AllMovie

Don't be misled by the title: the Newsreel History of the Third Reich series does not construct a factual history of the rise and fall of Hitler's Reich from newsreel footage screened for the Allies, but deliberately presents an 89-minute assemblage of distorted and fallacious, propagandistic newsreel clips shot by the Nazis for German audiences during World War II. The preponderance of footage at hand was seized from the S.S. by the Russians, and it provides a window into how WWII-era Germans perceived the events of the war, and how Hitler's government "spun" those events to them. Volume 5 covers events from the first half of 1941, including Hitler's foray into the Balkan regions, the fall of Yugoslavia, the French attacks on the Dover coast, the invasion of Crete by paratroopers and much more.