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Who has some good World War II documentaries that aren't terminally western-brained and full of bad history? (hexbear.net)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I never know where to post anything I swear it always seems like there are five comms that are relevant but zero that are appropriate

The wife and I were digging through old doccos uploaded to Youtube and stumbled across The Occult History of the Third Reich, which sounds for all the world like a History Channel "OMG THE NAZI GOLD!" type sensationalist pile of bs. Surprisingly enough though it's a pretty detailed look at the roots and practices of the more esoteric side of everyone's least favourite fascists, and how it all tied into their genocidal ideology. I was extremely impressed.

So brainrot re-engaged we started watching The World At War, and it's cool but I desire a non-Western perspective. I realise that a lot of countries in say, Eastern Europe might not have as much reason to fetishise past wars through documentary as the US and its military industrial complex, but I'd really like to see the second world war through other lenses. Soooo much of American and British WWII doccos are sooooo bad. Pull up the 1995 Battlefield series and it's all "dyk that Hitler was actually a big stinky dumbdumb and his generals were all very sexy nicebois who oversaw no crimes and could have totes legitsies taken Moscow and Kursk if not for that meddling Adolf??" type garbage.

Ty for engaging with this post if you do ✨

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Newsreels from the time that have survived are mostly publicly available and I'd check those out. They're propaganda of course but the propaganda spread during the war and then what was spread after is interesting as hell. First hand reports are always good

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ayo the USSR don't seem to have newsreels any time between 1926 and 1943? I know about Kino-Pravda and Novosti Dnya at least. I got the idea after watching the last two issues of the Deutsche Wochenschau, because you can only stomach so much literal nazi propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

American and British ones report on the USSR being cool as hell cause they needed to at the time. If you wanna see how they change their tune opportunistically it's a very interesting look. It's still the same broad stereotype of the Russian and soviets you'd see throughout the cold war but just for this instant its advertised as good by America. It would be an interesting film project to cut between ww2 praise and then condemnation just 5 years later