Review of "This Film is Confidential: More World War II “Secrets” Revealed," DVD

Review of

This Film is Confidential: More World War II “Secrets” Revealed, DVD

Three out of five stars

 To start, the title is a major misnomer, while some of the events in this video were likely not made public immediately, they reveal no great secrets. The members of the public in the Allied countries were kept apprised of many of the actions that took place after they were over. Launching major bombing attacks on major European cities held by the Germans or Pacific islands held by the Japanese were well known and used to score significant propaganda victories. Both the German and Japanese governments had openly boasted of their powerful defenses against aerial attack.

 This video is war in its most sanitized version, newsreel-style footage shot from bombers and fighter planes. While people are no doubt being shot into and blown to pieces by the ammunition expended in the images, from a distance it all looks clean. In only rare occasions does the result of the explosions appear in the video. In general, each mission is declared by the announcer as a great success with the target heavily damaged or destroyed. Yet, as has been revealed in books published after the war, in most cases the damage to the industrial facilities was so minor that it was back up to full capacity in a very short time. The debate over the effectiveness of Allied bombing on German war production has never ended.

  This collection of short snippets describing Allied air attacks against Axis forces has little depth and does little to explain the complexities of conducting the massive air war against strategic and tactical targets.