Thomas The footage is extremely nice quality and not to mentioned with colors and everything. Sadly it has been made widescreen which means some of the footage has been cut off, rather than just preserving the 4:3 aspect ratio.That aside, it's also a very informative documentary that manages to explain World War 2 pretty well despite just being 6 episodes. It may focus a lot on Europe but it still comes around the other theaters well.However it's also blatantly obviously biased. I'm not a Nazi or communists but the documentary was obviously anti-soviet/Stalinist and didn't really maintain a very neutral look at the war, which documentaries should if you ask me. Non of the actions committed by Germans that are shown in the documentary is anything but "pure evil" and non of the western allies ever did anything wrong. A good example is the utter destruction of Germany just being seen as an absolute necessity from the documentaries point of view without putting the slightest critique towards the actions committed by the Allies. Every German soldier portrayed in the documentary is meant to look as evil and barbaric as possible.The documentary even manages to sneak in the ridiculous claims about Germans making lampshades of human skin, shrinking heads and whatnot.But this is what you can expect from documentaries like this, I suppose. I mainly just watched it for the nice visuals.

Ilan_Voyager Henri De Turenne and Daniel Costelle have a 40 years old record of documentaries about the WWII period. As it's made by French filmmakers for a French TV it seems normal that the documentary emphasizes on the French point of view. The excellent documentaries about the same subject by the BBC are also "biased"...No history work can pretend to be perfectly neutral, or it would be a long list of raw meaningless facts.Another comment makes the assertion that "A greater number of Frenchmen bore arms for the Axis than for the Allies." Thats seems a pretty foolish assertion if you do very simple maths on the proved ciphers:-Resistance; At least 220 000 people (the historian Paxton estimates the numbers between 200 000 and 400 000). Not all were bearing arms as the 100 000 FFI in 1944, but all worked against the Nazis. -Italy Campaign 1943 130 000 French soldiers (American statistics). -At the time of Normandy Invasion 500 000 French regular soldiers (plus the 100 000 FFI). In May 1945 not far from the million...On the other side: - Milice (paramilitary organization) 25 000.(35 000 including part-time members and non-combatants). - In the Wehrmacht and later Waffen-SS; 7340 in 1944. Lets put at max 20 000 volunteers during all the war, and including the double entries with the Milice.The Alsatian people were drafted in the Wermacht as they were considered as German by the Nazis. So most were not volunteers and cannot be included.So how the pseudo historian has found that "A greater number of Frenchmen bore arms for the Axis than for the Allies."???

jeffrey-nimmo-1 I take exception to the statements that this is the greatest WW2 documentary ever made. It's a fairly standard history from a French viewpoint, with the additional gimmick of being colorized. Yes, colorized, not "restored," as the original was never in color in the first place. Some of the footage is new, but most has appeared in previous documentaries.Black & white footage is not easily colorized, and can often appear fake, even surrealistic. So, while it sometimes works, making certain scenes more vivid and realistic, it often works counter to its purpose.Much of the new footage has not appeared previously for a reason: it is extremely disturbing. Dead and decaying bodies abound. This is a war documentary and so is perfectly appropriate, but I would not allow small children to watch.The commentary avoids controversy by being rather simplistic. WW2 Buffs will learn nothing new. I was impressed however, by the statement in one of the episodes, that the French communists didn't begin resisting the German occupation until after the invasion of the Soviet Union, a full year after the fall of France. This statement of course is absolutely true, but it couldn't have made the French leftists very happy.In all, I would recommend this to WW2 and modern history buffs, only for the new footage, and to see what can and can't be done with colorization. However, for general viewers looking for a solid introduction to the war, I would recommend "World at War." For those sad souls who cannot watch b&w footage, there are series for the US, Great Britain, Japan and the Anzacs, all showing original, not colorized, color footage.

R. Ignacio Litardo "Perfection is rare to find" is the favourite phrase of an aesthetic surgeon. This is just it.The text is superb. Informative, NEUTRAL, without concessions for any party, and with a subtler enough message of hope. The images are really unbelievable. Also unusual. If you think you've seen them all and docus on wars bore you, think again. Kassovitz's voice is just what's needed for the job: enthusiastic and yet dry enough so you get "just the facts". If you ever look for a good music equipments, when you read reviews you'll find that one of the best compliments writers do is: "doesn't get in between you and the music". You don't "notice" the direction, editor, the "author" who made this monumental work. Even with touchy topics like the Holocaust, they just deliver the facts. Their involvement is obvious, but they always give us the facts first. Whether you are cramming for a general education examination or if you want to be a bit less ignorant on probably the most relevant topic of the XX century, you'll find no better documentary. Engaging, painful to watch at times, showing us the consequences on the peasants and the "little people" as well as the general's feats and whims, this saga strikes the right balance at everything. From the Blitzkreig to the V2, from Normandie to the unlikely allies the Nazis got from the dominated Slav countries (and how they mistreated them for "not being Aryan", everything is here, and more. Even Hitler's madness. Just one example: him calling Churchill and Roosevelt "jewizizing" after another military setback. Surely history is staggering enough: the Islamists were one of the unlikely willful allies of the Nazis, "combating the common Zionist enemy".Words are not enough to describe the "thirst for nothingness" Hitler saw on the world, Japanese's pride, American altruism, British flame, the French way of failing so much, for so long, Italian's mistrust of government, Soviet power and blindness, German efficiency in devising the cruelest weapon (i.e. the mines with a "click") as the Berliner. performing yet another perfect rehearsal. If there's just one thing I'd have liked is less bias for the tiniest "heroic French action" completely irrelevant for the course of the war, and absent from any history manuals. Time being a scarce resource, it'd been useful to cover a bit more of the Pacific front, barely mentioned. It's also a bit Eurocentric in scope, but I suppose that's the price to pay. Nobody is perfect after all :(.Whatever is to be learned from wars must be here. Whatever can be learned is never enough, never too late, never enough. Churchill's famous prose give this documentary two of the most memorable moments, in which it was difficult for me not to cry. People may not learn, again. Yes, a documentary on such hay-necked topic can still do that to you.