User reviews

High production quality and great actors. This documentary has been in the making for 10 years.

Only thing that is highly problematic is that particularly one of the historians participating, had some public outburst against other historians who did not share his views to the letter. This documentary share the views of many historians and the soldiers themselves. It's a powerful reminder that war is inherent evil in its very nature. That no sides during the conflict is without sin. But, that the motivation to sign up to fight does not come out of evil intent. The stories are both powerful and sad from these men who suddenly found themselves on the loosing side.

I react to this as a historian with Norwegian fascism and national socialism as my main field of research, and this series has proven to be highly problematic, as it hides war crimes perpetrated by Norwegian SS volunteers and lets surviving volunteers explain away several aspects of their service. It more or less portrays the soldiers as victims of subterfuge and sneaky recruitment tactics, and ignores that research shows them to the mostly nazis and anti semites before they were recruited. It also perpetuates myths about the sentences they received after the war as illegal. While there are historians that take part in the series the editing leaves out salient commentary and important facts and analysis.

Which has sparked significant criticism and controversy.

If this series was supposed to give the viewer a better understanding of of the motivations of the fighters, it fails. Far too much attention is spent on stories from the front and not much light is shed on the background of the characters, their beliefs/convictions or the social context they came from, not to mention what some of them did when they returned.