User Reviews

Sometimes difficult to believe...and still, it happened. Beyond imagination. You wonder how human mind can be so twisted. One must never forget what happened then as it somehow help preventing it to ever happen again.

Too painful to watch. That's why 9/10. But, actually, deserves straight 10.

One of the most important documentaries about WW2, Nazism and antisemitism ever made.

And with some the most painful scenes, practically unbearable.

Had to watch in parts, this is not a series to binge as it is very difficult to watch and comprehend how these monsters treated people and the Jewish population like. Extremely important hence why it should be seen, documented proof of the brutality of the Nazis.

As free and educated people in the West, we are actually doing the unthinkable - we are forgetting the deeply horrifying lessons from Holocaust.

Admittedly, the facts of the Holocaust are sincerely too vast and terrible to adequately understand. But while the numbers don't lie, the narrative can be limited to soften the impact - I believe that's the trouble. Even in Russia, where Germany's invasion unleashed unprecedented destruction for civilians and military, antisemitism is on the rise, even employing the surface features of Nazi symbolism. This is a shock since Russia has attempted to craft a very different narrative (the 'Great Patriotic War'), keeping what was done by Germany very much present in mind of the public.

"Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads" is focused on one of the Holocaust's darkest truth, that at least 1.3 million Jews among the 2 million civilian victims of Nazi racial violence were shot one at a time by individuals from the SS, the Wehrmacht and German instigated anti-Semitic groups in occupied countries.

The narrative of the Holocaust which we hear about in the West characterizes it's evil nature describing the mass extermination within concentration camps by gas and ovens - there was cruelty and sadism within the camps, but those instances are few in relation to the staggering numbers of dead from that method. This film is about something extraordinarily savage, about the shooting up close of hundreds of thousands of women and children, repeatedly from 1941 until 1945.

Our western narrative is something of a double-edged sword: it frames the evil in a way which is easy to picture and understand; 'factories of death.' Yet one of the reasons the camps became so important to the Germans is that it allowed them to avoid seeing the those they were killing. The millions of dead are reduced to numbers.

On the other hand, the work being done by the Einsatzgruppen brigades were so intimate and clearly genocidal, ghastly and prolific, that it created serious psychological problems for those Germans taking part - either severe depression and alcoholism or the emergence of brutish, pathological sadism. Himmler and arch-antisemite Reinhard Heydrich were very aware of the damage this was doing to the morale of the troops involved.

This film is extremely well put together and succeeds in creating a vital and accurate picture for this harrowing chapter in Western History.

(Please read "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder and watch the film,"Come and See" (1985) - it is a rare and vivid depiction of the action of one Einsatzgruppen brigade). Cannot recommend highly enough.

This is one of the best documentaries I've seen about the events during WW2 in Europe.

I am a WW2 buff (as a lot of people are) army brat who grew up in Germany and have read countless books and watched many documentaries on the subject. This docu is the kind you want to watch - it's thorough, has first hand accounts, shows footage from the time - footage that isn't as widely seen too; I saw photos and video footage I've never seen before ...

it's not censored at all, which I appreciate too. In order to understand the chaos and destruction of the time, we need to see it and hear it - every horrible detail and image so as to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. This documentary shows all of that and more. I found it sad, informative and very interesting. Especially the stories from those who were just ordinary people who had to see this happen and could do nothing to stop it.

While I believe children need to know about this, I will say it IS quite graphic, so I suggest not watching with little ones around.

Give this doc a watch, especially if you are interested in the subject. It is not like any of the countless other docs I've seen - it brings different information and images that will be sure to inform and surprise you.

Very forgot to watch in parts but I agree with the other review..we should never forget what happened.

There is no denying that this is important historic content that in our current times needs to be promoted and shared, however the viewing experience is really poor.

Simple yet jarring errors are present like the absence of a capitalised "A" in the word "August" on one of the first title cards of the series.

Music choice is very poor and severely undercuts the severity of the topics being discussed.

Long fades to black are present mid-interview with subject matter experts which provides a very unpolished feeling to the viewing experience. These fades exist between different pieces of footage from the same interview (they are trying to segue to another point in the interview) but instead of cutting to B-roll or another camera angle as would be industry standard to cover the edit, these fades are used instead.

This production does not do justice to the subject matter. It is cheaply and unprofessionally made, and because of that has a strange voyeuristic and sensationalistic feel that doubles the viewer's nausea--as if the Nazi horrors are not enough. The narration is full of mispronunciations, the credits have typos, the lighting of interviewees is atrociously bad, even a historian in the film--unkempt and bad teeth glistening--is so horrendously lit that he looks like a villain himself, and a prosecutor is heard saying inane comments with a stupid grin such as that he "had a special affection" to put someone on trial because he had doctoral degrees. It makes me angry that Holocaust films are such an industry that cheap productions, such as this one, are cranked out, seemingly for no other reason than to satisfy the depravity of some viewers. The people who died and the subject matter deserve productions of much better quality.