World War II in Colour

The color process is both fantastic and jarring in bringing the our eyes old events that come back to life in a way that is emotional and very real. The old black and white films were like watching old history about a far past, but the color of the war film changes to feeling from memory to seeing moments in a new mind frame about that mentally sees the conflict in modern terms to appreciate and emotionally see and feel the events.

Recently I watched this documentary series about World War II in (HD) color on Netflix and really liked it. In 14 episodes you get to see a well documented overview of WW2, starting with the events leading up to WW2 in both Europe and Sout-East Asia, the beginning stages with the fast advances both Germany and Italy made in Europe, and Japan in Asia, the mistakes made by the aggressors, the fighting back by the allied forces on different theatres, and ultimately the victories over Germany , Italy and Japan.

The interesting part about this series is that the original black & white footage has been coloured by advanced colouring techniques. While you can occasionally spot the clearly artificial colouring, most of the times it is unobtrusive and hardly noticeable. Watching these scenes in colour definitely add an aspect of realism to them, compared to the same scenes in black & white.

There are many documentaries about World War II, and this documentary deserves a good place between them.

The segment "The Island War" treats the liberation of the Phillipines as an unnecessary and overly costly (and therefore ill-advised) operation. However, that totally fails to recognize that in war, there are both military and political concerns and that grand strategy requires the consideration of both. War is, quite simply, foreign policy pursued by other means. Therefore, foreign policy has to be considered in the strategy of the war.

Because the USA had a commitment to the Phillipine people as a protectorate, it was politically necessary to return as soon as was humanly possible. MacArthur may have left, but Phillipine guerrillas had been fighting and dying against the Japanese with US supplies and coordination from the very beginning. To ignore a chance to liberate the Phillipines would have been no different than leaving Paris in German hands while liberating Holland and Belgium. It was politically imperative! Likewise, the episode maintained that the "Northern arm" of the Japanese pincer had "only pretended to retreat and under cover of darkness had reversed course..." both Japanese and American accounts, much closer to the event when interviews with actual participants were available, indicated that the Northern force actually intended to retreat and only reversed course following critical comments from the high command.

Halsey had every reason to have believed that the Northern force was less a threat than Ozawa's aircraft carrier force which had just been spotted. Every previous naval victory in WWII had come at the hands of the aircraft carriers, NOT the battleships. When confronted by two enemies... one with a knife and the other with a machine gun, only the fool deals with the knife first! There were American POWs held in the Phillipines. Many were saved during this operation. The civilian casualties were indeed great, but that was the choice of the Japanese occupiers and how many would've died, either of brutality or starvation had the islands been bypassed? The further we get from WWII, the less accurate do the "documentaries" become. You can tell a good story with the films, but unless you have spent years studying the contemporary histories, from both sides... false conclusions will run rampant. As the last of the participants pass from this life, there can be no more "factual" accounts. The eyewitnesses are silent now. Don't just watch, READ, READ, READ the books that were published before 1960.

Documentary series on World War 2. Covers each of the major campaigns in detail and uses colourised archival footage.

An excellent documentary series. I've watched all the best WW2 documentaries, including the pinnacle of the genre, The World at War, and this is among the best.

Cynically I thought the series' selling point would be the fact that the footage is colourised and that it would rely heavily on this feature to get by. I needn't have worried: the series does not rest on the fact that it has colourised footage and other than the title of the series, no attention is drawn to this.

It's simply a great all-round documentary series: good detail without being tedious, great, relevant video material, superb, stirring, gravitas-filled narration by Robert Powell. It doesn't quite measure up to The World at War but nothing does.

This show demonstrate how unreliable human being are and how far they go due to their incomplete and sometimes wrong believes.

Going through the events occurred during WW II over and over again coming to conclusion that human will eventually destroy itself is inevitable.

The irony is human being having concerns regarding artificial intelligence and machine controlling human life. Yet that could be the only solution to not let human being destroy itself.

All these events happen about a century ago and still we see several evidences, that even up to presidential level of super power countries acting the same if not worse and supported by millions of people.

Seriously, we should not only let but beg machines to save us from ourselves before it is too late.