I am not proud to admit it, but sometimes I get tired of talking about World War II. After having Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust hammered into me through years of grade school, middle school, high school, and college, not to mention numerous Oscar-bait movies, I get worn out talking about World War II. Even though my own grandfather served in World War II, at times I couldn't help thinking, “Yes, horrible things happened. Can we move on?” I thought that Apocalypse: World War II would be just another war documentary with good intentions. It would hit all the highlights, remind the audience of the atrocities of the Holocaust, and not really bring anything new to the table. Boy was I wrong. Apocalypse: World War II shattered my complacency by showing me parts of the war that I had never seen before.
Apocalypse: World War II starts by setting up the conditions in Germany which allowed Adolf Hitler's rise to power, and it ends with the surrender of Japan. What makes Apocalypse: World War II unusual as a war film is that there are no talking heads or talking-head interviews with World War II experts. Almost the entirety of the six-part miniseries is made up of real footage from the war. There is battle footage, but there is also film of soldiers taking pictures of their prisoners and then forcing these men, women, and children to dig their own mass graves before shooting them in the head. There is a young British girl participating in bombing drills with her family and listening to news broadcasts on the radio. In another horrifying scene, German soldiers are filmed freezing to death in Russia with their corpses lying in the snow, and soldiers are training dogs to run under tanks with bombs attached to their bodies.
Often times when I learned about World War II in school, many of these people and events felt less real to me because I was just reading about them as opposed to seeing them in real life. I couldn't grasp the idea that Hitler was a human being beyond giving insane speeches and ranting like Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. In Apocalypse: World War II, I got to see Hitler hanging out with his mistress and playing with his beloved dogs. This man treated Jews, homosexuals, and the disabled like cockroaches that needed to be exterminated from his country, but he loved his dogs. Hitler was not a super-human demon who put his country under a spell. He was a human being, and that makes his rise to power all the more frightening.
What I got out of Apocalypse: World War II was that human beings are capable of extraordinary feats. Yes, many of the extraordinary things in Apocalypse: World War II are disgusting and hateful, but there are many extraordinary moments of bravery from World War II. The British endured bombings in their cities and still kept in good spirits in spite of their hardships. Many families risked everything to hide Jews during the war. As a film enthusiast, one group that stuck out to me was the war filmmakers who captured most of the battle footage in the film. They risked their lives to document what was going on so that future generations like myself could see and understand what World War II meant to millions of people. Thanks to their work, the filmmakers behind Apocalypse: World War II could show audiences in 2011 what it was like to be on the battlefield, at Hitler's summer home, and in London trying to live a normal family life.
Note: If you are particularly squeamish, I would be cautious when deciding to watch Apocalypse: World War II. The film includes uncensored battle scenes, footage of innocent people being shot in the head, and many other disturbing images. I think, however, that people who choose to watch fictional films that romanticize war should be required to watch this film. War is hell, and Apocalypse: World War II reflects that.
DVD Bonus Features
Film and history geeks like myself will really enjoy the DVD's behind-the-scenes featurette about gathering hundreds of hours of footage, cleaning it up digitally, and deciding how to find a narrative in the footage. Some of the footage that did not make the final cut is also included under the Bonus Features menu, so there is plenty more for World War II and film enthusiasts to check out on the DVD release.
"Apocalypse: World War II" is on sale March 29, 2011 and is not rated. Documentary, War. Directed by Daniel Costelle, Isabelle Clarke. Written by Isabelle Clarke, Daniel Costelle, Jean-Louis Guillaud, Henri de Turenne.
