As someone who has been a student of WW2 history for over 40 years and has seen all sorts of documentaries about the subject this is my go-to series and also the series I recommend to anyone who is starting out on learning about that conflict.
This was the first and as far as I have seen the only series that goes into in depth into the backgrounds of the battles, covering the 'leaders', causes of the battles, soldiers and weaponry and also into the battles themselves and while many other series are good and do often have additional bits of information which broaden the pictures, whenever I watch them I always feel more like they are skimming the subject to fit it into the limited time allowed rather than really getting into the subject.
In part this series was lucky to have been created at a time when the work of Bletchley Park and other secrets of the war were being released to the public and if you watch documentaries before this time, even the good ones you really notice the difference between the apparent genius of certain commanders and the realisation they had many advantages due to the code breaking efforts of the allies.
This series is now 30 years old and while new information comes out all the time this still stands the test of time as a great record of that conflict and I honestly don't know why it became so abandoned which is a huge shame. If you search religiously you can still get much of the series on DVD but you have to be careful not to get the chopped up shortened versions which miss out on a major advantage this series has over others in the depth it goes in to on each battle. Luckily 27 of the 30 episode can be found on youtube and as a show to their popularity most episodes have been watched millions of times.
This was the first and as far as I have seen the only series that goes into in depth into the backgrounds of the battles, covering the 'leaders', causes of the battles, soldiers and weaponry and also into the battles themselves and while many other series are good and do often have additional bits of information which broaden the pictures, whenever I watch them I always feel more like they are skimming the subject to fit it into the limited time allowed rather than really getting into the subject.
In part this series was lucky to have been created at a time when the work of Bletchley Park and other secrets of the war were being released to the public and if you watch documentaries before this time, even the good ones you really notice the difference between the apparent genius of certain commanders and the realisation they had many advantages due to the code breaking efforts of the allies.
This series is now 30 years old and while new information comes out all the time this still stands the test of time as a great record of that conflict and I honestly don't know why it became so abandoned which is a huge shame. If you search religiously you can still get much of the series on DVD but you have to be careful not to get the chopped up shortened versions which miss out on a major advantage this series has over others in the depth it goes in to on each battle. Luckily 27 of the 30 episode can be found on youtube and as a show to their popularity most episodes have been watched millions of times.