Germany At War: 1941-1943

Surprisingly, the material that goes into this volume of the documentary series Germany at War is superior in condition to most of the footage used in the earlier volume. Despite covering a period in which the war began going seriously against the Germans, there was no shortage of footage shot by the government propaganda unit to help keep morale up. There were enough staged events, such as the German Armed Forces Day of 1942, to provide moments that recalled the early days of the Reich, but looking at the faces of soldiers and moast of the people, the undertone is grimmer than in 1935 or 1936; between scenes such as that, and surprising shots of the U-boat pens being built in occupied France, there is plenty of room for built-in irony, knowing what was happening on the front in the East. The same six-chapter breakdown that characterized the first volume is used here, and as the footage is generally in better shape, the entire volume is easier on the eye -- at least, the sharpness now makes the digital video format worthwhile, rather than a matter of providing high-resolution reproduction to grainy materials.