Hello!

Since it is so widely praised, I started watching The World at War, and, already, in the very first episode, I am disappointed to notice omissions and misinformation.

The new Germany began to round up its enemies - Communists, Socialists, impertinent journalists, even Reichstag deputies. At Oranienburg concentration camp, conditions were at first crude rather than brutal. At this time the camps were run by the Sturmabteilungen - the SA. They bullied more than they murdered. From the first moment, Hitler unleashed his promised campaign against the Jews. The SA organised boycotts of Jewish-owned shops. The real point was to encourage the German people to think and act anti-Semitic as a matter of course. The outside world was horrified, but there were those, including many German Jews, who thought the anti-Jewish campaign the work of Nazi extremists - something Herr Hitler would put a stop to when he felt more secure.

As far as I know, the world was NOT horrified by Hitler's measures. In fact, most people shared his views. After all, eugenics wasn't Hitler's idea, and it was already popular in many countries around the world, including the US and France. In fact, the Unites States was the first country in the world to start performing systematic forced sterilizations.

So, why no mention of eugenics? Why no mention of the antisemitism already existing in other countries? Why is the documentary falsely claiming that the world was horrified by Nazi Germany, when there's evidence that it wasn't? Henry Ford used to say pretty much the same things about Jews as Hitler did, and nobody was horrified. In fact, many fancied him as a presidential candidate. Plenty of American eugenicists saw Hitler as an ally, and eugenics was considered a progressive idea at the time. People who didn't believe in eugenics, like the Church (not for humanitarian reasons, but because it opposed all manners of birth control), were considered backwards and anti-progress.

Now, I know these issues remain controversial even today, and I'm not saying all this to bash Americans or to defend the Nazis. My point is that it's important that history is told correctly, without sugar-coating, because this is the kind of thing that lead people to make the same mistakes. If we simply see the Nazis as "evil" and not as a product of humanity itself, then the entire point is lost.

Is the rest of the documentary even worth it? Because I'm getting a huge Gell-Mann Amnesia vibe from it. If there's such a grievous mistake so early in the very first episode, who knows how many more mistakes it contains that I won't even be able to notice.