The Third Reich’s most ambitious war documentary chronicles Hitler’s lightning conquest of Holland, Belgium, and France in the spring of 1940. The six week campaign, marked by continuous combat and spectacular German victories, established the blitzkrieg as a bold strategy that revolutionized warfare. Before the offensive, the German high command deployed camera teams of hand picked professionals among various army groups poised to attack. Motorized and permitted unlimited access to the front, the correspondents recorded the onslaught from the perspective of the common soldier. Editors combined this material with the best scenes from the newsreels and captured Allied footage to produce an authentic and riveting cinematic record of the campaign. The novel use of animated maps throughout the feature balances the soldier’s eye view of battle with the strategic progress of military operations. Herbert Windt, renowned for elaborate orchestral compositions for the Riefenstahl epics Triumph des Willens and Olympia, provided an original score for the film.