Is “The World at War” still a good historical reference?
The Great value of “The World At War” was the personal eyewitness accounts by the officers and politicians personifying the war itself but also the ordinary soldiers on both sides, almost all of them have passed on to history. As Jeremy Isaacs has stated, arranging the personal interviews with surviving assistants of key figures were the most difficult, like the interview with Karl Wolff, Heinrich Himmler’s adjutant. Here is the mesmerizing account of Wolff when he admiited witnessing some large scale executions while Himmler looked on. There are some episodes that are already a bit dated based on new research that have come up, like the Battle of Stalingrad or the account for Operation Overlord, but it does not degrade the overall value of the actual RARE footages that truly describes a documentary film. IMHO, it is one of the greatest and best documentaries ever produced. And the years of research undertaken to produce this series was evident all throughtout. Thames Television is now
