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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VIDEO: THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY
VHS, DVD
The man who found the Titanic,
Dr. Robert Ballard, took on the greatest technical challenge of his
career when he traveled to the Pacific waters off Midway Island,
site of a critical turning point of World War II, in search of the
sunken aircraft carrier U.S.S. Yorktown. This documentary not
only details Ballard's challenge in finding the Yorktown,
which rests three miles below the surface, a mile deeper than the
Titanic, but also provides an intelligent and gripping narrative
of the Battle of Midway, in which four Japanese carriers were also
sent to the bottom in a furious day of fighting that turned the tide
of the war in the Pacific. On the expedition with Ballard are four
veterans, two Japanese and two Americans, who had been involved in
the decisive 1942 battle, and who are at times overwhelmed by
emotion as Ballard looks for their old ships. The dogged search for
a Japanese carrier is fruitless, but finally Ballard finds a debris
field that leads him to the Yorktown. Ballard's remarkable
underwater cameras scan the great carrier, which rests upright on
the ocean floor, its antiaircraft guns still pointed skyward as if
to ward off yet another furious Japanese attack. As one might expect
from a National Geographic production, this documentary is
both intelligently conceived and beautifully photographed.
--Robert J. McNamara
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SACRIFICE
AT PEARL HARBOR
VHS
This documentary produced by the BBC
offers a revisionist look at the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it
raises some tantalizing questions. It makes the incredibly serious
and controversial claim that the U.S. government had definitive
knowledge of the imminent Japanese attack, yet Franklin D. Roosevelt
and other American leaders deliberately sacrificed Americans lives
so they would have an excuse to enter World War II. There's no
question that American cryptographers read Japanese communications,
but serious historians have long contended that any credible warning
of the December 7, 1941, attack on American naval forces can only be
discerned when information is pieced together with the help of
considerable hindsight. Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor claims
otherwise, but the evidence offered, which for the most part
consists of interviews with elderly men who claim to remember
knowing the attack was coming, isn't always terribly convincing. The
stories of pre-war intelligence operations are intriguing, but one
could plausibly claim that failure to act on some of the warning
signs would be attributable to either honest mistakes or simple
ineptitude, not a grandiose conspiracy to force America into the
growing war. This documentary presents its material in a dramatic
fashion, but ultimately it raises more questions than it answers.
--Robert J. McNamara
HEROES OF IWO JIMA
VHS, DVD
The flag-raising atop Mt. Suribachi
during the epic World War II battle of Iwo Jima is the focus of this
stirring documentary narrated by actor and ex-Marine Gene Hackman.
James Bradley, son of one of the flag-raisers and author of the best
selling Flags of Our Fathers, relates many of the stories
surrounding the men who fought at Iwo Jima, and retired Associated
Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who snapped the classic
photograph, also offers his battlefield recollections. Family
members of the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima speaking movingly
of the men and what prompted them to enlist in the Marine Corps. The
rumors that Rosenthal faked the photograph are debunked, and the
enormous symbolism of the Marines raising the flag and what it meant
to America after four years of horrific combat is intelligently
discussed in this look at how a single moment in American history
has assumed legendary significance.
--Robert J. McNamara
RETURN
TO IWO JIMA
VHS
On February 19, 1945, American Marines
began fighting their bloodiest battle--it lasted 36 days--on a small
Pacific island whose name became synonymous with honor and heroism.
Ed McMahon hosts this poignant reunion at the battleground, 40 years
after the American flag was raised over it. Veterans from both sides
returned to strengthen ties for peace. They met, recalled fallen
comrades, and shared the mutual hope that Iwo Jima will always be
remembered and never repeated
FAMOUS
MARINE BATTLES: TARAWA
VHS
Although it does
not give any indication of it on the box, this documentary is a
period piece, an official Marine Corps film produced for the U.S.
Government Office of War Information, with no date of release given,
but probably 1945. The narration is straightforward, basically
telling you what you're looking at. There is no critical analysis,
no alternate viewpoints, no mention of controversial command
decisions, and there was little or no access to Japanese documents
at that time. What you do get is some incredible color footage,
miraculously filmed by Marine photographers of the 2nd Division.
This contains intense, up-close combat scenes that will give you a
renewed respect for these 19-21 year old Marines. Watch for a scene
of Marines swarming up a Japanese emplacement and assaulting it with
rifles, grenades, and flamethrowers. This sand covered emplacement
became known as Bonnyman's Hill (not identified as such in the film)
named for the Marine's legendary Lt. Sandy Bonnyman, who led the
assault on this emplacement with his squad of assault engineers who
became known as "Bonnyman's Forlorn Hope." It was fortunate that a
Marine photographer was there to film the assault. For an analytical
look at this battle, see the History Channel's documentary Death
Tide At Tarawa, also available on video and DVD from Amazon. Anyone
interested in this battle or in World War II history in general
would benefit greatly by reading Col. Joseph H. Alexander's history,
Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa, by far the best book on
this battle. Amazon.com Review
WORLD
WAR II: WAR IN THE PACIFIC
VHS, DVD
Major American campaigns in the
Pacific during World War II are ably chronicled in this set of
documentaries produced by the History Channel. The focus of the
films is primarily U.S. Army and Marine action, as forces using an
island-hopping strategy across the Pacific made amphibious landings
that were usually followed by vicious combat against Japanese
defenders. Action footage shot by American combat cameramen provides
the bulk of the visual material, and many of the clips dramatically
demonstrate what a terrible price was paid to conquer the islands.
The narration of each documentary offers information about
particular combat units, and strategy and tactics are explained with
the use of maps. General Douglas MacArthur, as one might expect,
receives a lot of attention, and Admiral William "Bull" Halsey has
an entire documentary (which is actually an episode of the
Biography series) devoted to him and his naval campaigns. One
film focuses on jungle warfare in Burma and New Guinea, while
another provides a quick-moving overview of how warplanes were
deployed by both sides. MacArthur's triumphant return to the
Philippines is featured in one documentary, and the American assault
against fanatical resistance on Okinawa is the subject of another
film. These films do not cover the entire Pacific War, but they are
informative, visually compelling, and intelligently assembled.
--Robert J. McNamara
--This text refers to the
DVD edition.
THE
WAR CHRONICLES Box Set
VHS
On April 24, 1947, more than a year
after the end of World War II, 26 Japanese soldiers who had been
holding out in the caves of Peleliu, in the Palau Islands, walked
down to the U.S. airfield to surrender--to the astonishment of the
Americans who had thought the island had been "secure" since 1944.
The Battle of Peleliu was notably bloody: with a casualty rate of
almost 50 percent, some 20,000 Marines died in a three-month ordeal
that was supposed to be a quick, four-day operation on the way to
liberate the Gilbert Islands. The Peleliu airfield was an essential
and easy target to secure, but up in the rocky hills of the small
island the Japanese had made a fortress of miles of interconnected
caves--virtually impregnable. After the battle that more than a few
soldiers wrote home to describe, literally, as hell, the lush, green
island oasis had been charred bare by massive bombing and
cave-clearing flamethrowers. Though not as widely known as the
Battle of Guadalcanal, Peleliu was almost as significant a turning
point in the Pacific theater.
A&E and the History
Channel's War Chronicles includes fascinating documents of
many understudied parts of World War II, such as the Battle of
Peleliu. Each of the seven cassettes in this series produced for
television carries two one-hour episodes, but the episodes are
hit-and-miss for quality. The Peleliu episode "Island Hopping" is
excellent: superb contextualization and background, use of maps,
well-organized narration. Other episodes, such as "The Desert War,"
are wanting: no use of maps, film images that don't seem to connect
to the narration, cursory historical information, lots of explosions
but less substance. In the end there is some fascinating,
well-written documentation here--just don't be afraid to use your
fast-forward button when necessary.
--Erik J. Macki
THE
WORLD AT WAR - 9 Volume Gift
Set
VHS, DVD
Sir Jeremy Isaacs highly deserves the
numerous awards for documentaries he has earned: the Royal
Television Society's Desmond Davis Award, l'Ordre National du Mérit,
an Emmy, and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. His epic The
World at War remains unsurpassed as the definitive visual
history of World War II.
The Second World
War was different from other wars in thousands of ways, one of which
was the unparalleled scope of visual documents kept by the Axis and
Allies of all their activities. As a result, this war is understood
as much through written histories as it is through its powerful
images. The Nazis were particularly thorough in documenting even the
most abhorrent of the atrocities they were committing--in a
surprising amount of color footage. The World at War was one
of the first television documentaries that exploited these resources
so completely, giving viewers an unbelievable visual guide to the
greatest event in the 20th century. This is to say nothing of the
excellent, comprehensible narrative. Some highlights:
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A New
Germany 1933-39: early German and Nazi
documentation of Hitler's rise to power through the impending
attack on Poland
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Whirlwind: the early British losses in
the blitz in the skies over Britain and in North Africa
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Stalingrad: the turning point of the war
and Germany's first defeat
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Inside
the Reich--Germany 1940-44: one of the
most fascinating documentaries that exists on life inside Nazi
Germany, from Lebensborn to the Hitler Youth
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Morning:
prior to Saving Private Ryan, one of the only
unromanticized views of the Normandy invasion
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Genocide:
this film is one of the most widely shown introductions to the
Holocaust
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Japan
1941-45: although The World at War
is decidedly focused more on the European theater, this is an
important look into wartime Japan and its expansion--early
20th-century history that lead to Japan's role in World War II is
superficial
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The bomb:
another widely shown documentary of the Manhattan Project, the
Enola Gay, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki
The World
at War will remain the definitive visual
history of World War II, analogous to Gibbon's Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire. No serious historian should be missing
The World at War in a collection, and no student should leave
school without having seen at least some of its salient episodes.
Rarely is film so essential.
--Erik J. Macki
WORLD WAR II - THE LOST COLOR ARCHIVES
VHS, DVD
In
the 1980s determined researchers began scouring the world for color
film shot during World War II, and the result of their quest is
spectacular. Seeing the war through the ubiquitous black-and-white
footage has always made the experience somewhat distant, but in
clear, crisp color, the enormity of the war and its horrors is
startling and dramatic. Films of Nazi rallies are all the more
disturbing; a viewer seeing the scene in color realizes the massive
crowds saluting Hitler are no longer gray and faceless masses, but
gatherings of well- dressed civilians. Color combat footage, from
across Europe and the Pacific, is frighteningly immediate, and some
of it, showing the wounded, the dead, and even prisoners being
executed, will no doubt be disturbing for many viewers. Violence and
destruction on an unimaginable scale is vividly put on display, as
are smaller moments of soldiers smiling for the camera or liberated
prisoners from the concentration camps staring in pained
bewilderment. The episodes, produced by the History Channel, are
introduced by veteran journalist Roger Mudd, and the narration for
each individual segment typically contains excerpts from letters and
diaries describing events close to those depicted in the film
footage. The footage used is of a surprisingly high quality (much of
it was shot and stored away, virtually unseen for decades), and it
provides a stunning look at how the war appeared to those fighting
it. --Robert J. McNamara
--This text refers to the
DVD edition.
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