David Glantz and Stalingrad on TV

Just in case any Eastern Front fans have been building models at a blinding pace or glued to "reference books" about the Pz 38(t), I'd like to pass along info on a very good hour long TV show available to one and all. Title is the "Greatest Battle" and is part of the very good "Secrets of the Dead" series aired on PBS. (Sometimes easy to forget that on a good day PBS still airs the best TV history available in the USA.) The "talking head" is David Glantz and the show summarizes his findings concerning the Stalingrad campaign. The hard core maybe have his Stalingrad trilogy (pushes 2500 pages in 3 volumes) but normal humans may want the highlights. I wouldn't say that Glantz completely rewrites the history of the campaign, but I dare say that anyone whose information is largely derived from pre-1989 renditions of the battle (the brilliant John Ericson avoided many of the errors found by Glantz but his books are almost unreadable so not many folk know it) the narrative will come as a real eye opener. For instance, Stalin did not trade space for time. The campaign was set-up by one of Stalin's greatest military idiocy of the war (the spring Kharkov offensive). The Soviet triumph was made likely by the bloody but partially effective defense of the Don bend and a heavy Soviet counter-attack against 6th Army while 4th Pz Army was supposed to be pumping oil. The list goes on. This is operational history, not first person. (Hence the battle for the city itself receives maybe 15 minutes.) Stock footage is excellent.  If nothing else it's a kick to see Glantz on screen. Definite thumbs up. Show can be bought from PBS or, far better, purchased for $1.99 from Amazon's Instant Video service. (Once "bought" the show stays in your "video library" in theory forever and can be watched as often as liked. Lot of good stills if you have the right software.) Watch it directly on your computer or if you have something like one of the Netflix players you've got an excuse to fire up your new 80" wall monitor. BTW: a 1999 series of four episodes ($6.99) called Great Tank Battles of World War II is also available. This is not the recent Military Channel series, but an earlier British effort. This series is heavily centered on German armored forces (lots of technical stuff and tactics) and was clearly made by military simulation buffs - something clear from the narrative but not the footage which lacks any computer graphics. Interesting but some dicey history gets chucked in.

The whole lot is less money than one used Osprey book. Enjoy.
Eric