Cheap Last Days of WWII (Video) Price

Stunde Null is what Germans today call 11:01 p.m., May 8, 1945. Meaning "hour zero," it was the time that Germany, having been literally reduced to nothing, could start rebuilding and refashioning itself into the modern democracy we know today--whose economy, perhaps ironically, is at the core of the euro. A&E's documentary series The Last Days of WWII looks at the period right before Stunde Null and at the few years following it. Intriguing video and excellent narration of the final operations of the war on both sides establish context, and the series follows events up to the Nuremberg Trials and the start of the cold war--for which the divided Germany was indeed a microcosm.

Most video documentaries of World War II focus closely only on the war years themselves--students of history recognize the images of Auschwitz's discovery and Hiroshima's fires all too easily. Not so in The Last Days of WWII. In three two-hour documentaries spread over two video cassettes, A&E undertakes an impressive analysis of the tensions between the Allies that gave rise to the cold war well before V-E Day. Good treatments of the Nuremberg Trials certainly exist on video elsewhere, but this overview is also one of the better discussions to date--and manageable in length, to boot. That Germany was a divided nation and not technically sovereign until 1989 has its origin in this period; Last Days covers the occupation, de-Nazification, and reconstruction of Germany, preliminarily at least, as well.

Like many American-made World War II documentaries, this series is unfortunately somewhat Germany-centered. The end-of-war experience in the Pacific does indeed find coverage here, as does the atomic bomb, but do not expect a deeper understanding of prewar and postwar Japan or Italy. This is perhaps due to a pervasive misjudgment among historians and documentarians about the inaccessibility of Asian cultures to a North American audience; it is perhaps also due to an excessive intrigue with the Nazis specifically. Despite this shortcoming, The Last Days of WWII remains an innovative handling of the often-overlooked end and aftermath of the war and will inform and provoke World War II buffs--and, hopefully, history students as well. --Erik Macki

CATEGORY:	Video
MANUFACTURER:	A & E Entertainment
MPAA RATING:	NR (Not Rated)
FEATURES:	Color, Black & White, Box set, NTSC
TYPE:	Documentary
MEDIA:	VHS Tape
# OF MEDIA:	2
UPC:	733961133103