History Channel's The World Wars

Nineteen Kilo

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Anybody catch this? I watched it the last three nights and came away a bit disappointed. The show seemed a bit unfocused.

It was billed as a show that would reveal how World War 1 shaped & influenced the world leaders of World War 2. And it started out just that way, following Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Stalin and for some reason the "world leaders" MacArthur and Patton through World War 1. By the time the show got to World War 2 it became less about the leaders and more a general overview of that war.

I would have preferred it if it had stayed a study of the leaders and not another generic retelling of WW2. After all, it had not been an overview of WW1 at the beginning of the show.

France received no attention at all. They should have ditched Patton and MacArthur and told us what Petain and/or DeGaul were doing in WW1 and how it influenced them during the second go around. Also Truman was introduced at the very end and not a single word was mentioned that he had been in France in World War 1. Might have been nice if they had followed the war's influence on Truman as well.
 
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JRKrejsa

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I tuned in and saw a few minutes of it. After seeing several non-historical things, I switched to a different program.
-British WWi troops using Soviet Cold War era gas masks.
-Patton's tank attack being rendered with Stuart Tanks. (How hard is it to CGI in the correct FT17s???)

I could not take it after that.
 

rdw5150

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I taped it but am not holding out lots of hope. It just does not seem like focusing on Patton and especially MacAthur belong......
 

Khill

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I tuned in and saw a few minutes of it. After seeing several non-historical things, I switched to a different program.
-British WWi troops using Soviet Cold War era gas masks.
-Patton's tank attack being rendered with Stuart Tanks. (How hard is it to CGI in the correct FT17s???)

I could not take it after that.
bad history and not just the visuals either

i had high hopes but was disappointed

it is suppose to be the history channel: LAME
 

JohnisaG8tor

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Loved all the MODERN warships "flying" Japanese flags (and whatnot), several obvious errors, and so forth.
But I'm holding out for something MUCH more historical in the History Channel's - Big Foots in WWII series!

They also have a Hitler was a cross-dressing bisexual tidbit too!!!

Pretty sad when they and Animal Planet have such BULLCRAP as episodes; vice such stuff being on Sci-Fi. :mad:
 

dlazov

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I watched it with my boys, besides the obvious mistakes (Stuarts during WW1, Modern Destroyers flying a Japanese flag, etc.) they left out Tunisia, North Africa, the Balkans, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Battle for Moscow, Kursk, Bagration, the failed bomb plot against Hitler, Cobra, Battle of the Bulge, anything with the strategic air war, Montgomery, Bradley, Eisenhower, Clark, Guderian, Rommel, Cunningham, Zhukov, Alexander, Konev, Manstein, and a host of other missing things.

It was pretty sad, slightly entertaining but really a let down.
 

Nineteen Kilo

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I tuned in and saw a few minutes of it. After seeing several non-historical things, I switched to a different program.
-British WWi troops using Soviet Cold War era gas masks.
-Patton's tank attack being rendered with Stuart Tanks. (How hard is it to CGI in the correct FT17s???)

I could not take it after that.
Oh the visuals were atrocious. Almost everything with re enactors (or were those clips from movies?) was way off base. US POW's shuffling to the German prison camp was the visual for Russians going to the gulag in the 1930's (WTF?). The stock footage from WWII was equally random, the Blitz on London was apparently conducted by B-17s.

Still I was willing to overlook all this due to a low budget, but the unfocused storyline really was a dud.
Kev
 

Markdv5208

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bad history and not just the visuals either

i had high hopes but was disappointed

it is suppose to be the history channel: LAME
My impression as well.

Good concept, botched.

Mark DV
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I noticed some serious errors: they noted the size of the German army invading france in '40 as 8 million, really??? I seem to remember 1.8 million (though I cannot remember the source from among all the WW2 books I've read over my lifetime). Also, they noted the reason for Japan invading the pacific area to "form a centralized core around the phillippines," really??? again from my understanding the strategic goal for japan was to secure the Indonesian oil resources, attacking pearl harbor would've been a necessity since war with the USA was inevitable.

I think the documentary was trying to "horeshoe" or "skew" MacArthur (for one) into a larger than historical role for purposes of the documentary, thus the "Phillippine core" theory. Since the doc seemed focused or themed on the before & after of the leaders in particular: their roles during WWI and after WWI, during WWII were exaggerated in some way ... I too was disappointed. The doc just came off as "slanted" to me.
 
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