War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. host, James Early. Hello and welcome to another episode of key films of World War II in Europe.

I'm your host, James Early, as always.

And as always, I'm accompanied by Sean McIver.

And in this episode, we're going to talk about a very, very interesting film, very realistic, very gripping, and very brutal film, a 2004 German film, Downfall.

Downfall is two hours and 34 minutes long.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the critics, or I should say 90% of the critics gave it a positive

rating.

And with the audience, it was even higher, 94%.

We don't have too many of those in our series.

We have quite a few, but out of the 30, I don't know if even half or in the 90s on both

of them.

IMDB, though, only gives it 7.4 as the average, which is solid but not fantastic.

IMB tends to rate foreign films a little lower just because of the crowdsourcing of the ratings.

I don't like such titles, you know.

Critics are more likely to appreciate, you know, to not mind subtitles than some of the RIMD

reviewers.

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