The World At War - Complete Set

The World At War - Complete Set

List Price: $119.98
Our Price: $79.92
You Save: $40.06 (33%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $39.84 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases

DVD Cover Information

Movie Reviews of The World At War - Complete Set

Movie Review: A milestone of civilisation: prepare to be amazed
Summary: 5 Stars

The many postwar interviews gathered for this series with wartime Allied and Axis political leaders, generals, resistance leaders, diplomats, and ordinary and not-so-ordinary soldiers and citizens, are astonishing in their range, candour and insight. It is impossible here to do justice to these interviewees. Mountbatten, LeMay, Prince Bernhard, Durrell, Westphal, Manteuffel, Guingand, Galland, Warlimont, Fuchida, Genda, Galbraith, and Samuelson are just some of the famous names.

Albert Speer, who was Hitler's architect and later his Armaments Minister, talks frankly and contritely about the coverup of the "Final Solution" and his close relations with Hitler. Statesmen Averell Harriman (US), Anthony Eden (UK), and Koichi Kido (Japan), among others, recall diplomatic and political byplay and insiders' views ranging from Churchill to the Emperor of Japan. The top WWII Japanese air ace to survive the war, Saburo Sakai, recalls the youthful patriotic fervour of his fellow fliers and the impact of Japan's reversal of fortunes. US, Russian, Japanese, Dutch and British warriors and housewives recall dealing out and receiving the horrors of war. Hitler's youngest secretary, Gertrude "Trudl" Junge, talks of the bizarre underground life in the Fuhrerbunker. Eisenhower's driver, Kay Summersby, recalls cameos of her former boss's skills and frustrations in coordinating multinational Allied command. The last prominent survivor of the 1944 Stauffenberg plot against Hitler, Ewald Heinrich von Kleist, recalls his days as a young Wehrmacht lieutenant and gives insights into why the small anti-Nazi movement failed. Admiral Karl Döenitz and U-boat ace Otto Kretschmer recall the battle of the Atlantic. General Sir Brian Horrocks, the inspirational British commander who led XXX Corps in the drive on Arnhem (played by Edward Fox in "A Bridge Too Far") talks of Operation Market Garden, the rivalry between Montgomery and Patton, and the burdens of military command. The overlay of archival footage of the actual parachute and glider drops in Market Garden make the corresponding scenes in the movie, "A Bridge Too Far", look like home movie sequences. Linking it all is a matter-of-fact commentary which soars above chauvinism and prejudice. It is read in deadpan style by the distinguished British actor Laurence Olivier--among his finest work.

The globe-changing civilisation-shaking upheaval of the Second World War continues to fascinate an immense worldwide readership and viewing audience. If you, too, want to better understand how so much decent, intelligent and cultivated humanity descended into and in some cases survived that madness, view the grim and gripping "The World At War" series, and prepare to be amazed.

Summary of The World At War - Complete Set

The Second World War was different from other wars in thousands of ways, one of which was the unparalleled scope of visual documents kept by the Axis and Allies of all their activities. As a result, this war is understood as much through written histories as it is through its powerful images. The Nazis were particularly thorough in documenting even the most abhorrent of the atrocities they were committing--in a surprising amount of color footage. The World at War was one of the first television documentaries that exploited these resources so completely, giving viewers an unbelievable visual guide to the greatest event in the 20th century. This is to say nothing of the excellent, comprehensible narrative. Some highlights:

• A New Germany 1933-39: early German and Nazi documentation of Hitler's rise to power through the impending attack on Poland
• Whirlwind: the early British losses in the blitz in the skies over Britain and in North Africa
• Stalingrad: the turning point of the war and Germany's first defeat
• Inside the Reich--Germany 1940-44: one of the most fascinating documentaries that exists on life inside Nazi Germany, from Lebensborn to the Hitler Youth
• Morning: prior to Saving Private Ryan, one of the only unromanticized views of the Normandy invasion
• Genocide: this film is one of the most widely shown introductions to the Holocaust
• Japan 1941-45: although The World at War is decidedly focused more on the European theater, this is an important look into wartime Japan and its expansion--early 20th-century history that lead to Japan's role in World War II is superficial
• The bomb: another widely shown documentary of the Manhattan Project, the Enola Gay, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki

The World at War will remain the definitive visual history of World War II, analogous to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. No serious historian should be missing The World at War in a collection, and no student should leave school without having seen at least some of its salient episodes. Rarely is film so essential. --Erik J. Macki