Greatest Events of WWII in Colour

From the beginning I was hooked. The way the show details the events, the strategies, the beautiful footage, interviews, etc was gripping and I binge watched the show over 2 days. It goes into the psychology of the most important people and what led to their decisions. It takes into account the culture of the individual countries at the time and is filled with suspense and twists. It was also very informative, I knew a little bit about WWII from high school classes, but this really helped fill in the gaps in a satisfying way. I feel like I've learned more than in the 2 days of watching this show than I would in a year of study. If you are slightly interested in the events of WWII and want a dramatic narrative of the most important events, this show is for you!

First, in defense of the series against some of the review comments about the source of the video, just because you've seen it in a movie doesn't mean it's not real wartime footage. Older movies, before CGI, did that all the time to save money. For instance, we've all seen that crash of the plane onto the carrier deck in a movie or two, the one where it breaks in half and spins around. But it's real, not shot for a movie. Second, there's no way to cover everything important that occurred in WWII in 10 hours so obviously many important things will be left out. You can't cover the contributions of every country when so many participated so you pick the major combatants, etc. My main complaint is in many cases they cover some subjects in such a way as to focus on a more minor topic and leave out the major one. So many examples I can't list them all but here's just one: in the Battle of Britain episode they extensively cover the Spitfire without even a mention of the Hawker Hurricane when in fact there were many more Hurricanes used and Hurricanes were responsible for many more German losses than Spitfires. Yes, the Spitfire was the shiney new plane at the the time. But it's higher complexity meant lower percent availability of the smaller numbers of planes and the Hurricane's quicker turnaround time meant a single Hurricane could fly more sorties in a day. So why not take even 20 seconds to mention the most important British fighter in the Battle, especially the early stages?

If you're someone who'd like to better understand WWII in a thoughtful, comprehensive, well-paced film... this is it.

And here are 3 reasons why:

It is totally captivating. I've seen countless films on WWII, but this moves with a pace that allows you to absorb the key events while gaining insight on why things happened the way they did. Although I've seen so many accounts of the war, this summarized it better than any other film in my opinion.

It's binge-worthy. I stayed up all night long watching this - much more engaging than the typical war documentaries that put us all to sleep. I will watch it again with my wife and I know she will like it because you're compelled to watch the next episode.

It's relevant. The approach they've taken - beautifully restored and colorized film combined with thoughtful accounts by historians and veterans - is to be commended and treasured. But more importantly, it reminds us of what people with bad ideas can accomplish when the rest of us stay silent. A timeless and painful lesson.

I love WW2 documentaries. However, the lack of respect shown to the diggers got to me. Australia entered world war 2 well before the USA. No mention of rats of Tobruk or Kokoda just to name a couple.

Overall the series had a great amount of knowledgeable information and footage.

This series main selling point, according to Netflix is "rare footage from around the world, expertly restored in full color, tells the story as you've never seen it before."

It's true. I've never seen it told with such inaccuracy.

From a purely narrated standpoint, it's not a totally bad documentary. It omits a TON, but makes up for it somewhat by revealing little known details and recollections from people who lived it.

My main beef with this series is that their main selling point is bs. The Dunkirk episode supposedly depicts Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers attempting to pick off English boats and ships in the channel supporting the British Expeditionary Force's evacuation of France. But the footage is not of Stukas, but some other aircraft I had some trouble recognizing. In the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire is mentioned frequently, but the footage is of Hawker Hurricanes, which was already considered obsolete by Spitfire standards by the Summer of 1940. However, the big aerial fight scenes depicting German He-111 medium range bombers and Bf-109E fighters engaging Spitfires over London, are actually re-enactments from the 1969 historical drama "Battle of Britain." The Bf-109Es were not actual Messerschmitts, even, but Spanish HA-1112 Buchons built after the war in the 1950s, that existed in flying condition in greater numbers than actual Messerschmitts, many of which were destroyed by the Allied and Soviet forces as they closed in on Berlin.

Often, substitute footage is used when authentic footage is unavailable or scarce. I get it though. The layman won't be able to tell the difference. What I didn't like so much was that Netflix is peddling this as "rare footage ... expertly restored in full color" -- which leads you to believe all of it, at the very least, is from the era in question, and it's been colorized to give a more accurate depiction of the war.

The final straw for me was a scene during the Pearl Harbor episode, which supposedly depicted Japanese dive bombers attacking Pearl Harbor, with the big red sun emblazoned on their fuselages. But this footage is actually of a US Navy dive bomber called the SBD Dauntless, its stars and bars "photoshopped out" and replaced with the rising sun of Japan. What the hell, Netflix? Top Gun did something similar, by reimagining the USAF F-5 Tiger as the fictious Mig-28, but I doubt any of us went into that theater thinking that this was anything more than RAD on steroids.

If you want to watch a really good documentary on WW2, Ken Burns's "The War" is a great choice. Also, the History Channel ran a terrific series called the "War Room" -- and instead of taking liberties with scarce historical footage, they supplemented their narrative with really neat graphic animations that talked about the tactics and strategies that either lost or won the battles. This Netflix series is a bit of clickbait, and a little bait and switch. There are so many better sources to learn about WW2.