DVD92 - Through Enemy Eyes vol.1

Go behind enemy lines on a journey that traces the rise and fall of German military fortunes... the great battles, the desperate hours captured via authentic uncut newsreels, exactly as presented to German wartime cinema audiences.

Now see the Second World War as you've never seen it before: Through Enemy Eyes.

All newsreels have been transferred from original 35 millimeter and 16 millimeter German prints and have been accurately translated and electronically subtitled in English.

Through Enemy Eyes Vol. 1 (Two Disk DVD Set)

DISK 1: June 21, 1939 - Oct 4, 1939

NEWSREEL: 459: Reborn German Fleet Maneuvers on High Seas; Goebbels Speaks at Protest Rally in Danzig;

NEWSREEL 468: Hitler Youth on Danube Cruise to Budapest; Danzig SA Defends Border Against Poles; German Refugees From Poland Tell of Oppression; NEWSREEL 470: World War 2 Begins: Germany Invades Poland; Air and Sea Bombardment of Westerplatte; German Tanks and Infantry Move Deep into Poland.

NEWSREEL 471: Polish Jews and Insurgents Taken to Camps; German Soldiers at Worship in Jasna Gora Church; Wehrmacht Crosses Vistula River;

NEWSREEL 472: Hitler Reviews Troops at the Front; German Women at Work in Munitions Plant; Tank Columns Advance and Enter Lodz;

NEWSREEL 473: House-to-House Combat in Captured Cities; Germans and Soviets Meet at Brest-Litovsk.

NEWSREEL 474: Funeral of General Fritsch in Berlin; Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop Flies to Moscow; Hitler Observes Bombardment of Warsaw;

DISK 2: Oct 25, 1939 - Mar 6, 1940

NEWSREEL 477: German Engineers Re-start Steel Mills in Silesia; German Troops Patrol West Wall Fortifications; U-Boat Captain Prien and Crew Welcomed in Berlin;

NEWSREEL 480: New Japanese Foreign Minister Takes Office; Assassination Attempt on Hitler in Munich.

NEWSREEL 482: Pre-Military Training for Hitler Youth; Impounded Foreign Ships in Kiel Harbor; Baltic Germans Resettled in Posen;

NEWSREEL 483: Sports Events in Spain, Japan and Germany; British Navy Blockades North Sea Countries; Luftwaffe Reconnaissance Over English Coast;

NEWSREEL 488: Evacuation of Tientsin by the British; Anti-Air Defense Exercises in Germany.

NEWSREEL 491: Ethnic Germans From Russia Return to Fatherland; Goebbels Tours Western Air Defense Zone;

NEWSREEL 492: International Winter Games in Bavaria; Hitler Speaks at Berlin Sports Palace; Luftwaffe Planes Sink British Ships in North Sea;

NEWSREEL 496: Duce Reviews Elite Militia in Rome; German Wartime Trade Fair in Leipzig; Blitzkrieg Formations in Combat.

Special Features:

•Interactive Newsreel Selection Menus
•Printed Description Guide of Entire Through Enemy Eyes Series

14 Original German Wartime Newsreels with English Subtitles.

256 Minutes - Nearly 4 Hours on Two DVD Disks.

June 21, 1939 - March 6,1940

SPECIAL PRICE REDUCTION!

See and hear the entire war from the German perspective!

DVD92 - Through Enemy Eyes vol.1

Details: Germany, 1939-40, B&W, Total running time: 256 minutes, German with English subtitles.

$40.00 $30 +s/h

"Through Enemy Eyes" is the most significant historical collection of its kind, because preservation of virtually every Third Reich newsreel made during World War Two visually documents that conflict as nothing else. "Die Deutsche Wochenschau" was, as its name suggests, issued weekly to movie theaters throughout Germany, and dramatized the fighting for homefront audiences. Hitler deemed these films so important, according to PzG director, Michael Kelly, that the Fuehrer previewed each one for its effectiveness prior to release.

Volume I, Disk 1 begins with a pair of pre-war newsreels that capture the spirit of that summer before the opening of hostilities. The June, 1939 edition is a mix of international friendliness and military boasting: Sympathy is expressed for the American and British victims of submarine accidents; the Indianapolis 500 race is highlighted; and a French pilot puts a German aerobatic bi-plane (a Buecker "Jungmeister" incorrectly translated into the English subtitles as a "Fokker") through its paces, while German artillery lays down a practice barrage, and the Kriegsmarine's new "pocket battleship", the "Admiral Graf Spee". The August Wochenschau of just two months later is far more bellicose, with popular demands for Danzig's return to the Reich from which it had been separated by 1919's Versailles Treaty.

The main body of September newsreels contains spectacular footage of the blitzkrieg that smashed Poland in three weeks, an unprecedented military feat, shown here in close up detail every modeller or historian must find invaluable. Few if any books are able to show such a wealth of minutiae, from the campaign badges on Wehrmacht infantrymen to the hand-operated starter-cranks of Stuka dive bombers. Among the most memorable scenes belongs to that pre-World War One "dreadnaught", the elderly "Schleswig Holstein", firing tracers and its heavy ordinance at point-blank range into the Poles' fortifications at the Westerplatte.

Volume I, Disk-2 opens with the triumphant return to Berlin of Captain Guenter Prien and the crew of his U-47 after their destruction of HMS "Royal Oak" at Scapa Flow, scene of the German Navy's humiliation twenty years before. Their rapturous reception is one of the great cinematic events in the history of the Third Reich. More pomp and circumstance occur when Mussolini reviews his elite militia in Rome, but military action resumes with the sinking of British ships by Luftwaffe bombers over the North Sea.

Reproduction of these old newsreels is crystal clear. They unquestionably represent an investment that will pay off in repeated viewing for years to come.

Trouble with viewing all these Wochenschau newsreels, I get so excited, I always feel like looking for a recruitment office somewhere.

- Marc Roland