Search - World War II: When the World Went to War, Vol. 1 1939-1942 on DVD

Mixed Bag....but generally good.

jrc | Jonesboro, AR USA | 05/20/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is generally a good series. Episodes are about 30 minutes each, mostly from an early 50's TV documentary about WW2, based on Eisenhower's memoirs (originally titled CRUSADE IN EUROPE). Footage from the original episodes looks good...FDR's "Day Of Infamy" speech is taken from the best master I've ever seen.

Now the mixed bag part....the original episodes are interspersed with episodes of a more recent documentary. The more recent doc obviously has a different narrator and uses "color" footage (that looks colorized to me).

Also, the order in which the episodes are presented is not chronological in the strictest sense. The quality of the historical information is good, even in the newer doc.

Overall, the goods outweight the bads.

Each set contains 3 DVDs. The first two volumes run over 200 minutes; Volumes 3 & 4 are down to 163 minutes each. There is apparently to be a fifth volume released in the near future.

For the price, these are a great value. Quality is much better than Madacy and other budget labels."