World War II was unique in thousands of ways, one of which was the unparalleled scope of the Axis and Allies' visual documentation of their activities. As a result, this war is understood as much through written histories as it is through its powerful images. The Nazis were remarkably thorough in recording even their most abhorrent atrocities--in an impressive amount of color footage. The World at War was one of the first television documentaries to exploit these resources so completely, giving viewers an unbelievable visual guide to the greatest event in the 20th century. This is to say nothing of the excellent, comprehensible narrative. Some highlights include early German and Nazi documentation of Hitler's rise to power through the impending attack on Poland in volume 1; the early British losses in the blitz in the skies over Britain and in North Africa in volume 12; the turning point of the war and Germany's first defeat in volume 13; one of the most fascinating documentaries of life inside Nazi Germany, from Lebensborn to the Hitler Youth, in volume 16; an unromanticized view of the Normandy invasion (unprecedented until Saving Private Ryan) in volume 17; one of the most widely shown introductions to the Holocaust in volume 18; an important look into wartime Japan and its expansion (although early 20th-century history that lead to Japan's role in World War II is superficial) volume 22; and another widely seen documentary of the Manhattan Project, the Enola Gay, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in volume 24.

The World at War will remain the definitive visual history of World War II, analogous to Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. No serious historian should exclude The World at War from their collection, and no student should leave school without having seen at least some of its salient episodes. Rarely is film so essential. --Erik J. Macki