Review of Battlefield The Battle Of Kursk

Introduction

It`s not very often that one reviews extras or packaging with a disc over the content, but this is a special case.

Peter Darman is publishing a series of background booklets to accompany a range of Battlefield DVDs which will be available to buy exclusively through his website www.daswolf.co.uk as both a basic DVD/Booklet package for £10.99 and a special package also containing a replica combat badge relevant to the campaign. The first of these DVD/Booklet packages is Battlefield: The Battle of Kursk.

If you`re familiar with the Discovery Channel series Battlefield, this disc presents the 100 minute segment from the series of the Battle of Kursk. In the summer of 1943 more than two million men from the German and Russian armies and over six thousand tanks faced each other across the battlefield near the Russian town of Kursk. The battle that followed played a pivotal role in the outcome of the Second World War, but at a terrible cost for the ultimately triumphant Red Army.

Video

Much of the material on the disc is archive newsreel footage, so image quality is not the strong point. The programme is presented in its original 4:3 ratio. The disc is PAL coded and region-free.

Audio

Sound is in DD2.0 Stereo

Features

An "ask the experts" section which cues up short video interviews; a test your knowledge section and excerpts from other titles in the series. Unfortunately the disc does not carry subtitles.

The Booklet
Peter Darman`s background information booklet adds a great deal to the information presented in the programme on the disc. Even when the major Studios first brought out DVD and produced complementary booklets (like the mini-brochures of the Bond series), they tended to be a four-or-eight page blurb with lots of pictures and white space but little genuine information. Nowadays we`re lucky to see even a chapter title card enclosed with a new release. Mr Darman has seen an opportunity to value-enhance a product by including his booklet in the package, although to my mind the disc is the value-enhancement to this excellently-produced and thoroughly researched booklet.

At forty pages, the booklet is a mine of information. There are no illustrations (that`s what the DVD is for), and each chapter deals with a strategic or technical aspect of the battle. After a quick background briefing on the circumstances of the battle and the two leaders Hitler and Stalin, Mr Darman goes into detail about both the German and Red Army Commanders on the battlefield, the weaponry used, the opposing armies and their tactics, the chronology of the battle and the losses sustained by both sides. The booklet wraps up with a useful website address and recommended reading list.

Conclusion

A highly informative package about a particular conflict during the Second World War. A very competent tv programme is enhanced by the inclusion of detailed background information in Mr Darman`s complementary booklet.