Certainly - thus my "it's not perfect" comment. In particular, some things gleaned from Nazi archives were deliberately withheld and still classified as of the time WaW was produced.

Ditto for Soviet archives, obviously - things that only they had access to, either that they captured in Poland and Germany, or their own internal documents were certainly not well known until the 1990s or later.

So, you will have to fill in the gaps/get your corrections elsewhere. But, overall, it remains as comprehensive and accurate as such a product can be. Although focused on the breadth of the entire conflict, there was a surprising amount of depth, largely through those lower level interviews. Anything that approaches 50 years of age will appear dated. I think that's not necessarily a criticism, but a fact.

But, I agree that nothing newer could exceed it in other categories - other than, perhaps, a deeply intensive research into specific figures, battles, operations, on the depth side.

This post was edited on 10/11/17 at 11:50 am

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Posted by Champagne

Already Conquered USA.

Member since Oct 2007

48490 posts

Posted on 10/11/17 at 12:48 pm to Ace Midnight

quote:
1990s or later.

Glantz says in he newest revision of his book When Titans Clashed that more than half of what we know for sure about the Eastern Front has come to light since 1995. That really underscores the necessity of updating everything that we learned about WW2 before then.

For example, arguably the biggest secret of WW2 was the Ultra Secret about cracking the Enigma code. The general public first learned of this in 1973. This is the same year that the World at War documentary was completed, so, obviously, many of the participants in making WaW had no idea about Ultra/Enigma. That's a fairly significant flaw in WaW -- a flaw that's not its fault. Was the Ultra/Enigma secret mentioned at all in WaW? If not, then, I would argue that NONE of the people involved in making the documentary had any knowledge of Ultra/Enigma.

It is tough to gain a full understanding of that very complex and long period of history from the popular history sources, the film documentaries and the movies. That's the challenge that every good citizen who wants to be informed faces.

Haven't you and I spent our whole lives studying WW2? We and a bunch of other people, too.