Customer Reviews

Hitler's Britain

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

rather over dramatic introduction to each chapter. It begins accurately enough, with the first year of World War II. France & all of Europe had been defeated by June 1940 & the English Channel Islands have been occupied. Preparations have already been made for the defeat of England & Operation Sea Lion, the actual invasion in September 1940. Interestingly the German troops occupying The Channel Islands & Paris were well behaved & actually spent their own money on the local economy. This may have lulled many Brits. Then alternative history takes over with a vengence. The German air force badly defeats the RAF, the ability to make more planes & the early warning system of radar stations are destroyed. Having cleared the skies the Germans employee the dreaded blitzgrieg by air & 100,000 land troops. Churchill is killed in his bunker & the royals flee to Canada. The home guard & what is left of the British army retreats from the coastal areas in disarray. Six weeks later the Germans march into London. Now the the Nazis take off the velvet glove. Preparations for the administration of an occupied Britain had been made years before, that reality is made clear in this movie. Most alternative history strains the bonds of credulity & Hitler's Britain is no exception. That is part of the enjoyment. So 2,000,000 men are rounded up & sent to Paris as POW's & hostages so the rest of the population behaves & does not resist. Quite a task to do so quickly. The Nazis even have a little black book with the names of socially prominent people. Masons, Socialist, Liberals, Jews are all identified. Especially immigrant Jews. They were targeted for immediately disposal. In reality the British has already done this little task rounding up all non-native Jews as war approached. The police were co-opted by collaborators in their miidst & appeasers like Lord Halifax were enisted to help. Edward VIII, abdicated as king of England before the war had been identified as sympathetic to the Nazis & was reinstalled as King. The movie extrapolates on. Britain's atomic secrets from America are obtained by Germany & the rocket science we obtained form German scientist in reality is never realized. The last scene of a Swastika on the mooon is quite disconcerting. The movie is entirely done with newsreel & documentary footage, some you may even recognize. But if you like history or even "what if" history you'll enjoy this.

On the whole, this DVD is acceptable, especially given the bargain price, under $10.00, and 95-minutes of running time. Nevertheless, I expected more on what the British might have had in store for the Germans had they really attempted an invasion, pursuant to Operation Sea Lion. That invasion would have launched something like 250,000 men onto the shores of southern England in an effort to take over the country by force in the summer of 1940. Support from the German navy and air force would have been massive, but precarious, given the strength of the RAF.

It's been rumored that Winston Churchill planned to pull out all the stops to repel any invader by flooding the shoreline with petrol and setting it ablaze. Then, as the Germans had tried to land, Spitfires, Hurricanes, and Mosquitos would have bombed them with mustard gas. If this had happened a major conflagration might have resulted. Then, Hitler would likely have retaliated with poison gas bombs from attacking airplanes and the British would have paid dearly. RAF Bomber Command would have attacked major cities in Germany the same way and the loss of life would have been staggering.

The DVD mentions next to nothing on this topic. Rather, it shows what would have happened to England and the rest of Great Britain had the Nazis taken over the country as they had in France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and elsewhere. The DVD is OK for what it is, but could have offered a lot more.

I took another gamble on a $5 bargain bin dvd, and this one turned out pretty well. First I will admit up front that some of the acting and especially the voice-over work is really cheesy. Fortunately I laugh at cheesy, campy stuff, it doesn't offend me, and besides, I've seen much worse.
That being said, the dvd is really interesting. They have their facts right about a lot of things. I was impressed to see that they remembered the Nazi occupation of the British Channel Island near France. I believe that was the only British soil the Nazis controlled. I have researched this before I bought this dvd, so I knew they were correct in that part. They have obviously done considerable research of old German documents, and used this to paint a fairly realistic picture of what life would have been like had Hitler successfully invaded Britain. I also liked the interviewing of the old would-be resistance fighters in Britain. The only thing I wish they had done more of is make it clearer just how disastrous a blow this would have been to the United States. We would have entered the war, and we would have had to invade all of Europe through Italy, or alllll the way across Russia and into Germany from the East. And that's only AFTER we had beaten Japan. Either way, the war would have gone on much longer, and it would have gone nuclear, (more so than it really did) and the United States would not have gone untouched. We would have lost some East Coast cities to long-range German bombing.
So, this movie may not be a masterpiece, but it's decently done and thought-provoking, and you have the acting to snicker at as well. If you can find it for $5 or so, go for it. I don't regret my purchase.

I enjoyed this DVD very much - it was both informative and chilling. The only thing I didn't like was the constant use of the same graphic of the swastika over the U.K. - it got to be very annoying, but overall it was a well produced look into the evil methodical minds of the Third Reich.

Okay, this film must have been designed to be viewed on the television. There are constant interuptions throughout, which I can only imagine was where a commercial would have come in, with annoying exit and re-entry music designed to introduce commercial breaks made consentrating on the minimally interesting material difficult to follow, and impossible to enjoy.

I bought this DVD sight unseen, and was sorely disappointed with it. I think worst of all was the awful musical score that interjected itself between scenes, or attempts at editing. I could never sit through this one again - not even if you paid me.

This film discusses German contingency plans for England should the planned invasion of the islands take place. Mixing actual WWII film footage with "reenactments" and interviews with people actually involved with resistance planning at the time and historians it tells a compelling story. It includes information about the Auxillery Unit, an underground organization which was kept quiet for decades. In the event of a German invasion the unit would already be in place and armed with secret hideouts, weapons and radios. It is a pity that this video was not re-edited for DVD release, however, as the logo and music reminding you of the name of the program can get very annoying at times. Will make you want to learn more, though.

Obviously, this offering was filmed to be on television. The constant interuptions (to the film) with exit and re-entry music associated with commercial breaks made consentrating on the minimally interesting material impossible to absorb.

Are the Producers proud of this film? It is so obviously a last ditch effort to milk a few bucks out of this imaginary documentary. If I had the power, I would burn all copies of the DVD and call a firing squad for anyone associated with the film.