Narrated By: Laurence Olivier
The World At War is a 26 part British television documentary series about second world war which aired first in 1973. It took four years to be made and was at the time the most expensive series ever made at 900,000 British pounds. Adjusted for inflation it stands at around 12 million.
It takes much inspiration from 'The Great War', about first world war, which came out a decade earlier. Most of the story is told with the usage of archive footage but there is also some footage about how some of the places are presently as well as face to face interviews. They chose to interview people who were not that high up on the power list and also ordinary folks. The documentary was made with the information available during that time but later declassification of files meant that some important things like Alan Turing helping Britain to crack the German codes were missed. Another problem is that the things that happened on the Eastern front after 1943 are largely glossed over.
The major difference between the two world wars were that in the first one the fronts in Europe, the Eastern and Western, ended up as stalemate for a long period of time whereas in second world war everything happened relatively quickly. It was great for me watching the series in terms of getting to know about the actual events as well as the motivation behind them, especially the Pearl Harbour and the nuclear bombing. In what was largely a civil war in continental Europe, it is curious that three outsiders in US, Russia & UK emerged as victors.
My stand on the nuclear bombing of Hirsohima and Nagasaki is that, it was kind of inevitable with US trying to protect its interest by having a stronger leverage during the negotiations with Russia for the post war world. In the end, the shock and brutality of the bombings have played a part in preventing its usage in a war scenario since then.
Rating: 4.5/5
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