World War II with Walter Cronkite
- TV Series
- 1982–
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Walter Cronkite hosts and narrates this series that repackages portions of previous documentary presentations.Walter Cronkite hosts and narrates this series that repackages portions of previous documentary presentations.Walter Cronkite hosts and narrates this series that repackages portions of previous documentary presentations.
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Forgotten ww2 series
When it comes to world war 2 documentaries, it simply doesn't get better than World at War. The show's amazing and engrossing narration by Laurence Olivier combined with the black and white (and color) footage of real battles make it extremely historically important, even 5 decades later. Even though World at War is probably my favorite show ever, there are also some other ww2 series that don't get much attention, and it doesn't get much more obscure than this. Released all the way back in the early 80s, World War 2 with Walter Cronkite is so unknown today that it has absolutely no reviews or ratings on imdb. None. This might be the most unknown thing I'm reviewing so far, which is sad because it deserved to be more well known. It's not as professionally made as World at War, because it recycles a lot of war footage that I've seen countless times before in other programs, but what makes this series special is who presents it. Walter Cronkite was arguably the most talented reporter in America around this time, and was actually in the war as a correspondent. It's hard to imagine someone better suited for presenting newsreel footage than him. It's also important to know that while not as good as World at War, this show does have several things that the former doesn't. For one thing, World at War is thought by many to be the best overview of ww2, as it covers the important battles really well, but some locations get left out. The show hardly talks about Yugoslavia and makes no mention whatsoever of the Chinese Civil War which was going on throughout the 1940s. WW2 with Walter Cronkite makes up for these deficiencies by giving a lot of insight into topics that World at War barely mentions. Some of these include guerrilla fighting that went on between some civilians in occupied Denmark and Nazi Germany after the invasion there, what was going on in Norway after the Germans invaded it, the British pursuit of the German battleship Graf Spee near South America, and what some people in Hitler's government did during the war that made them so notorious. My favorite has to be the last one, since that episode talks about Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy who attempted to end the war early by flying to Scotland completely alone and demanding to see the king. He was imprisoned for the rest of the war and although found to be mentally ill at Nuremberg, he was given another life sentence post war. Throughout each one of these episodes, we're shown riveting and brutal footage that was taken during the action, which is why this series is so important. The things shown can never be replicated for real. The set I have also comes with numerous features taken from other programs on ww2, and discuss things such as the tactics involved with being a plane ace or interviews with American prisoners who were incarcerated in a German POW camp. The only thing I don't really like about the main series is how long each one of the episodes are. Each one typically consists of 4 segments, and the episodes themselves are 90 minutes each. They're quite long, and if Walter didn't announce to the viewer that the footage is about to depict a different campaign or battle, you'd probably get confused. All of the footage is black and white, so it has a tendency to blend together and feel the same. To summarize, WW2 with Walter Cronkite is one of the most comprehensive programs on the second world war that I've ever seen, and I know what I'm talking about when I say that because World at War exists. The latter might be better, but not by all that much.
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- nickenchuggets
- Jan 29, 2022
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By what name was World War II with Walter Cronkite (1982) officially released in Canada in English?
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