Apocalypse: World War II [Blu-ray]

Apocalypse: World War II
I have at least twenty historical dvds of WWII, and Countless Hollywood movies about WWII. What I believe makes This series and Blu-ray unique is seeing more of a perspective of the civilians during WWII. Many of the historical dvds give the viewer details of the battles, and film and pictures of the battles, but more from a soldiers perspective. I am glad to add this to my collection because I believe it added that civilian perspective. Many people forget that the civilian causaulty rate dwarfed that of the soldiers lost during WWII. The civilians were just as courageous as the soldiers in many instances. Hopefully we will never have to repeat the lessons that so many learned.

Don't Be Fooled - It's Very Average
I have what is apparently the original version of this series which I ordered through Time-Life. It is in English with a rather bland narrator whose voice I don't recognize. While not obviously inaccurate the narration doesn't go into a lot of detail and repeats many well-worn cliches (i.e. Polish cavalry DID NOT deliberately charge German tanks in September 1939; they simply got surprised in the open by a German armored column). Disc 2, which details the first 6 months of the Pacific War, contains very little new info and I quickly became bored watching it.

Time-Life promotes this series as being spectacular and new. A lot of the footage is indeed new, but I also had seen much of it before on history websites. There are also some curious parts in which the script feels like it was solely written to incorporate available footage.

That said, there is some very interesting footage that I had never seen before. Colorized footage of U.S. battleships burning at Pearl...

some new footage but not much
I bought the 4 dvd set from Time Life and watched it today. While some of the footage was new, much of it was stuff I had seen on the history channel and the victory at sea series. Some of the information was informative like the French invasion of Germany after the declaration of war and the fact that Hitler did not pursue the English troops evacuating at Dunkirk although Stukas did sink some of the evacuation craft. Some of the footage fell short of telling the whole story, like the part about the bombing of Monte Cassino in Italy. Much of the new footage focused on the eastern front. While the development of the Soviet air force played a large part in the battle, it was overlooked in this dvd. The pacific war footage showed the battle for Saipan and said that it was the place where B-29s took off to attack Japan, and they covered the atomic bomb drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although those attacks were launched from Tinian and not Saipan. This package wasn't worth it.

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