Comprehensive doesn’t even begin to cover it.
On first thought, a five-DVD set seems more than enough to cover World War II, doesn’t it? Hell, it was a big war — five DVDs isn’t too much, is it? Just about right, I’d say. It’s enough to cover the war in broad strokes while making the interesting bit detailed. But wait — what’s that you tell me? The Unknown War is a five-DVD set that only covers one of the war’s many fronts? Sounds exhausting.
And it is, to a degree. Or, rather, exhaustive.
The Unknown War, like most documentaries besides Planet Earth and Life, has a very target audience: World War II fans. If you’re not just absolutely fascinated by the global infighting that was occurring across almost every continent on the globe in the 1930s, you just won’t like (or understand) this set. But if you live for shows like The Pacific and Band of Brothers and would like to see another aspect of the war without waiting for Tom Hanks to make it himself, check out this set, which documents probably the bloodiest — and most forgotten — part of the war. After all, you don’t think we beat the Germans by ourselves, do you? The Russians lost about 20 million men before the Germans were weak enough for us to land the final blow. And this documentary tells us how they did it.
It’s a twenty-episode series, which seems like too much for one subject. And it can be. I have no real interest in watching the entire thing all at once. Luckily, each disc is divided into episodes which helps you to choose which topic you’d like to watch. If you don’t mind chronology being out of joint, skip around to the parts that interest you; that’s probably the best way to do it.
In the end, The Unknown War will appeal most to history buffs and not much to anyone else. However, if you are a history buff, it’s likely that you’ll get a ton of mileage out of this series. Get it on Amazon.
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