Ultimate Collections: World War II

The History Channel showcases what it does best
This is a great ten disc set showcasing what the History Channel always did best in my opinion - document World War II. I haven't liked how the History Channel has "mainstreamed" its offerings over the last few years, and thus this set is a real treat for long time viewers. It's also great for your kids to watch if they think that history is boring - it will change their minds. The following are the set's contents:

DISC ONE:

World War II: The War in Europe - Part 1

This disc contains four episodes from War Chronicles, a multiple-episode series of war documentaries written and directed by Don Horan, and hosted and narrated by actor Patrick O'Neal. Running about 26 minutes each in length, the episodes included on this disc were produced in 1983 and 1985. They feature no interviews, just O'Neal and at times, an anonymous narrator who, inexplicable, drops in additional voice-over material explaining in detailed narration over the graphic archival footage,...

A brief comment
I note that there are a lot of lukewarm reviews of this set, and even a fair number of negative comments relating to its shortcomings. For me, though, as a beginner in World War II history, something I knew very little about, I found this set quite enjoyable and informative. I liked how each episode is divided into various segments discussing the country's leaders and generals, the armies and positions involved, order of battle, military strategy, and the weapons themselves--ships, tanks, planes, etc. This approach made it very easy for a non-specialist to follow and to learn from.

The footage is truly spectacular; in one film sequence, a Stuka dive-bomber scores a near miss on a tank, which flies up into the air, flips over, and lands on its turret, upside down. Wow. The extensive footage of fighters strafing tanks on the ground, shooting down enemy planes, bombers dropping hundreds of bombs, and battleships firing massive broadsides are amazing to watch. With extensive...

Hoping for Something Better
I agree with the majority, that this set is very incomplete. While content presented on WW II is good, I have other issues.

The running time is approximately 810 minutes (not 892 minutes) on 10 DVDs in the standard cases, which requires at least 6 inches of shelf space. Only 4 DVDs were required, but 10 DVDs were used.

I mainly purchased this set for the 10 Military (Great) Blunders episodes. I was hugely disappointed that all episodes ran between 20:55 and 21:07 minutes. I have some of these episodes on VHS and they ran 22 minutes and I was hoping that original running times of perhaps 23 minutes, would be in this set. The problem is the History Channel (and the rest of the TV universe) keeps cutting runing times for more commercials. So, the original episodes no longer exists and you get heavily edited programs. Maybe, if the History Channel had shipped the original, uncut episodes, 892 minutes may have been correct.

Bottomline, while there...

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