War: What Is it Good For?

A wise man once pondered the title above, “War: what is it good for?” It is a valid question, but Edwin Starr shouldn’t have tried answering that question himself because it isn’t, “Absolutely nothing.” The actual answer is entertainment. There have been movies about war since the invention of moving pictures and Hollywood is still cranking them out with Defiance, The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Bastards all hit theaters this year. Call of Duty is one of the most popular video games with its six games (the next coming next year) in the series selling over 55 million copies. And if you went to high school undoubtedly you had to read All Quiet on the Western Front.

There is also plenty of war to be found on television; Ken Burns has done two successful documentaries for PBS. And without war, it is doubtful that there would even be a History channel who recently has its own successful documentary series WWII on HD (which you can find on iTunes if you missed it). For anyone who is a fan of war as entertainment, or has one on your Christmas list, I have a DVD set you will want to check out: The World Wars: The Complete History of WWI and WWII from History. Just how complete? How about 41 programs on 14 disks (including four bonus features) for over 25 hours of programming. I imagine if you have a History teacher on your Christmas list, you are not going to find a better gift.

The programs included are what you would expect from History and every angle from the two great wars are covered, air battles, navel battles, trench warfare, political ramifications, American, English, Russian, German points of view, episodes of Battlefield Detectives, Deep Sea Detectives and Biography, very few stones are uncovered. If there is one complaint to be had, these programs were produces individually and are thrown together into one set. So plenty of information found overlap many of the programs. If you didn’t know that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the catalyst of WWI, you will never forget after going through this set as it is mentioned quite frequently.

You can find the The World Wars: The Complete History of WWI and WWII at shop.history.com for 79.99 (that comes to just under $6.00 a DVD). For you barging shoppers, you may want to try Amazon where it is currently on sale for 40.99 (which is less than $3.00 per disk, see below).