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10-part ‘WWII in HD’ fills screen and speakers with lost footage

Forget the tired newsreel footage from your dad’s World War II docs — this has all the personal immediacy of reality TV combined with all the epic drama of a world at war.

Widescreen-filling high definition and subwoofer-thumping Dolby soundscaping bring Nazi jackboots, grim-faced GIs and Pacific aircraft carrier battles into the living room like never before in the History Channel’s new 10-part series “WWII in HD.” It premiered Nov. 15-19.

Billed as the first high-def doc on the fight against the original Axis of Evil, the series culls full-color scenes of tragedy and triumph from thousands of hours of newly found footage, carefully cleaned and digitally captured in HD.

Gary Sinise narrates as the series follows the struggle of 12 souls through the war as their lives intersect with history. Among them are a young man from Toledo, Ohio, who becomes a Tuskegee Airman, a Jewish refugee from Austria who volunteers for the Army, a nurse who sees combat from North Africa to the liberation of Europe and a cub war correspondent covering the Pacific.

Diaries, log books and new interviews provide the real-life script for a cast of Hollywood voice talent, including LL Cool J, Rob Lowe and Rob Corddry.

The documentary takes pains to paint in audio colors as much as big-screen visuals. Sure, there are the room-filling sounds of gunfire and the “date that will live in infamy”-type clips, but also subtle touches like the heavy steps of troops making their way aboard Navy warships and the sounds of a Giants football game heard on the radio just moments before a newscaster breaks in to announce the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But it’s the combination of new footage and the virtually infinite resolution of film distilled into the color- and detail-sponge of HD that makes the documentary really explode off the screen.

“We spent about 2½ years tracking down new color film for this,” said Lou Reda, a former Navy Seabee who’s produced hundreds of documentaries.

Like the bounty from an international treasure hunt, the lost footage was uncovered far and wide, buried in museum storerooms and languishing in military archives, said Reda, slowly being claimed by time because curators often don’t have the money to do their own restoration. Reda and his team also found footage in forgotten boxes stashed in the dusty attics and dark basements of veterans and home-movie shooters in the U.S., Germany, England, Russia and Japan.

Indeed, it is this found footage that provides intimate views of the war, shifting from an awkward recruit fumbling with his rifle during an inspection to the pan across a group of sailors and Marines offering the one-fingered salute on their way to Guadalcanal to the gut-wrenching final seconds of a Serbian man’s life as he is executed by a Nazi soldier.

Check your local listings for dates and times, or visit www.history.com.