World At War IV

Finally...wrapped up the last two episodes! Whew! I wonder what effort must have been invested in collecting all the information, editing all the footages, sewing all that together into a hell of a series! The advisor to the series was Noble Frankland, the then director of the Imperial War Museum. The last two episodes, though, were not that impressive. Ofcourse, there was no dearth of material, and the first 24 series talked in detail about various aspects of the war: for all the theaters, the scope of the series was covering the strategic, tactical and operational aspects of the war on land, air and at sea. Episode 25 dealt with the aftermath - the process of reconstruction in the devastated lands, the epicenter of all the battle. Huge swathes of refugees moved across continental Europe, quite like zombies. Permanently displaced even at home, since their homes were bombed out. The episode also talked about how other Asian nations, still under European colonial rule got inspired by Japan's exploits - Japan had routed the British out of Malaya , Singapore and many other places, restricting them to a few strongholds such as India. Nationalistic aspirations of many of these countries compounded by a weakened British/European presence made things easy for many to break free. The episodes show colored footages of celebrations across England and many other places, of the American homecoming. Absolutely invaluable stuff, this series. The last one talks about Remembering the Dead - 55 million died officially. Add to this figure the millions who died before the war in related events such as the Great Purge in USSR, the Japanese invasion of China, the partition of India in 1947. All within +/- 5 years of the war.
Back to life post World At War. Spent some time reading some books and playing Scrabulous before dozing off...