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History Channel's "The World Wars"

GRIZZLY

Grizzled Veteran
Jun 18, 2011
743
337
New Jersey
Has anybody seen this?

I actually remember getting really excited about it when I saw previews earlier this year.... I think it came out around Memorial Day (Which is an American holiday commemorating war veterans - it was on May 26th this year), but I only recently got around to watching it.

So...

I believe it said the intro scene was October 16th, 1914 (could be a little off on that, but it was definitely September or October of 1914). The Germans charge out of the trenches wearing Stahlhelms (not made until 1916) towards the British line. They fall back and a gas shell (not on the Western front til 1915) lands in their trench. A young German soldier struggles to get out his gas mask... only to realize that his mustache blocks the mask from being able to fit air tight (What.... he never tried it on before during their drills?). As he begins to choke he takes a big gulp of air and closes his eyes. 20 seconds later or so the Germans yell "All clear!" and the young soldier lets his breath out and is fine (You're meaning to tell me that the brilliant German scientists and engineers who developed this gas canister hadn't considered the possibility that someone could hold their breath long enough to not choke?).

The soldier scrambles into a dugout and shaves the sides of his mustache leaving only the signature toothbrush mustache of you-know-who... the young German, with his fresh new stache (which I don't think he had until he got into politics in the 20s), stares into the camera... you, the viewer, go "Oh snap it's Hitler!" (Who's unit wasn't even at the front yet)... and then dubstep kicks in and the word HITLER flashes onto the screen.

Utterly ridiculous. I was literally laughing at the spectacle of pseudo history.

And this is coming from a total amateur... I'm sure some of the actual academics on this forum could TEAR apart the inaccuracies in this. This is only the first 5 minutes out of 6 hours of the series. The whole thing is oozing with thick layers of American bias (<- coming from an American, I bet you Europeans would be even more disgusted than I was). The battle of Stalingrad is only mentioned to elevate the antagonist vs. antagonist aspect of Hitler and Stalin. Kursk? Moscow? Leningrad? Ukraine? Riga? Nahhh. It also features commentary from the great historians of our era - Dick Cheney and John McCain.

Total disgrace to history documentaries.

The cinematography was really cool though. It's worth watching just to see the awesome trench battles and tanks and planes and explosions.
 
I too was very excited to watch this series. Sad to hear it has been transformed into a cinematic event rather than objective history. I can honestly recommend "WW 1 in Colour", which Is British. A Russian made documentary about WW2 is Soviet Storm, which can be found in its entirety in English on YouTube. Both good with a non-American perspective.
 
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This is the "History Channel". It's too much to expect anything more than pseudo-history, pseudo-science, or pseudo-anything. This is the sad state of television at the moment and one of the many reasons I have stopped watching any form of cable television. I haven't watched any in quite a long while, but from what I can deduce, it seems that only National Geographic is trustworthy when it comes to educational cable programming.
 
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With an all star lineup of shows that include:
  • Swamp People
  • Big Rig Bounty Hunters
  • Pawnography
  • Biker Battlegrounds Pheonix
  • Pawn Stars..
just to name a few. I hardly check the "History Channel" schedule anymore. Someone should think about renaming themselves, imo.

Honestly, the History Channel should just be renamed the nonsense channel at this point. My family used to have a joke about a made up show called "Hitlers Dinosaurs" until what ever the military channel devolved into created one similar >.<
 
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