Der Krieg

I watched this six-part documentary series when it was first shown on British television back in November 2010. I was absolutely blown away by it.

The main draw of this French-made series is the inclusion of colour film footage. The narration doesn't really tell us anything we don't already know about the war, but the colour footage, which plays constantly throughout the six hours, is tremendous and brings the era to life like never before.

Fairly wide-ranging in scope, this one covers the Nazi invasions, the Russian front, the British perspective and the War in the Pacific. I was moved, intrigued and came away feeling like I'd attended an extremely good history class on the subject.

The high resolution film scans look great. They are the main attraction here so be sure to watch it in HD. The colorizing is good too, making the footage more powerful for today's audience, although I can imagine that future improvements will eventually make it look dated.

The script repeats an old error about the Polish cavalry units in Ep. 1. A brief clip of men charging with sabers drawn is narrated "The Polish cavalry charges the German tanks, and is slaughtered." This is nonsense and insulting. World War I taught every cavalry officer that cavalry charges were a thing of the past. Polish cavalry c.1939 were not classic cavalry. The were highly mobile infantry units which used horses to move but then fought dismounted. They were highly effective in that role.

This is a world war 2 documentary like no other. It contains a brilliant musical overture, often haunting but superbly executed. The narration is good, but the biggest plays is the colour footage which brings the war alive like no other documentary.

Inevitably, comparisons will be drawn with the masterpiece "The World at War". These are unfair comparisons. This documentary had its own angle and story and special way of telling it.

I watched this series when it came out over a decade ago and I just had an urge to watch it again. It certainly feels more chilling now than when I was a teenager and the brilliant colors of the Second World War will forever be seared on my mind.

Maybe the story is not 100% complete, and maybe it gets a little confusing because so many things happen simultaneously throughout the world, so it's understandable that they didn't cover every single aspect and that it's a little too much "French biased", after all it is a French documentary. For example they didn't cover the Balkans at all, and there was one of the most complicated situations in the whole WW2. Maybe not the most important, but certainly interesting, especially in Yugoslavia, where there was in effect a three-way civil war under Nazi occupation, between royalists, communists and quislings going on simultaneously with the armed resistance to Nazis. So that in itself is a situation that would require it's own documentary, and I can see that the authors maybe did not wan't to get into explaining those difficult circumstances when it may take too much time. But the sheer amount of film material shown, that I've never seen before, is astonishing to say the least. I watched every episode eyes wide open. And it's that WW2 video material itself that makes this documentary worth having in one's collection.