Greatest Events Of Wwii In Color

[Jarrell Campbell]

Greatest Events of WWII in Colour is a docuseries that, hence its name, documents some of the events of World War II, while showing colorized archive footage of such events. This series was released on Netflix as an original series on November 8, 2019.

There's lots of bombings and explosions, bloodied and mutilated corpses, and people being pushed, marched, or hearded to their deaths. Kamakazi pilots are shown flying straight into ships. People are shown crying, etc.

Parents need to know that World War II: From the Frontlines is a WWII documentary. It has colorized archive footage of events that transpired, and recorded first-hand accounts of what it was like to be there. It contains descriptions and footage of violent war time events (Nazi marches, suicide bombers, missile launches, etc.) as well as images of people before and after being killed. Nazi calls for a master race and genocide are also discussed. Nudity is present, but not in a sexual context. Historians and WWII buffs might like it, but those sensitive to intense imagery may want to skip it.

Narrated by John Boyega, WORLD WAR II: FROM THE FRONTLINES is a documentary series that features colorized World War II footage while witnesses from all sides share their personal experiences throughout. From Poland to the Phillippines, the enhanced archival footage offers an immersive look at the events that took place throughout. Audio recordings of survivor accounts, including former U.S., German, and Japanese soldiers, as well as concentration camp and atomic bomb survivors, are played while restored film footage offers a vivid look at what they are describing looks like. On occasion, footage of interviews, some pulled from other documentaries, are also shown.

This straightforward historical series uses colorized archival footage to offer a very intense visual chronicle of events that transpired during World War II. Like most documentaries on the subject, it features extremely violent and disturbing scenes, ranging a Polish child being removed from his/her mother by a Nazi soldier, to kamakazi planes fliying into ships. While it stops short of showing people being executed, the scenes that lead up to, and after, the murders are still disturbing to watch, especially when the audio accounts "fill in" the gaps of what happened, and describe other (often unseen) horrors that took place during those years. Granted, World War II: From the Frontlines doesn't offer much that's new by way of information, but the colored footage creates a more dimensional viewing experience. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might find it worth the watch.

What is it that World War II: From the Frontlines is tryng to achieve by featuring archive footage that has been colorized? Is it to give more context to what happened during the Second World War? Or is it simply trying to present old information in a new way to encourage audiences to watch?

What is the most important event of the 20th century? Historians may ponder that question for years to come, but from the perspective of the people of the United States, it is World War II. In a recent Gallup poll, Americans nominated the war in general, the Nazi Holocaust that occurred during the war, and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan that helped end it, as three of the top five events of the century. Rounding out the top five are two events that signaled major changes in human rights and equality: the granting of the right to vote to women in 1920, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A Gallup poll conducted earlier this fall first asked the American public to name the most important event of the century off the top of their head, without prompting. Gallup Poll analysts then took this list, deleted the "events" that in reality are more like sweeping advances (such as the computer), added additional events that have appeared on other lists, and created a new list of 18 events for the public to rate. These events were then read to a new random sample of Americans in November, and the respondents were asked to rate each of the events on the following scale:

What were Americans thinking as each of these events occurred? The sections that follow look in greater detail at what polling showed about Americans' reactions to the top five events in the rankings as they were occurring and/or what the trend of American thought has been on the topic through the years of this century.

World War II -- The Most "Just" War

According to the American public, not only was the Second World War one of the most important events of the 20th Century, it was the most "just" of all the major wars fought by the United States in its history. A Gallup poll conducted shortly after the beginning of the Persian Gulf War in January 1991 showed that 89% of all Americans rated World War II as a just war, compared with 76% who rated World War I that way, 75% the Revolutionary War, 74% the Persian Gulf War, and 70% the Civil War. Only about half (49%) of Americans rated the Korean War as just, with 32% saying it was not, and 19% unsure. Not surprisingly, only 25% rated the Vietnam War as just, while 65% said it was not, and another 10% were unsure.

Despite this retrospectively positive view of World War II, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the years leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans were not inclined to become involved in fighting against either the Germans or the Japanese. In fact, so strong was American opposition to U.S. involvement in fighting that in October 1939, more than a month after the Germans had started World War II by attacking Poland, fully 68% of all Americans said it had been a mistake for the U.S. to enter even the First World War. And only 16% said the United States should send our army and navy abroad to fight Germany in the war that was under way. This opposition to U.S. involvement persisted throughout the next two years. The last time before Pearl Harbor that Gallup asked a question about U.S. involvement in the war was in June 1941, when only 21% said the U.S. should go to war.

But if Americans were reluctant for the country to become involved in actual fighting, they nevertheless wanted to take aggressive steps -- short of war -- to help England and France, and to thwart the buildup of power in Japan.

In October 1941, about two months before the Japanese attacked the U.S. military in Hawaii, 64% of Americans said the United States should take steps "now" to prevent Japan from becoming more powerful, even if this action would mean risking a war with Japan, while just 25% were opposed. Even earlier, in October 1939, 62% of Americans said the U.S. should do everything possible, except going to war, to help England and France. But even this caveat was tempered by the willingness of the American public, in a June 1941 poll, to have the U.S. provide military escorts for ships carrying war materials to Britain -- with 56% in favor and 35% opposed. Even more telling was the widespread support of Americans for allowing the U.S. Navy to shoot at German submarines and warships on sight, supported by a margin of 62% to 28%. These latter two actions are clearly acts of war, and had they been implemented would have drawn the United States into war even earlier than it was.

One reason for the public's opposition may well have been its perception that U.S. involvement was not needed. When Americans were asked in August 1941 who would win the war between Germany and Britain, 69% said Britain, while just 6% said Germany.

The Atomic Bomb

In the days immediately following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Americans overwhelmingly approved of the action, by a margin of 85% to 10%. And by a margin of 69% to 17%, Americans also said it was a good thing rather than a bad thing that the bomb had been developed at all.

But in the years since, public opinion has become less supportive of both the development and use of the atomic bomb. The question about using the bomb on the Japanese cities was asked again in 1990, when barely half of the public -- 53% -- said it approved of the dropping of the bomb, while 41% expressed disapproval. In the latest asking, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the event in July 1995, the margin of approval increased from 1990 -- with 59% of the U.S. public saying it approved of the use of the atomic weapon, and 35% disapproving -- but was still far below 1945 approval levels.

Even more dramatically, the 1995 Gallup poll showed that 61% of Americans now thought it was a bad idea that the atomic bomb had been developed in the first place, with just 36% saying it was a good idea. These figures are similar to results of a 1990 Gallup poll. The 1995 poll also showed that while 86% of Americans believed that dropping the atomic bomb saved American lives, the public was about evenly divided on whether it saved Japanese lives by shortening the war -- 40% thought it did, but 45% said it cost more Japanese lives.

The Holocaust

Although the Holocaust is viewed by the American public as one of the most significant events of the 20th Century, there were no Gallup Poll questions about the Holocaust that were asked during or immediately after the Second World War. However, in 1993, the release of a poll by the Roper Organization led some people to believe that a substantial number of Americans simply did not believe that the Holocaust had ever occurred. The question asked of a national sample of respondents was as follows: "Does it seem possible or does it seems impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?" Fielded in November 1992, the poll was released in April 1993. It reported that 22.1% said "possible," 65.4% said "impossible," and 12.4% said "don't know." This suggested that more than one-fifth of all Americans had doubts about the occurrence of the Holocaust, and overall more than a third either were unsure or had doubts.

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