Les Grandes Batailles de la 2ᵉ Guerre mondiale

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 stumbled across this late on a Friday night. The last war documentary that I'd seen was Peter Jackson's "They Shall Not Grow Old" and I had been yearning for a similar experience ever since. Well, safe to say-- I found it. This is an enthralling watch. The colorization of such massively historical events allows us viewers 70+ years later to empathize in an unimaginable way, and is careful enough to give us fresh insight into perspectives from both sides. Well done to all involved. Netflix in my opinion is hit or miss but this is without a doubt as good as it gets. Top class. A real tribute to the heroic men and women of that generation.

Side note: Pay no heed to the so-called political connotations suggested by other reviewers. Having watched the entire series through, my mind never once went there, I was too enraptured by the images and the quality on display. It in no way detracts from the documentary itself, if you're reading this prior to watching don't let such comments dismay you. I couldn't recommend this film highly enough.

Missing so much details and trying to focus on special events only and focusing as much as they can on very few events . May be trying to make us see something which I didnt understand because they negelected great events in WW2 with no reason

Its so sad listening to so many butthurt complainers nitpicking at everything in this documentary. Honestly you could make a 30 or 40 part documentary series on ww2 and not even scratch the surface of the entire war and do every aspect and every service person justice. Those who complain that their country isn't mentioned... so what. You can't mention every damn country in detail.

I think this documentary series does a splendid job as acting as an introductory series to perhaps children/teenagers learning about ww2 for the first time. (then move on to books) Personally I knew most of the information but I enjoyed hearing it again with some coloured footage. The narrator is really easy to listen to and his commentary is mixed in with some war authors and some vetrans (who are becoming very very few, so these documentations of their experiences are essential)

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.