Review of "The Great War WWI," Timeless Media Group

 Review of

The Great War WWI, Timeless Media Group

Four out of five stars

Too much repetitive video out of context

 The origins of the First World War were both simple and complex. They were simple in that there was a system of alliances that counterbalanced each other and there was an arms race, specifically at sea between Great Britain and Germany. This created a natural rivalry between the two groups, where no nation was secure enough to not support the nations allied with it. It was complex in that the alliances were not as rigid as all sides felt they were.

 This set of DVDs starts with the origins of the war and does a reasonable job in explaining how the war started. It also points out that few if any people on either side had any idea that the war would be as destructive as it turned out to be.

 In the middle, the description of the conflict is very nonlinear and repeats the same video loops over and over again. Sometimes, the video does not match what is being described. At times the movement from one video to the other is logically and temporally inconsistent.

 The examination of the war ends with the rather abrupt end and the political and social aftermath. One unusual treatment is that of the Allied involvement in the Siberian area of the emerging Soviet Union after the collapse of the Russian Empire. This is an area of history not often covered. Few people in the United States know that a significant number of American troops were in what is now Russia after the German surrender.

 While this is not a high tier video description of the First World War, it is still good enough to be part of the education of modern students in this brutal conflict that was a war beyond anything anyone thought possible.