Hitler's Last Stand

The angle is strange! The battles are described in a way that gives the impression that the Germans were winning and then suddenly the Germans lost in the few last minutes! The Germans are also depicted as some kind of supermen that lose for some strange reason! The allied are shown as clueless bunglers and whereas the Germans are show as supreme at planning and strategy!

They seem to have decent writing, access to world-class historians like David O'Keefe, and a budget for CGI. The reenactments, however, are horrifyingly bad. I feel for the extras who have been given not only the wrong types of uniform and equipment to work with, but absolutely no informed instructions on how to wear any of it convincingly. Firearms carries are abysmal and modelled after modern day police tactics rather than what soldiers were doing in the field in 1944. Many won't notice much of this, but for those in the know, the reenactments are unwatchable. And they deserve to have been the centrepiece.

The level of historical battle accuracy and reenactment was top notch. I have been watching war movies for over 40 years. My dissatisfaction has always been with equipment, vehicles, artillery etc. It's not easy finding WWII tanks, trucks etc that look new and many Hollywood movies must use 70 yr old resources. We all know by the 1940's everything in action was shiny brand new, yet in film, 70 year old stuff looks 70 years old. Not here. Equipment and uniforms were new as they should have been. Hitler was a bastard and we need to keep educating each new generation so they understand it must never happen again. That said, without turning this into Schindler's List, it still should have depicted the lose of innocent life caused by the Nazi Final Solution; extermination of all Jewish people.

As a series of short documentaries this is good. It shows some well-known and less knows 'incidents' and they are presented in an interesting way. The storytelling is good, the acting could have been better. I guess the budget wasn't huge, because many of the actors are seen in various roles over various episodes. OK, John Wayne played many roles in many films, but they were different kinds of films and not parts of a series. If watching this series, in one episode an actor is playing the role of a German officer and in the next episode a Canadian one and in another episode he's an American soldier. Also, when watching episodes concerning castles, all have the samen walls. And residential buildings all look the same: not very house-like. Even tank no. 14 seems to take part in many different battles.

My overall opinion: good intention, not so good execution.

The story tellers over dramatize everything. The reenactors were the wrong gear and carry the wrong weapons. It looks like it was put together by a high schooler in AV club with a bunch of his buddies playing the roles. On the plus side, the specifics of the battles are pretty accurate.