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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Time Line Main Menu with Audio and Animation  Synopsis - Episode Summaries  Notes - Brief History of The World At War Biographies - Major National and Military Leaders  Web Link  Galleries - Photo
Rating
Year Released	1974
Running Time	413:49 minutes  (Not 416 minutes as stated on the packaging)
RSDL/Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Various
Studio Distributor	Thames  Warner Vision Australia	Starring	Sir Laurence Olivier (Narrator)
Case	Dual Black Amaray
RPI	$59.95	Music	Carl Davis

    I have always been an avid reader of World War Two history books, and one of my favourite tomes at the time this series aired was The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, which I read numerous times. To actually be able to see and hear the words of people who were actually there was one of the great television joys of my life. To be able to see real footage of the horrors inflicted upon the world by The Third Reich made the horror of the words even more poignant.

    To return to the series after the passage of some twenty five years is something of an experience, for it really does bring home just how powerful some of the imagery in the footage truly is. It is very important I feel that everyone take the opportunity to view this series, as it is an invaluable insight into just how bad World War II was and hopefully serves as a reminder of how utterly futile and idiotic war really is.

   Enough of my reminiscences however and on with the DVD! If you wish to have an introduction to the series, then I suggest that you check out Murray's review of Part One of the series. The episodes making up this two DVD set are:

    Disc 1

• Episode 16 - Inside The Reich: Germany 1940 - 1944 (52:13)

In 1940, Germans (or at least the German propaganda machine) thought that Germany had won the war. They had blitzkrieged their way through most of Western Europe, often with little resistance. After the fall of France and the British fleeing back across the Channel from Dunkirk, German troops returned to Germany as victors. Life was pretty good in Germany - at least until the slow realization that the Allies were not about to surrender and that Germany was in for a long, hard war. This episode details this slow realization and the effect it had on the German people as the Third Reich slowly collapsed under the weight of opposition from within and without. A rather condensed look at the fall of The Third Reich, including the attempt on Hitler's life, that perhaps fails to do real justice to the overall changes in Germany during this time.
• Episode 17 - Morning: June 1944 (51:52)

This rather enigmatic title is derived from a speech to the French people by Winston Churchill after Dunkirk, promising a morning when the Allies would return to French soil. As such, a rather interesting title to attach to the episode devoted to perhaps the most pivotal moment of the war - the morning of 6th June, 1944. The day the combined forces of the Allies took to a short stretch of water and returned to the European mainland hell-bent on laying waste to The Third Reich. After all the films about Operation Overlord, it is interesting to return to the reality of the planning for and build up of men and material for the operation, when Britain became home to the most heavy military build-up ever. Naturally, a nominal one hour television episode is not going to cover everything, but this is an interesting look at part of what went into the operation. The need for success is perhaps no more illustrated than by the fact that within 12 months, the war in Europe was over.
• Episode 18 - Occupation : 1940 - 1943 (52:17)

Many nations suffered occupation under the Nazis, but none more unexpectedly than neutral Holland. The Netherlands was totally unprepared for the German invasion of 1940 and soon succumbed to the relatively minor show of power that the Germans made in destroying Rotterdam. Initially life under the German occupation was not so bad - at least on the surface - and appeared to continue in some normality but as the cold reality of Nazi policies became evident, choices had to be made, most especially by the large Jewish population. Whilst not exactly eulogizing the efforts of the Underground in Holland, this episode nonetheless demonstrates how the Underground came into being and the difficulties the entire country faced in trying to throw off the veil of neutrality it had worn during World War I as well.
• Episode 19 - Pincers: August 1944 (52:05)

After the hard slog to gain a reasonable foothold in mainland Europe, the Allies found themselves pushing across Europe at a rapid pace, tailing a fleeing German army. As the push towards the Nazi homeland gained momentum, the forces started to outstrip their supplies. Inexplicably, the Allied command brought the advance to a halt somewhat short of the Rhine River. Had they have pushed on to the Rhine, they would perhaps have sealed German forces into Germany with no route for escape, and been able to hold the position during the worst days of winter. Stopping gave the Germans time to regroup and amass forces for a daring counter-attack aimed at pushing to Antwerp, thus denying the Allies the vital harbour there and sealing the British forces under General Bernard Montgomery in a pocket away from the main Allied force. Attacking at the weakest spot in the Allied lines, in the Ardennes, the plan almost succeeded as it initially steamrolled cocky but shocked Allied troops. It ultimately was lost but it was an extremely close call. Whilst the war in the west was virtually over after this, the momentum lost by the Allies was not really regained and the push to Berlin took agonizing months longer than maybe it could have done. We know the battle today as The Battle Of The Bulge.

• Episode 20 - Genocide: 1933 - 1945 (52:08)

Perhaps the most obvious of episodes as its title says it all. The basic fundamentals of the Thousand Year Reich are pretty well known - a pure Germanic race returning to its rightful place as the masters of Europe, with the sub-human races to be eliminated so as not to create impurities in the Aryan strain. Heinrich Himmler was given the task of overseeing this policy and his Schutzstaffel were ruthless in its execution. This really is a detailing of the growth of the anti-Semitic fundamentals from forcing Jews to wear the Star of David through to forced re-settlements in ghettos and executions and then the creation of the massive genocide camps as exemplified by Dachau and Auschwitz. Whilst this policy was often thought to be purely Jew-related, it did in fact include other races, notably Slavs. Still, the Jews copped by far the biggest brunt of the policy and it should be noted that this episode does contain some very disturbing imagery.
• Episode 21 - Nemesis: February - May 1945 (51:52)

The Western Front is crumbling under the Allied onslaught and the Red Army is beating a very hasty advance towards Berlin. It is not helping that soldiers are abandoning the Eastern front to head west to surrender in order to avoid capture by the Russians. Time is definitely running out for the Thousand Year Reich, and the hierarchy knows it. Albert Speer has already told Hitler that from a manufacturing pint of view, it is all over but he is one of the only voices preaching the truth to the increasingly isolated Fuehrer. As the last months of the Reich wind down, as Germany crumbles under the weight of the Allied advances, Adolf Hitler shows no regrets. This rather interesting period is well documented by two people who were there in the bunker with Hitler right up to his suicide: his secretary and his valet. We even get to hear from the Russian soldier who was given an almighty honour - to hoist her country's flag above the conquered (or is that liberated?) city of Berlin
• Episode 22 - Japan: 1941 - 1945 (50:44)

With the war over in Europe, Winston Churchill warns that there is still work to be done in the Pacific. A bunch of fanatics known as the Japanese are still causing problems. Brought spectacularly into the broader war by the attack on Pearl Harbour, which resulted in a declaration of war on Britain and America, the Japanese very much gambled and lost. At the time, Japan was not the industrial giant it is now and it did not have the capacity to sustain a long, drawn-out war. The people had been conditioned since birth about the Emperor (a divine being) and the invincibility of their country. The military, who basically ran the country, knew very differently. They knew that if Britain and the United States did not sue for peace very early after Pearl Harbour, they had no chance of winning the war. Obviously Britain and the United States did not sue for peace and what followed from mid-1942 was the slow but inexorable termination of the Japanese war effort - only forestalled by the sheer fanaticism of its soldiers who in general would die rather than be captured. This episode details in broad terms the slow defeat of Japan starting from the most crucial of battles in the Pacific - Midway.
• Episode 23 - Pacific: February 1942 - July 1945 (50:32)

The Japanese might have been unable to sustain a prolonged war, but they sure made life very difficult for the United States forces. Spread over a vast ocean, the Americans had to island-hop their way to Japan and did so along two broad fronts: from the South East through the Philippines with forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur and from the East through the island chains with forces under the command of Admiral Chester Nimitz. Initial planning had the island of Tarawa as the first target for the latter and the cocky Americans thought that they would be able to waltz in and take over this minuscule island without much trouble. They soon found out that they would be fighting for every foot all the way to Tokyo as the relatively small garrison on the island inflicted significant losses on the Americans. The story was the same all the way across the Pacific as the Americans pushed towards Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa - important as they provided the bomber bases from which the massive raids on Japanese cities could be launched.

Video

    Since it was made for television, and given that the archive material is as old as it is, the transfer is of course presented in Full Frame format that is equally obviously not 16x9 enhanced.

    To be honest, given the wide variety of source material on offer here, we really should not be too concerned by conventional thoughts of sharpness, detail and clarity. Rather, we should be more concerned that the varied material has been presented in such a way as to maximize the visual impact of the transfer. Unfortunately, that may not be the case here. Much of the material would seem to be very unrestored and so there are plenty of problems therein. Overall, we run the gamut from almost non-existent definition and clarity, with lousy shadow detail, through to actual better-than-expected definition, shadow detail and clarity. Most of the material demonstrates reasonable enough detail and definition, with average shadow detail. Clarity is not great in general, with plenty of grain on offer in a lot of the material, which does get really distracting. There would appear to be some low level noise problems at times.

    Most of the programming is black and white archive footage with the interview material in colour. However, the last two episodes in this package contained more colour footage from the United States. The archival footage is pretty much all over the place in terms of colour. Some material is quite decent with nice tones, whilst other material is quite poor with basically various shades of murky grey on offer. Given that much of the footage was shot in extreme circumstances, and the average quality of the film stock available was probably not that terrific, this is not unexpected. What is unexpected is that the interview material does not display great colour and is a little undersaturated throughout. The colour footage from the war displays the general lack of quality expected in such footage, with colours being rather poorly rendered.

    There does not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer, although in some instances these could be well hidden by what has been presumed to be heavy grain. There is nothing significant in the way of film-to-video artefacts, just the odd instance of aliasing that is barely noticeable. However, there are obviously tons and tons of film artefacts on offer here and it is interesting to ponder whether the material would have been restored more (to eliminate more of these) had the series been made now, rather than 27 years ago. At times I was a little surprised by the extent of the film artefacts on footage that I had seen before, but I really would rather see the footage with the artefacts rather than not see it at all.

    The DVDs are presumably Dual Layer formatted since there is no obvious layer change noted during the programming. Presumably there are two episodes per layer on both DVDs.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The narration comes up well in the soundtrack and is easy to understand. The speeches are similarly generally easy to understand. There appeared to be some minor issues with audio sync in the transfer at times - this is most notable during some of the interview sequences.

    The original music score comes from Carl Davis, and is perhaps highlighted by the very memorable theme tune, which really does evoke a lot of memories of the days when this was broadcast on television. In general, the score is decently supportive of the programming, even to the extent of the excellent use of silence at times.

    Basically you can forget about the technicalities of the soundtrack. This is designed purely to convey the narration and other dialogue, which it does well enough. There is no real problem at all with the soundtrack, even though it is a fairly basic. It is free of any significant distortion, surround channel use and bass channel use.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Synopsis - Episode Summaries

Notes - Brief History of The World At War

Biographies - Major National and Military Leaders

Web Link

Galleries - Photos

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
31st March, 2001