O Mundo em Guerra

Utterly brilliant. Powerful and evocative. The most compelling documentary series ever made concerning war. It's tone offers a stark contrast to the often gung-ho attitude towards World War 2 that the media exhibits. Rather than opting for screaming about the horror of war, it allows Sir Laurence Olivier's quiet voice to take a back seat to the true images of war: corpses everywhere, explosions, terrified citizens and soldiers, broken men, indifferent politicians, mistakes that cost thousands of lives, the suffering of the innocents. Most of all it truly brings home that mankind is capable of when all normal rules of "civility" are removed. There is something distinctly Hobbesian about man in a true state of nature, he will return to a more beastly form capable of crimes that will still shock and fascinate 60 years on. Perhaps there could be a follow up series called "The century at war" for the twentieth century was truly the century of horrors. I feel it is an irony of immense magnitude that it took an event which caused the death of 50 million people to produce such a compelling and excellent series such as this.

After all these years I still consider this series the finest example of World War II documentary film making. The interviews with the many participants from all countries set this apart from any other project. It would be great to see a contemporary documentarian(Ken Burns ?) take on this topic and try to gather information from veterans before they are all gone. With modern technology to improve old archival footage and lots of information that has been unearthed since 1974 when The World At War was produced, an updated version of this series would be welcome. The History Channel has made some fine shows dealing with many aspects of WWII but an expansive series such as the World At War has not been successfully attempted since the original. If you are interested in this era don't miss this series. It is required viewing.

Theo Robertson has commented that WAW didn't adequately cover the conditions after WWI which lead to Hitler's rise and WWII.

Perhaps he missed the first ONE and a quarter HOURS of volume 8? Covers this period, and together with the earlier volumes in the series, shows clearly the existing conditions, I feel. A friend of mine grew up in Germany during this period, joined the Hitler Youth even, and his experiences were very similar to that mentioned in WAW.

This documentary is SO far above the History Channel's documentaries I also own, that there is no comparison.

The ONLY fault, and it is a small one, that I have with WAW is this: the numbers are not included, many times. For instance, if you're talking about lend-lease, then how much war material was lent/leased? How much to Russia, how much to Britian? How many merchant ships did the U-Boats sink, and when? How many ships did the German or Japanese Navy have, total, in 1941? What type were they? How many troops? How many troops did the allies have, in total, and by country? Lots of numbers could have made a lot of viewers nod off, but I would have preferred MORE! And naturally, I always want to see more military analysis. Like WHY didn't Patton & Clark trap the German army that was at Cassini, after they had it surrounded, instead of racing Monty to Rome, and letting it escape? I don't think you can begin to understand war until you've seen some of these video segments on "total war", like the fire bombing of Dresden. It's like trying to understand Auschwitz, etc., before you see the clips of the death camps: you just can't wrap your head around it - it's too unbelievable.

Unknown at that time, and of course, unfilmed, were the most egregious cruelties and inhumanities of the Japanese, including cannibalism, (read "Flyboys"), and some LIVE vivisection of medical "experimentation" prisoners, w/o any anesthetic!

Dave

It's been a quarter-century since this series made its debut, and I wanted to briefly comment on Carl Davis' towering soundtrack score. The theme and opening titles are unexpected and make a terrific impact upon the viewer, coming as they do after a low-keyed prologue narrated by Laurence Olivier. With their work, and with the superb scripts (and their author(s) have not received the accreditation due), I can't imagine how the telling could ever be improved upon in any subsequent productions. No, I think this will remain the definitive World War II anthology. Highly recommended - though a cautionary is called for throughout the Holocaust sequences. (There was much trepidation at its debut over televising that episode.)

Certainly any others I have seen pale in comparison. The series gives balanced coverage to all theatres of operation. No one country is given undue credit for the Allied victory. Laurence Olivier brings great weight and dignity to his role as narrator.