DVD98 - Through Enemy Eyes vol.7

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. 7 (Two Disk DVD Set)

DISK 1: Nov 26, 1941 - Feb 9, 1942

NEWSREEL 586: State Funeral of Ernst Udet, Chief Air Inspector General of the Luftwaffe.; Heavy Artillery Pounds Strategic Targets in Leningrad.; Important Rail Junction of Tikhvin Captured by German Troops.; Deep Frost Impedes the Advance to Moscow.; Infantry Units Reach the Crimean Capital Simferopol.; German Troops Enter the Historic City of Yalta on the Black Sea.; Stukas Attack Enemy Tanks and Troop Concentrations on the Libyan-Egyptian Border.

NEWSREEL 588: Grossdeutschland Regiment in Action near Moscow.; Reich Marshal Göring in Conference with France's Marshal Petain.; One of the two U-boats that sank British Carrier Ark Royal Returns to Port.; German and British Fighter Planes in a Dogfight over the English Channel.; Colonel General Guderian's Panzers Attack Southwest of Moscow.; Italian and German Troops Battle the Brits and New Zealanders in North Africa.

NEWSREEL 592: Enthusiastic German People Donate Warm Clothing for the Soldiers on Eastern Front.; Finnish Troops Counterattack in East Karelia.; Skis are a Necessity in Snowbound Eastern Front.; In Leningrad Sector German Infantry Prevents a Bolshevik Breakout over the Neva River.; Heavy Combat near Sevastopol in Crimea.

NEWSREEL 594: Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop Received by Hungarian Regent Horthy in Budapest.; The Führer Awards Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross to Waffen-SS General Sepp Dietrich and other Officers.; National Socialist Women at Work Making Camouflage Suits for Winter Warfare.; German Mine Sweepers in Action on the English Channel.; Siege of Leningrad - Soldiers Routine Activities Behind Front Lines.; Heaviest Artillery Pounds the port- and Citadel of Sevastopol.

NEWSREEL 596: Hitler Speaks to the German People on the Ninth Anniversary of his Rise to Power.; General Muñoz Grandes, Commander of Spanish Blue Division, Receives the Iron Cross, First Class.; Supply Lines Operate Around the Clock in Cities Behind Front Lines of the Eastern Front.; German and Romanian Troops Attack Sevastopol and Feodosiya in the Crimean Peninsula.; U-boats Deploy Against the USA.; German and Italian Troops on the Road to Benghazi, Libya.

DISK 2: Feb 25, 1942 - Apr 16, 1942

NEWSREEL 599: Training at Various German Officer Candidate Schools.; Wintry Woes in Snowbound Woods of Karelia.; Continued Fighting on the Eastern Front.; Colonel General Rommel on the Outskirts of Benghazi.; German U-boats in Action off the Coast of New York.; Precision Teamwork of Luftwaffe Fighters and Kriegsmarine Units on the English Channel.

NEWSREEL 600: Japanese military operations in the Pacific (Japanese Newsreel Footage Included); Hitler Decorates General Model at the Wolf's Lair headquarters. Scenes of Russian Winter; German and Romanian Troops Surround Sevastopol. The Luftwaffe bombs Malta.

NEWSREEL 602: Aftermath of British Bombing Raid on Paris; Hitler Opens the Memorial Day Festivities in Berlin; Winter Warfare in the Donets Region in Russia; Armed Forces Day Celebrated in Berlin.

NEWSREEL 605: The British Naval Raid on the German-held port of Saint-Nazaire; German troops in action on the Central Sector of the Eastern Front; German raider in the Indian Ocean; British Air Attack on Lübeck destroys the Lübeck cathedral.

NEWSREEL 606: Wilhelm Fürtwangler conducts the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra at an Armaments Plant in Berlin; Reich Marshal Göring Congratulates Field Marshal Milch on his 50th Birthday; German troops advance into the Kerch Peninsula in the eastern Crimea; Italian and German Navies in the Mediterranean; Tank Battles in Cyrenaica, Libya.

10 Original German Wartime Newsreels with English Subtitles.

254 Minutes - Nearly 4 Hours on Two DVD Disks.

November 26, 1941 - April 16, 1941

SPECIAL PRICE REDUCTION!

See and hear the entire war from the German perspective!

DVD98 - Through Enemy Eyes vol.7

Details: Germany, 1941-42, B&W, Total running time: 254 minutes, German with English subtitles.

$40.00 $30 +s/h

Volume 7 of the “Through Enemy Eyes”

Volume 7 of the “Through Enemy Eyes” series of German wartime newsreels opens on 26 November 1941 with the funeral of Ernst Udet. Just nine days before, Germany’s second-highest scoring First World War ace (with 62 victories, second only to his commander, Manfred von Richthofen) had committed suicide.

As the chief of T-Amt --- “Techical Bureau” --- the Reich Air Ministry's developmental department, the Gerneraloberst had been the target of blame (which he guiltily accepted) for Luftwaffe loses in the Battle of Britain, owing to his alleged over-emphasis on mass-producing inadequately defended dive-bombers. The English knew better, however: their interception of enemy radio transmissions, not any misperceptions of German technical deficiencies, had decided the aerial campaign.

Contributing to his state of mind, Udet was pushed over the emotional edge when his girl friend left him. While these facts are not so much as alluded to in the Wochenschau coverage of his state funeral march to Berlin’s Invaliden cemetery, they serve as background to the event.

Meanwhile, the German drive toward Moscow had arrived within 19 miles of the Soviet capital; it would never get any closer. But Newsreel 586 concentrates instead on the siege of Leningrad with some great scenes of heavy artillery blasting the defiant city. The action switches to the south, where a gigantic Red Army armored train bristling with long-barrelled cannons is seized by Wehrmacht troops.

In the Mediterranean Theater, captured British footage of the Royal Navy’s top aircraft-carrier, HMS Ark Royal, shows off her great size and fire-power. After her loss to u-boat torpedoes, gun-cameras aboard Messerschmitt interceptors document how incredibly close Luftwaffe pilots zeroed in on their prey, in this case, RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires, shredded at point-blank range.

The December 10th newsreel begins with a ferocious artillery barrage of Leningrad. The city could no longer be taken, because troops required for its occupation had been diverted by Army generals to the fighting before Moscow and in the south. The gigantic city had been effectively isolated, although Axis forces demanded for the siege could certainly have been put to better advantage elsewhere.

Far from this dilemma, at a French airfield on the English Channel coast, Messerschmitt-109Fs are serviced by maintenance personnel in scenes historians and model builders alike should find invaluable for close-ups of the aircraft’s the Daimler-Benz DB 601 powerplant and cockpit details. The "Friedrich" represented an aerodynamic improvement over all previous models, with a substantially increased range of 1,060 miles over the Bf 109E's 410 miles. With a maximum speed of 394 mph, the “F” outflew contemporary Spitfires, one of which is chased at tree-top levels in this exciting newsreel coverage before being shot down.

Air combat continues over the Libyan Desert, where Italian Fiat Falcons strafe and bomb a British armored column. Although a biplane in a war of monoplanes, the CR-42 gave exemplary service in the ground-attack role, as dramatically demonstrated here.

The Wochenschau for 7 January 1942 is notable for the absence of a theme quoted from Franz Liszt’s symphonic poem, Les Preludes, that began every German newsreel since the opening of Operation Barbarossa. The advent of a new year was probably seen as an opportunity to withdraw the victory fanfare, which would have seemed inappropriate in light of Wehrmacht reversals before Moscow.

But the scenes here are uncompromisingly realistic, as they depict hideous winter weather in which men can hardly survive, let alone fight. Numerous details of German small arms weapons and uniform rank appear in house-to-house skirmishes for some anonymous Russian hamlet. No less freezing conditions are faced by crews aboard minesweepers, their decks and turrets sheathed in ice, as RAF bombers attack.

In the Crimea, a large-scale amphibious landing attempted by the Reds is entirely smashed by German and Romanian defenders, as evidenced by a nearly capsized Soviet destroyer, its exposed hull holed with numerous direct hits. Low-level assaults are carried out by ground-attacking Stormoviks, referred to as “cement bombers” for their heavy armor. But they cannot prevent a colossal German siege cannon from bombarding Sevastopol.

The February 9th newsreel highlights officers of the Blue Division, Spanish volunteers in the Leningrad sector. A long and unusually detailed segment documents the successful u-boat cruise of Erich Topp to the waters near New York City, where he sinks a freighter on the surface with his deck-gun.

In North Africa, Axis anti-tank guns engage in a furious desert battle with British armor, reducing Churchill and Matilda tanks to burning hulks.

Operation Cerberus, Hitler’s successful relocation of Kriegsmarine capital ships from French ports, is showcased with intense action, as the battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau down RAF bombers during the famous “Channel Dash“.

Subsequent newsreels feature Heroes Memorial Day with Third Reich pomp and circumstance at its best, followed by the cruise of a German auxiliary cruiser through the Indian Ocean, where it scores against one armed freighter after another.

Volume 7 concludes with armored clashes in Libya and a performance of Wagner’s Meistersinger Overture conducted by the renowned Wilhelm Fuertwaengler in a tank factory.

Reviewer’s note: While purchasing all fourteen volumes of “Through Enemy Eyes” may be too sizeable an investment for most students of World War Two, they will find nowhere else --- in either the written or spoken word --- original source material that will provide them with a broader, more profound understanding of and appreciation for that seminal conflict. To watch it every day, from first to last newsreel, is a life-changing experience, comparable to seeing and hearing Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

Whatever viewers bring with them to this collection will be expanded a thousandfold. In short, the “Through Enemy Eyes” series is by far the most important, single document to have emerged from the Second World War, bar none.

- Marc Roland

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