Customer Reviews

Germany at War: From 1918-1945 (3pc)

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This 3 DVD set is a whirlwind summary of the German operations during WWII. It is a decent summary of the purely military operations focused on the German side of the war. It does not describe any Polish, French, English, American or Russian aspects of the war. It does not cover the political aspects of the war (such as decisions by Allied or Axis leaders or military conferences) or other non-military aspects such as the partisan war, the occupation policies and the genocide. It has very few details on decisive armaments such as the T34. Nor has it much detail on leading generals: Rommel, von Manstein and von Rundstedt are mentioned, Zhukov is not.
All archival footage is from the "Deutsche Wochenschau", the German newsreels of the time, imbued with Nazi propaganda. Since these run sometimes without commentary or subtitles, it does not hurt to understand German.
I found the narration rather fast compared to the average documentary but that's understandable given the amount of historical information to be covered in only 150 minutes.

The first DVD covers 1936 to 1941, not 1918 to 1941 as the title indicates, since there is very little coverage of the Weimar Republic and the first 3 years of the Nazi regime. The coverage really starts with the reoccupation of the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, followed by the annexation of Austria in 1938, the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Polish campaign in 1939, the Western Front in 1940, operations Barbarossa and Typhoon on the Eastern front in 1941.
The second DVD covers operation Blau and Stalingrad in 1942, the third battle of Kharkov, Kursk and Sicily in 1943.
The third DVD covers Italy, DDay, Bagration, MarketGarden, Herbstnebel (Ardennes) in 1944 and the battle of Berlin in 1945.