# Apocalypse: The Second World War (2009)

> A six-part French documentary that retells the Second World War entirely through colorized archival footage shot by those who lived it.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/30535

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 6
- Episode runtime: 53 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: documentary, war, history
- Created by: Isabelle Clarke, Daniel Costelle, Jean-Louis Guillaud, Henri de Turenne
- Network: France 2
- Cast: Mathieu Kassovitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, Heinrich Himmler, Erwin Rommel, Joseph Stalin
- TMDB rating: 9.0/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1508238/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: graphic
- Tone: sombre, harrowing, elegiac, authoritative

## What critics say

Viewers broadly acclaim the series as a powerful, rigorous and affecting compilation of archival footage that gives a vivid account of the Second World War.

## Synopsis

Apocalypse: The Second World War (2009) is a French national-television documentary miniseries created by Isabelle Clarke, Daniel Costelle, Jean-Louis Guillaud and Henri de Turenne for France 2. Narrated by Mathieu Kassovitz, it is a six-part, roughly fifty-three-minute chronicle built entirely from genuine wartime footage shot by correspondents, soldiers, resistance fighters and ordinary citizens. Its engine is the sweep of the conflict itself: each episode moves through campaigns, battlefronts and home fronts, letting the images carry the momentum of events as they unfolded. Recognizable figures appear only in archive form, including Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, de Gaulle, Eisenhower, Rommel, Himmler and Göring, so the leaders are seen as they were seen in their own time. Most of the footage has been fully colorized, which gives the scenes an unsettling immediacy, while the Holocaust sequences remain in original black and white, a deliberate choice that marks their gravity. The tone is sober, weighty and elegiac rather than sensational. Fans of The World at War and They Shall Not Grow Old will find resonance in its archival immersion and its restrained, witness-driven approach to the twentieth century's most devastating conflict.

## Shows like Apocalypse: The Second World War

- [World War II in Colour (2009)](https://ember.film/tv/38530)
- [Greatest Events of World War II in Colour (2019)](https://ember.film/tv/77695)
- [D-Day Sacrifice (2014)](https://ember.film/tv/56215)
- [The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)](https://ember.film/tv/106041)
- [World War II with Tom Hanks (2026)](https://ember.film/tv/1105057)
- [WWII in Color: Road to Victory (2021)](https://ember.film/tv/116700)
- [Apocalypse: World War I (2014)](https://ember.film/tv/54675)
- [Age of Tanks (2017)](https://ember.film/tv/80680)
- [The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997)](https://ember.film/tv/17481)
- [The Great War (1964)](https://ember.film/tv/14956)

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