Some of the colourised film was interesting, but the thread seemed to double back on itself from time to time. The narrative was thin and delivered very poorly. It comes from the mouth of someone whose second language is English and who suffers from seeming not to have a first one. The Luftwaffe was mispronounced, as was the Third "Rike". Surely, if you are going to narrate a programme, you should find out how to pronounce the words you are going to utter? I also noticed such beauties as "Nawf Africah"; "in the middoow"; "forcin' the British out" and many other examples of poor English. The narrator sounds as if he is either foreign, or from some inner-city estate near London. Why not use someone British with clear enunciation to do the commentary, like Robert Powell? As it is the commentary was a constant irritant. I'd do it myself, if it comes down to it. I've done it before.
What I have seen is superficial, incorrect and minimises the people who prevented Hitler winning, which is us British. Why, they have a former Luftwaffe pilot telling us that German pilots at the Battle of Britain were better than the British! Really? How come we won, then? Inclusion of that opinion was singularly pointless, as was a comment by a former German soldier about the racial inferiority of the Russians. This was not stated as a historic opinion, by the way. The focus on the Nazis and race is not the point of the programme, surely? The main point should be on what the War was about: battlefields; victories; defeats; the order of battle; conquest and so forth. The programme is called "World War II: From the Frontlines", after all. There is no analysis of why there was a war at all, which is central to the whole thing and should have been the starting point. Otherwise, it suggests that Germany (or Hitler) just thought a war sounded like a fun idea and would let him be driven around in front of adoring crowds, sticking his arm out. There is no contrary opinion to the German idea expressed in the programme that the Poles were asking for it and were going to get it. No, they weren't. There was a fake attack on a German radio station used as an excuse to invade Poland. No mention was made of that.
There is no mention of Italy getting pasted by the Greeks and how Hitler had to send troops in support to conquer Greece (or about British support of the Greeks), which meant taking seasoned divisions out of the attack on Russia. That was important. No mention of the Soviets' criminal act in also attacking Poland in 1939, along with the Germans. There is the constant talk of "Nazis", as if there was a nation called "the Nazis". It was a war against Germany and on VE Day, in Trafalgar Square, it was made abundantly clear that it was victory over Germany.
Netflix, if you are going to make a programme about history, then get your act together and don't try to rubbish the guys who kept fighting when everyone else had been conquered, were neutral, or allied to Germany. Those guys were the British. All America did was to sell us weapons and let us do the fighting. Americans wanted no part in the War, thank you very much. Canada gave us food without charge and when Europe was invaded on D Day, the majority of troops involved were British and Canadian, not American.
