Very good series in color and worth watching every minute.

Trailer here: https://youtu.be/dz1rTZE9xgE

Netflix Info here: https://www.netflix.com/title/81303911

Looks interesting... I think they used the same technique as They Shall Not Grow Old for colorization- I will check it out, thanks!

Watched it last week. Absolutely worth the time, even for a history nut like me that’s already seen a lot of the info presented.

Thanks for the heads up. Going to check it out.

It was more meh, IMO. Some of its "historical" statements were sloppy history, for instance the Axis was not an alliance out to "conquer the world".

The more personal segments gave some good insights, though.

Could've been better.

Started watching tonight, halfway through the second episode, “World Domination.” Lots of footage I had never seen before.

They totally glossed over the Soviet invasion of Poland. I am not even Polish and that pisses me off. Poland
Lost more of its population as a percentage thank any other country like around 1/5.

Just finished the first one.
The colorization and video quality improvements to the original are impressive and make the story come alive.
We’ll be to watch a few more to see how well they cover the rest but so far I l what I’ve seen.

Now that I've finished the series....

The color video was really well done and brings it alive. Other documentaries show mostly a collection of videos that have been seen many times before but these were all new to me.

The series as a whole didn't have time to go in depth so this isn't a history lesson for newcomers. There are just five shows and each is under an hour. The first tells the story right up to Pearl Harbor so the whole war, the US part anyway, is only in the last four.

Most of us don't really need the entire story since the history is so well known already. Overall, an excellent show.

I just finished Episode 4, “Fortress Europe.” The 2 bombing missions over Hamburg by the RAF left me feeling hollow. I get it, but the 2nd mission in particular, was really hard for the airmen, and they said as much.

The other incident was the bombing of the Abbey at Monte Cassino in Italy. I once had the opportunity to talk to a man who was a U.S. Army lieutenant who led soldiers primarily from Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona during the Italian campaign, including Monte Cassino. There’s more to his story, but this doesn’t feel like this time.

This was a powerful episode.

Finally got around it this, and I agree that it was well done for a broad overview WW2 documentary. Nothing new for those who are already students of WW2, but at least the footage is good.

quote:

Originally posted by Dzozer:
I think they used the same technique as They Shall Not Grow Old for colorization

No, TSNGO used a much more sophisticated system of not only colorization, but also upscaling, CGI addition/extrapolation, frame rate correction, etc. Whereas this show just used film colorization, albeit modern digital techniques that are improved over older, more basic colorized WW2 footage.

But this show was also likely produced for a fraction of the budget or effort of TSNGO.

quote:

Originally posted by Valpo Fz:
They totally glossed over the Soviet invasion of Poland.

Yeah, they glossed over a lot. But you can only fit so much of the largest war in world history into 5 episodes. So they mainly just hit the broad strokes, with the nice addition of plenty of personal anecdotes.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Other documentaries show mostly a collection of videos that have been seen many times before but these were all new to me.

Agreed. Lots of WW2 documentaries get lazy and reuse the same old handful of clips that have been used and reused for decades prior. This one did not.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
The first tells the story right up to Pearl Harbor so the whole war, the US part anyway, is only in the last four.

I find it interesting that you would phrase it that way. "The whole war."

This show devotes nearly 2 of the 5 of the episodes to 1939-1941, before finally reaching December 1941 towards the end of Episode 2. Which is actually about right, for the overall timeline of WW2.

The US was the last major power to enter the war, over 2 years after its start. (Or over 4 years, if you're of the smaller camp that considers the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 to mark the true start of WW2.)

That's over a third of the war where the US was not actively involved. About 2/5ths, in fact...

It's true that some American WW2 documentaries tend to start their series more like: "In the beginning, Hitler invaded some other countries and bombed England, and then Pearl Harbor was attacked!", devoting basically all of their series to 1942 onwards from the lens of what the US did.

But if all you care about is December 1941 onwards, or just what the US did during the war, then you're missing out on so much important and interesting stuff about WW2.

^^^
True, depending on ones point of view, there is plenty that is missed, and others that are told differently than most histories.
The part I liked was that almost all of their colorized videos were things I had never seen before, and I've watched countless WW2 shows and documentaries in my lifetime.
They also kept the story interesting enough to grab the attention on younger folks that might not watch otherwise, or even know the basic history.