Being nearly the 60th anniversary of Operation Overlord, there are a lot of WWII documentaries and movies on TV, one of which is the rather interesting "Third Reich in Color". The original pre-and wartime color films are quite impressive. Unfortunately, as usual, the narration writing is typically subjective and silly. One would hope, although somewhat in vain, that documentary film makers given such impressive material would try to leave the usual 60-year-old propaganda and 'bad old Nazis' commentary and simply describe the scenes. What's worse is that at least two mistakes in part one (1937-1940) make it rather difficult to trust that what they describe is actually what is being shown.
The first mistake is a piece of film showing Heer officers in a riding display and, presumably, competition. The narrative describes this as such but places it in the spring of 1939, and yet at least two of the officers shown wear the EK2 ribbon through the second buttonhole of their tunics. To my knowledge, no one was awarded the EK2 until 1.9.1939
. Second was a supposed training flight by JG54 (Grünherz) in preparation for Unternehmen Gelb. Indeed the Bf109s shown were from JG54, but they were Bf109Fs- not fielded until the end of 1940. What's worse, the film very specifically shows one of the 109s tail with 7 vicotory bars!
Doesn't really inspire much confidence, does it?
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate- "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily'' William of Ockham
