Wonderful character development!

Overrated

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

First I should say I'm a whole time WWII buffs, I've seen most of documentaries and films on the subject, played tactical and strategic war games (both on computers and tabletops); I have read a huge collection of books and I'm an expert modeler on this historical age subject and studied in detail weapons, uniforms, organizations etc. I had a chance to see this whole series and admittedly it deals with tactics and weaponry, but i.e. the images associated to the spoken text are quite often repetitive and even altogether wrong, belonging to other battles or weapons.The music is such a soporific electronic noise it can surely help you loose patience upon the relentless repetitions of images and text... It shows a very poor scripting and researches relative to the actual images of the battles they try to describe in depth; some few interesting and revealing information may be found even by the experts and historians, but to get them you have to go through a large amount of to say the least "boring editing". Great idea, but badly accomplished: even the 3d animated titles belong to the prehistoric age of CG and look like a less than professional and low budget production.I suggest you spare your time and stay away from it: look for some better documented and above all realized series and there are many.

A respectful, adult, and logically laid-out presentation of strategic battles of World War II. An absence of talking heads is refreshing. The price paid for the distanced view this series takes is a lack of dramatic impact, but there's plenty of that elsewhere. Most viewers of any maturity will understand the human suffering behind the events that unfold on the screen.The narrative script seems devoid of prejudice. The war is treated as dispassionately as an historic chess game. There are no easy shots taken, no heart-wrenching footage of the concentration camps, no scenes of old Russian women sobbing over frozen bodies, no familiar Chaplain praying over a dying man on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Moving as this kind of footage is, we've already seen them.Yet the series isn't chary of descriptions of relevant personalities and their conflicts with others. The notorious rivalry between Montgomery and Patton, for instance, is noted, but treated even handedly.The narrative is put out in a reasonable manner that establishes continuity and contributes to our understanding of all sides of the conflict, and the sections are clearly labeled -- "The Leaders", "Order of Battle," "The Men," and so forth. And there is an abundance of maps. I can't remember another series that offered so simple and clear an explanation of strategy.Very nicely done stuff.

"Battlefield" is a masterful rendering of military history. It somewhat arbitrarily presents World War II as a series of battles. This is slightly misleading, since the "Battle for the Rhine" as two tapes are titled, was actually a campaign made up of battles such as Arnheim, Bastogne and the Bulge, which lasted from the D-Day landings to the fall of Berlin. Of course, the totality of a war cannot be explained this way, but "Battlefield's" perspective is narrowly focused on the operational aspect of the war.Each battle is broken into two tapes, "Prelude" and "The Battle"; each of these is broken into sections comparing leadership (politicians, generals), men (soldiers, sailors, airmen), arms and strategic situations, addressing their respective strengths and weaknesses. The campaigns are illustrated with war footage and punctuated with dynamic war maps. This analytic approach may seem dry to someone looking for a war-as-hell or human interest perspective, but as another reviewer has pointed out, these latter approaches have already been used in other series.Tim Piggot-Smith is a great narrator, giving an urgent, expressive, yet even and restrained voice to the events.One quibble: I think "Battlefield" omits some important aspects of particular battles. For example, it doesn't go into enough detail about the successful diversion of Halsey's task force in the Battle of Leyte Gulf to explain how the element of luck was crucial to the American victory. This is covered in other series, such as the History Channel's one-tape Leyte Gulf history. Perhaps the European theater is more vivid to the British than the Pacific theater, which was mainly an aircraft carrier and marine operation between the Japanese and Americans. Of course, when "Battlefield" covers aspects of the war with Japan in which Britain played a major part, such as South Asia, the coverage seems more meticulous. Being American, I may be biased, but this is my impression.This quibble notwithstanding, "Battlefield" is by far the best video series about World War II, from an operational viewpoint.

For too many years battles have been described in vague form with little heed to tactics, weaponry or the men involved. This series seeks to redress that with an overwhelming concentration of what happened within the battle and why. Pivotal battles such as Stalingrad or Normandy are well analysed and explained in laymens terms so that you do not have be a military nut to understand the events. The series assumes that its audience does not have a military background and so gives a run down on the military hardware used and the consequences of that. There is no distraction with first person testimony or an attempt to shock the viewers with horrific images and narration as that was so well done by The World At War. Instead we are offered an insight into the tactics and thinking of the military commanders and politicians with the use of computer graphics and maps. Having said that there is little on offer here for people with only a passing interest in history. The slow methodical pace does mean that it is unlikely to appeal to anyone outside of the history sector. Still, if you are interested you will emerge from the programme having learned something.