Great Battles of World War II: Kursk/Crete/Midway

This documentary is very well designed however, it will leave the viewer with the desire to learn more about these battles, especially the Battle of Kursk which turned the tide against the Nazis.

Exceptionally well-done treatment of an obscure battle (Crete) and a near-Armageddon of armored warfare (Kursk)

The info is very good, the dvd itself is ok as well, but as they talk about some things as there happening you can see the pictures are wrong for exsample you see the wrong tanks or the wrong airplanes?

Besides the film being poorly mastered (the image shakes so much that gives us the impression that the DVD was mastered inside a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean ), it was made during wartime by the US Government. The DVD then tells the story from the "official point of view" and, of course, ignores all the new evidences that were discovered/unclassified since then. If you want a comprehensive look on what actually happened on Russia and WWII as a whole, you must then order titles such as "The World at War" narrated by SIR Lawrence Olivier. If you expect this documentary to be as good as National Geographic's comprehensive approach on the Battle of Midway (6 stars-"The battle FOR Midway" ), forget it.

Excellent presentation of three pivotal WW2 battles. I`d not heard that interpretation of the Battle of Midway before. Our side was very lucky. The narrator should have taken Deutsch 101. Fallschirmjaeger is not that difficult to pronounce: FALL SCHIRM JAEGER (Luftwaffe Paratroopers). It sounded like the narrator was saying "fudge chum makers" or "fulshum makers." And "general major"? You don`t need to know German to know that a division commander is a major general, not a "general major" (auf Deutsch: Generalmajor). He never did figure out if 1st SS was "LIPE" or "LEEP" standarte (Leibstandarte). Also see The Green Devils: German Paratrooper Elite: 1933-1941, and The Green Devils: German Paratrooper Elite: 1942-1945. This film was a bit better than the Green Devil presentations, except for the narrator. The first Green Devil one never really explained why a few planeloads of paratroopers overcame 40,000 Allied defenders on Crete, but this program gets you closer to seeing how that happened.

This wartime production for propaganda and informative purposes introduced the american public into the horrors and magnitude of the gigantic struggle codenamed "Operation Barbarrosa" by Adolf Hitler himself. When one sees the film over fifty years after its' production, the tone and justified sympathy for the soviet peoples seems so novel by those of us who grew up under the cold war vitriol. That alone and the description of the suffering and valour of the soviet peoples is impressive in itself and gives us an historic dimension along with the dramatism. The military, economic and politcal foreground and explanations delivered during the film have probably never been reproduced and made accesible for the american public in later wars and complicated political moments. If there ever was a time in which the nation, and indeed, the free world strove toward acommon goal it was certainly in WWII. There is an absolute absence of political bias towards the soviets. I can only imagine the reaction of the american public when viewing the imposing panzer and wehrmacht columns at the beginning of the conflict and the destruction they inflicted; the tenacity of the soviets to overcome such a powerful foe; the footage and description of the battle that was to turn it all round: Stalingrad.And from there on the certainty of victory. Battle of the Volga is probably not the best for war documentary buffs;but it delivers the whole scope of the drama and that should suffice for the larger public, even if it is over fifty years old.

The documentary was good but it was very one sided. It was made prior to the U.S. knowing exactly what kind of leader Stahlin was. As a result it is more like a propaganda film then a depiction of the reality of the war in Russia which was a blood bath between two dictators. On a positive note it had some excellent battle footage.

This is one of the first WWII documentaries that really show the mistake that Hitler made by invading Stalins Russia. I'm not good with words but no one else had written a review for it. Sorry. But if you like War documentaries watch this, it's great.

ok