Customer Reviews

Complete History of WWII

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Being a WW2 buff I purchased this DVD collection recently.

The video portion of this documentary is very good... pretty much all of the footage is authentic historic footage... even though sometimes the footage repeats itself couple of times...
But generaly the video portion is very strong with editing and the added news reels are extra bonus.

Sound is a different story. The narrator's voice is actually pretty good with all the english accent and such... but whoever was mixing the narration and the music should be fired immediately. The music is just too damn loud in some parts, pretty much drowning the narrators voice with very loud score. The fact that the music repeats itself constantly is noticeable when you are watching couple of the episodes back to back. I've also noticed that at the end of Episode XI - Overlord the sound is cut off completly for roughly a full minute before the episode ends...

Another thing is the historical accuracy. The collection is actually pretty good but there are some VERY BAD portions... The one that really got me was the narrator's line in Episode VII - The Day of Infamy stating that the japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor on the 11th of December 1941 - and couple of lines later stating the correct date of 7th of December 1941... OOPS!!!... now that is a big mistake that should not be tolerated on this so called "historical documentary"

Another very bad thing is the sheer number of typos.. in the documentary itself, in the DVD navigational menus and the DVD printed package... misspellings like Operation Bar Barossa (correctly Barbarossa), Battle of Kirsk (instead of Kursk), Operation Overload (instead of Overlord), Divine Win (instead of Divine Wind), Air Suppremacy (instead of Supremacy) should not be tolerated!!!... This makes me wonder what is the "quality control" at the publishers office...

If these important mistakes were corrected I would have given this collection 4,5 to 5 stars... but as it is stands now all of these very bad mistakes are dragging this DVD collection to the ground...
I was able to purchase it for $19.00 so if you get the chance to get this 5 DVD collection for the same amount or less it is worth it just for the video by itself...

Overall, this is a fantastic DVD, with tons and tons of details. However, the audio in some spots is absolutely horrid. The music is overpowering and you can barely hear the narrator. Too bad. Otherwise, this is and excellent DVD set.

I really enjoyed this series. It is an EXCELLENT deal. Dollar for dollar this is my best investment in my DVD library. There are eleven hours of footage. It includes old newsreels as a bonus.

It's a lot like a talking history book. It was written from a British perspective, which is enlightening for Americans like myself. It was very informative and links all the way back to the treaties after WWI and pushes forward past the end of WWII. It was very descriptive about the details of every year of the war and flowed well.

On the down side: Disc 2 has some parts where the background music is louder than the narrator. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles available, so it's next to impossible to understand those sections. I tried playing on several systems and it still sounded bad, so its probably not my audio configuration. However, the problem is limited to only certain sections of that one disc. The majority of the series does not have that problem.

Fantastic DVD except that the music editor should have been fired, over all the background music is too loud and in some parts quite distracting.The rest of the DVD's are fantastic and well layed out, so if you can put up with a few spots of over baring music it's a must see.

I purchased this 5 set DVD recently and I thought that the info presented on it was very excellent and I really liked the extras that the DVD has(especially the newsreels). However, I do think that the music that's on the DVD could have been toned down a bit in order to hear what's being said.

All in all, this is a good DVD that is worthwhile to anyone whose intrested in the Second World War.

This disc collection, in most aspects, might have been one of the best that I have ever seen. It appears to have been designed in great part for the classroom,where I believe it would be an excellent teaching tool. Each very well assembled episode is quite independent of the others and starts with a thorough review of the preceding one. This of course can be bypassed with a touch of fast forward.

There is excellent coverage of all aspects of the war, political and military, including a very cogent explanation of the events leading to the conflict. Refreshingly, the film footage is mostly original with none of the tired images we have all seen ad nauseam.

No, the only fault, but an important one, is the sound quality. The music often screeches out the narrative and renders it impossible to follow. Whoever is responsible for the musical sound track should be condemned to listen to his work in a soundproof enclave and the volume turned up to nose and ear bleeding level.

It is a pity that such excellent and comprehensive work, obviously very carefully put together, has been marred to that extent by an incompetent sound track, negating almost completely what is a very intelligent narration. At least that which one can hear between crescendos. Pity!

The information presented in the documentary is very good, and holds one's interest. However, the incessant soundtrack behind the narrative is repetitive, and often completely mismatched to the topic being addressed. Worse, the music is at times so loud as to entirely drown out the narrator.

I would recommend saving your money and using a DVR to record better quality productions on The Military or History channels. The video footage is quite extensive, though repeated far too often during different sections. The audio portion is absolutely horrible at times; cheezy music often drowns out the narrative. The narrative is good for a basic overview of the major events (probably due to time limits), though a few silly anthropomorphized notions of "destiny" and "history" are attempted. I looked on the box for writing credits or historians and couldn't find a thing. All in all this is very mediocre, but might be a good starting point for a youngster who wants an introduction to the subject.

This dvd set has excellent documentary footage. However, the most astonishing mistake that I found was when the narrator referred to the attack on Pearl Harbor as occuring on Dec. 11!! A bit later, he says Dec. 7. Everyone makes mistakes, however a major blunder like that should have been caught. Also, it is difficult to advance it if you want to get to certain scenes. Disc 2 has some audio problems where the music (which gets too repetitious throughout) drowns out the narrator. It's just too loud. Other than that, a very good teaching tool - just don't show the part on Pearl Harbor. I guess it's back to World at War for that.

I ordered this and watched it.
Pro's: Short segments allows for a synopsis type overview of various wwii circumstances. Fairly lengthy with some interesting footage. Certain segments on the supporting players/framework of the military was interesting.There was some interesting footage on the Burma/China circumstance.
Con's: Narrator is Ok, not great, at times a bit irritating but that could be because of some of the inane scripting. At one point I was sure they used another person imitating the original narrator, the voice changed so significantly.(?)
This could be more properly called "A History of the Americans in World War II" both for the amount of content on Americans and for the perspective taken. Perhaps this was a result of lack of access to film footage (?). On that note repetitious footage. I am sure I saw the same German dig the same fox hole, the same way several times over--sometimes on the Eastern front, sometimes in Italy, sometimes in France. Maybe they were different guys from Germany's early cloning research program::Uber Infantry. Could be wrong on that however.
Would I buy this again. I suppose so. There is some good footage, thought the narration didn't tell me much I didn't know already.
Sorry if I sound too hard on this effort. Just my humble opinion.