-at a time when our country is engaged in what you could call a "Civil Cold War," I think anything that can bring us together as people, remind us of the things we *do* share, and inspire us to take pride in each other despite our differences is pretty damned valuable.

We don't have to be all-self-loathing, all-the-time. Think of the documentary as couples' counseling on a national scale. Let's take a brief break from bitching about how the other party never takes out the garbage, flirts with other women, or embroils us in endless dead-end wars, and allow ourselves to be reminded of the richness of our shared history, how much we've been through together, and how much these wildly disparate groups have each contributed to the shared enterprise that is the United States of America. Just like in a marriage gone south, in our current national situation it can be downright frightening to let our guard down and stop perseverating about all of the things that enrage or frighten us, and very, very difficult to stop responding to every action as a threat to be pounced upon. But if we're ever gonna make this work, both parties have to relax, disarm, take a deep look in each others' eyes, and rediscover the humanity within The Other - even if it's only for the length of a PBS documentary.

What is wrong with you people? It was never stated that this would be a be-all end-all presentation of WWII. It is presented as the American (US) experience from the perspective of the residents of 4 towns/cities in the US, and how it affected their citizens and how their citizens experienced it.

And the soundtrack? Come on, now. What a petty thing to whinge about. It does what movie soundtracks are supposed to do. Perhaps you need your sound system adjusted, because I didn't hear "someone...playing a cat's tail with a violin bow and the cat was none too happy about it."

And FreeProton, I can't believe you are defending Stalin. That's almost as bad as (or maybe worse than) defending George W. Bush these days.

I am sickened by these 'Touching stories of sacrifice' narrated by celebrities. Watch German documentaries on WW2 for a more sober perspective. Just don't expect the happy pablum spooned out in the US versions.

i agree with "freeproton"'s thesis and a few others. this is strictly a view of WWII through american eyes. such a focus isn't horrible (though i suspect it will lead to the usual "greatest generation" cheese by the film's end); in fact, strip away the sappy cemetary scenes and speilberg largely made it work in "private ryan". but such limited focus for a sizeable documentary concering a semi-global conflict seems a tad ridiculous, if not myopic. burns is an effective filmmaker. his "civil war" opus, and to a lesser extent, "baseball" worked wonderfully. but those stories were uniquely american even in their broadest concept. WWII is not. But somehow proposes to be. (I suspect he deleted the word "world" from the title to his hedge his bets.) So we know where were going with this, right? Shed a tear for the ruskies, and the brits (the battle of britian was given a minute of airtime the first night) and of course the jews, but damnit, let's go to the tavern and hoist one to the boys! such shortsighted nationalism is not extremely dangerous in something as monolothic and distant as america's "heroism" in WWII, but you can also see how such a limited vision of global understanding can lead to a thing we now call iraq.

The History channel is already all WWII all the time, so why is a remake necessary. There are many documentaries similar and better about these same battles and themes on the History channel. Many of them use the format of survivors telling their stories.

My mother-in-law worked for the Navy in the war effort, and she had been looking forward to seeing this program. When we spoke to her tonight about the first episode, she said she couldn't get interested in it. Her fiance, who became my father-in-law, was wounded in the battle of the bulge. My father was off Iwo Jima on a destroyer and was among the earliest Navy personnel into Japan shortly after the bombs. So we have some interest in the stories of WWII. This program just didn't get it.

And the music . . . awful! Last night and again tonight I commented that they were using the music to torture the viewers so we would appreciate what the troops had gone through. It was background sound, but it wasn't music.

This was a period noted for its fabulous popular music, so why has Ken Burns inflicted this other mess on us?

Ken Burns has made something that is going to bore and plague school kids for years to come. I suggest that people watch the History channel for films that tell the stories with personal perspective as well as accuracy.

We watched the preview segment as well, and that contained some authentic gibberish and outright glorification of war. War is not our greatest accomplishment; it signifies our greatest failure.

The music was horrid and made it unwatchable. And it just didn't match what was on the screen!

I heartily dislike manipulative music in documentaries anyhow. Why do I need music to digest facts? But manipulation that doesn't even bother to get it right is even more annoying.

Also I was always bothered by the fact that the Civil War documentary, which was highly affecting, if not all that illuminating, was shortly followed by a real war, the first Gulf War. I've always wondered if it somehow made us eager to try out a real war for ourselves.

"Sixty-two years ago, the greatest conflict in the history of humanity came to an end... The most appalling genocide ever had taken place."

Hitler's final solution was indeed appalling, but unfortunately it was just one of many genocidal agendas in the history of the world. And all are equally appalling.