Stream It Or Skip It: ‘WWII in Color: The Road to Victory’ on Netflix, A Doc That Gives A New Blush To Old War Footage

Trending on Netflix is the recently added title World War II in Color: Road to Victory, a ten-part documentary series that devotes 50-minute episodes to major turning points in the war. Beyond the observations and descriptions of historians and other experts, the selling point here is a colorization process that adds flair and nuance to the archival bulk of Road to Victory.

WWII IN COLOR: THE ROAD TO VICTORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “May 10, 1940. Britain’s darkest hour.” Bunched concertina wire lends an air of foreboding to the regal vista of the Palace of Westminster, and the narrator tells us of the Allied military failure in Norway that ousted Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and elevated Winston Churchill into the role.

The Gist: Just as Churchill became PM, German forces were invading Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands and massing for their assault on France. In response, the British Expeditionary Force continued to gather on the Franco-Belgian border, hunkering down alongside the French Army. But as The Road to Victory explains, a waiting game ensued as Adolf Hitler argued with his generals about a specific battle plan of attack. The wait ended when the Blitzkrieg crashed through the Ardennes Forest, a “lighting war” conducted with fast-moving armored units and mechanized infantry together with close air support, and within five days the French government was floundering. The BEF pulled back to the coast, and watched the German Army surround them.

Dunkirk is only 40 miles across the Channel from English soil. But for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers gathered there with no means of retreat, safety might as well have been a world away. Attempts to hold off the German advance at Arras and Calais had been crushed, and what remained of the BEF was forced out onto the beach, arranged in straggling lines and hoping for rescue. Meanwhile, back at home, Churchill was at once pleading with finicky French leadership to stay in the fight while holding off efforts within his own government to negotiate with the Nazis. (Joseph Kennedy, the American ambassador to England and John F. Kennedy’s father, figured into these efforts, too.) Churchill, the bulldog, understood Hitler to be an all-consuming foe, and one who would reduce a defeated Britain to a slave state. But if his military had any chance of fighting again, he needed to get his men off of that beach. Operation Dynamo commenced, and Dunkirk became the largest coastal evacuation in history up to that point – almost impossible, fraught with danger, but entirely necessary, and in the face of certain death or capture.

WWII in Color: Road to Victory seems to share its DNA with the 2009 documentary series World War II in Colour, which used to air frequently on the Discovery-affiliated Military Channel and remains available on Netflix. Victory replaces the narration from English actor Derek Jacobi with voiceover artist Trish Bertram, but it’s similarly buttressed with insight from historians, authors, and other experts on the era. Nine episodes follow “Dunkirk,” with coverage of the Second World War’s signal events – from the Battle of the Atlantic and the Allied invasion of North Africa to the Liberation of Paris, the June 1944 Battle of the Philippine Sea, Iwo Jima, and the penultimate race to Berlin.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ken Burns’ 2007 PBS documentary The War brought the director’s trademark style to telling the story of America’s role in the Second World War. But in 1940, the US wasn’t yet in it, and that gives this first episode of Road to Victory more resonance as the evacuation at Dunkirk becomes a rallying cry for what would become the Allied coalition. The story of Dunkirk was told in exhaustive fashion in the BAFTA-winning 2004 BBC television documentary series Dunkirk, and Netflix still features the 2019 series The Greatest Events of WWII in Colour, which shares its restored footage and narrative style with Road to Victory.

Our Take: “The British saw themselves shackled to a corpse.” University of North Texas military history professor Geoffrey Wawro is just one of the academics deployed in World War II in Color: Road to Victory to offer their descriptively rich interpretation of the events at Dunkirk – to a person, they speak with the authority and interpretive scope familiar to anyone who’s ever taken a college history lecture. And it’s that narrative that’s most powerful in Road to Victory, beyond even the colorization techniques used, though that does bring life to the proceedings. Chalky, greenish grays wash through old footage of Wehrmacht troops advancing, gun metal gray illustrates the scrambling Panzers, and rich browns denote the great coats and Tommy helmets of the BEF forces. None of the archival material in Victory will be new to frequent viewers of war documentaries. But the touches of color definitely offer a dynamic wrinkle.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Joshua Levine, author of Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk, the book that inspired the Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk, sums up what the evacuation meant. “It seems to me that the fact that the British Army got away at Dunkirk wasn’t just a nice little story that makes us feel good about being British,” Levine says over archival footage. “If the British Expeditionary Force hadn’t got away at Dunkirk, if it had been taken prisoner, if it had been destroyed, if Britain had gone down at this point, we’d be living in a very, very dark world today.”

Sleeper Star: Saul David, Professor of Military History at the University of Buckingham, has some of the more droll hot takes from the academic contingent featured in Victory, and a knack for describing the quaking inner life of Der Fuhrer. “Hitler’s immediate reaction to discovering the plans for the invasion of France had been discovered would have been one of absolute fury.”

Most Pilot-y Line: Battered, bewildered, and encircled by belligerents, the BEF now has its back against the coast. Author James Holland lays out the stakes. “You’ve got Belgium collapsing on the Northern flank, you’ve got the Germans pressing from the east, you’ve got them pressing from the south, they’re in this tiny little bubble. And everyone’s going ‘This is an absolute nightmare.’”

Our Call: STREAM IT. World War II in Color: Road to Victory offers a fine overview of many of World War II’s most significant moments, with archival footage accompanying the usual round of talking head experts elevated by a colorization process that adds signs of life to war’s detritus.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch WWII In Color: The Road To Victory on Netflix