powerful images. The Nazis were particularly thorough in documenting even the most abhorrent of the atrocities they were committing--in a surprising amount of color footage. The World at War was one of the first television documentaries that exploited these resources so completely, giving viewers an unbelievable visual guide to the greatest event in the 20th century. This is to say nothing of the excellent, comprehensible narrative. Some highlights:

A New Germany 1933-39: early German and Nazi documentation of Hitler's rise to power through the impending attack on Poland
Whirlwind: the early British losses in the blitz in the skies over Britain and in North Africa
Stalingrad: the turning point of the war and Germany's first defeat
Inside the Reich--Germany 1940-44: one of the most fascinating documentaries that exists on life inside Nazi Germany, from Lebensborn to the Hitler Youth
Morning: prior to Saving Private Ryan, one of the only unromanticized views of the Normandy invasion
Genocide: this film is one of the most widely shown introductions to the Holocaust
Japan 1941-45: although The World at War is decidedly focused more on the European theater, this is an important look into wartime Japan and its expansion--early 20th-century history that lead to Japan's role in World War II is superficial
The bomb: another widely shown documentary of the Manhattan Project, the Enola Gay, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki

The World at War will remain the definitive visual history of World War II, analogous to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. No serious historian should be missing The World at War in a collection, and no student should leave school without having seen at least some of its salient episodes. Rarely is film so essential. --Erik J. Macki

Product Features

Customer Reviews

Rated

on 2010-08-24

Made in 74, this 24 hour British documentary benefits from many interviews with still young WW2 vets from various countries, including Germany. We see and hear their remembrances of such events as the bombing of London. Fairly amazing stuff from people who look to be in their 50s and 60s when filmed, probably some time in the late 60s or early 70s? I have not seen all the episodes, but you will get hooked very quickly once you see only one or two. The sweep, the tone, the clips, the interviews, the big sense of epic history, they are all present. You might even want to own this for repeated viewing if you are really into it. It's that good.

Rated

on 2010-08-22

This chronicle of WWII provides not only classic battle footage, but also commentary by the people involved in the actions and decicions that shaped events...often the viewer comes to feel that things on the battlefield are not really under the control of major players, but to a great extent, the common soldier.

The bonus DVD on the Holocaust was very harrowing- and as a teacher of Holocaust studies, I'd thought myself inured.

And the narrator to this series: Sir Laurence Olivier

Rated

on 2010-08-20

An excellent documentary on WW2. Filled with eyewitness accounts, extensive footage, brutal honesty; not the modern revisionist way of treating history.

Rated

on 2010-08-11

I have a number of dvd and videos regarding WWII. One just bought prior to this set, "The Nazis". It was okay. This documentary, produced in 1974, is the best ever. It includes many interviews with people in the war. Now most are dead. I will not buy another WWII documentary because there is so little, if any, left out that at best a new one would be mostlly redundant. If you are a WWII buff, I highly recommend this set.

Rated

on 2010-08-11

I've only gotten through the first 3 DVD's of the set, but from what I've seen so far, this is an excellent documentary. It's ironic that the economic conditions that led to Hitler's rise to power mirror those here in the U.S. The fact that so many are willing to give up their civil rights to stave off perceived fears....but back to the DVD. Here in the USA we only know about several events of WWII, (Pearl Harbor, Normandy assault, Iwo Jima, and Hiroshima)but there were so many lives lost before we even entered the war. This set is not some romanticized version of the war, which we are so use to seeing. It is war as the way it should be seen. As I stated earlier, I have not watched all 13 DVD's yet but it is ironic to hear Anglos voice their opposition to being enslaved, yet most of the participants of the war had colonized other non-whites. If you are a war history buff or ex-military such as myself, this is a very well put together set.

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