Battlefield

I've really enjoyed this season, particularly the first 4 featuring Tim Pigott-Smith as Narrator. What is most enjoyable is the way each major battle is broken down into well organized segments, such as "Prelude to Battle", "National Leaders", "Weapons", etc. There is a lot of original footage, though some does tend to be reused, sometimes several times in the same episode.

If the show has a flaw, it is that each episode seems overly long, and sometimes the material has to be stretched to fit all that time. The worst example I encountered was in Season 5, Episode 2 "El Alamein", when the same information was repeated not just once, or twice, but sometimes three times. It was clear that the writers didn't have enough material concerning the relatively small battle at El Alamein, so had to simple repeat, repeat, and repeat again. It got quite tiresome.

Otherwise, it is a very interesting series that I have enjoyed tremendously.

WW2 dochmentaries today usually fall into the genre of hypotheticals and conspiracy, such as "What if Hitlar won the battle of Britain" or "Did Nazi Germany have Alien technology" very weak garbage when compared to documentaries that are trying to be historically accurate as one could be and without the need of being sensational (as is common these day).

Battlefield is a series of documentaries that were released over a period of 6 -7 years. They covered in depth many battles in both the European theatre of war to the Pacific theatre if war. Events included are "The battle of Britain" , "Operation Barbarossa" and "The battle of Leyte Gulf to name a few....

Each rougly 2 hour episode works of a similar formate. Introduces the battle and its significance in the strategic sense in the war. The tactics used in order to carry out the battle. The leaders and commanders are given some background each episode. Then information about the battle as it progressed. Using maps on screen and historical footage....

The only negative I can give this documentary is that sometimes it can appear a little repetitive if you tend to watch a lot of episodes in close succession. This is because the backgrounds of leaders is often repeated over again in an identical fashion. Yet this is a small negative. The narrators of the documentary series are British men and are excellent and have an air of academic seriousness. Unlike perhaps some American documentaries.

As someone who has been a student of WW2 history for over 40 years and has seen all sorts of documentaries about the subject this is my go-to series and also the series I recommend to anyone who is starting out on learning about that conflict.

This was the first and as far as I have seen the only series that goes into in depth into the backgrounds of the battles, covering the 'leaders', causes of the battles, soldiers and weaponry and also into the battles themselves and while many other series are good and do often have additional bits of information which broaden the pictures, whenever I watch them I always feel more like they are skimming the subject to fit it into the limited time allowed rather than really getting into the subject.

In part this series was lucky to have been created at a time when the work of Bletchley Park and other secrets of the war were being released to the public and if you watch documentaries before this time, even the good ones you really notice the difference between the apparent genius of certain commanders and the realisation they had many advantages due to the code breaking efforts of the allies.

This series is now 30 years old and while new information comes out all the time this still stands the test of time as a great record of that conflict and I honestly don't know why it became so abandoned which is a huge shame. If you search religiously you can still get much of the series on DVD but you have to be careful not to get the chopped up shortened versions which miss out on a major advantage this series has over others in the depth it goes in to on each battle. Luckily 27 of the 30 episode can be found on youtube and as a show to their popularity most episodes have been watched millions of times.

"Battlefield" is a masterful rendering of military history. It somewhat arbitrarily presents World War II as a series of battles. This is slightly misleading, since the "Battle for the Rhine" as two tapes are titled, was actually a campaign made up of battles such as Arnheim, Bastogne and the Bulge, which lasted from the D-Day landings to the fall of Berlin. Of course, the totality of a war cannot be explained this way, but "Battlefield's" perspective is narrowly focused on the operational aspect of the war.

Each battle is broken into two tapes, "Prelude" and "The Battle"; each of these is broken into sections comparing leadership (politicians, generals), men (soldiers, sailors, airmen), arms and strategic situations, addressing their respective strengths and weaknesses. The campaigns are illustrated with war footage and punctuated with dynamic war maps. This analytic approach may seem dry to someone looking for a war-as-hell or human interest perspective, but as another reviewer has pointed out, these latter approaches have already been used in other series.

Tim Piggot-Smith is a great narrator, giving an urgent, expressive, yet even and restrained voice to the events.

One quibble: I think "Battlefield" omits some important aspects of particular battles. For example, it doesn't go into enough detail about the successful diversion of Halsey's task force in the Battle of Leyte Gulf to explain how the element of luck was crucial to the American victory. This is covered in other series, such as the History Channel's one-tape Leyte Gulf history. Perhaps the European theater is more vivid to the British than the Pacific theater, which was mainly an aircraft carrier and marine operation between the Japanese and Americans. Of course, when "Battlefield" covers aspects of the war with Japan in which Britain played a major part, such as South Asia, the coverage seems more meticulous. Being American, I may be biased, but this is my impression.

This quibble notwithstanding, "Battlefield" is by far the best video series about World War II, from an operational viewpoint.

This is an extremely well done series. The only complaint I have is the god-awful music throughout. It's terrible & the same in every single episode I've seen. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I have absolutely nothing but praise for this fantastically knowledgeable & well put together series. There is so much about this that is both factual & entertaining at the same time. I would tell everyone to watch this superb series but especially those interested in WWII. Even for Historians of the era or Wannabe historians such as myself who know a ton about the period, there is still information that is quite interesting. I will say that those who just have a passing interest in WWII might not want to watch this as it's generally pretty in-depth for it's 1 hour 37 minute episodes. Give this a try, just ignore the bad music & learn.