Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

What if? That's the question raised by this documentary that considers the question of what life in Britain would have been like had Hitler's Germany won World War II and occupied the island. This has the advantage of being based on actual documents. The Germans expected to defeat Britain and had very detailed plans for what to do with the occupation, right down to which personalities would be arrested, which organizations would be destroyed and which museums would be plundered. The first half of this film deals with that German occupation, and it's a sobering look at what British life would have become, based on the documents and on the examples of how the Germans dealt with other nations under occupation. As this half comes to a close, I thought the film lost a bit of its bite as it became highly speculative, proposing either a nuclear war between Germany and the United States or a Cold War between the two powers, and suggesting that, with Werner von Braun not being captured by the Americans, Germany would have landed men on the moon first. Maybe, but that seemed to be becoming a bit too speculative and was going a bit beyond what the purpose of the film was. The second half of the movie shifts the focus from what the Germans would have done in the occupation to what the British would have done, and focuses on the plans for the "Auxiliary Units" set up on Churchill's orders - basically, small groups of men organized on a village by village basis who were to engage in guerilla warfare against the Germans. The depiction of the types of sabotage they would have engaged in was realistic, but in the end the film suggests that their operations would have been largely hopeless, and would have led to widespread reprisals against the civilian population.Certainly, this is a sobering and realistic documentary that makes one grateful for those who so long ago made sure that Nazi tyranny would be defeated.

For the same subject treated quite well in fiction, look for a copy of Len Deighton's "SS GB". You follow the path of a British cop who has to answer to Nazi officers as he first investigates, and then is drawn into, a resistance movement. The resistance schemes to draw the sympathy of the isolationist USA, looking for America's intervention in the European war. This could help you flesh out some of the concepts in "Hitler's Britain." And, frankly, I'm a bit annoyed with the summary that suggests a likely ineffectual British resistance. That scarcely jives with the Brits who survived the bombing of London, and who rescued the troops at Dunkirk. For those of you who know Len Deighton's work, you won't be wasting your time, if you can find the book.

Hitler's Britain. This documentary sets out a Britain where we had been defeated and lay under the Nazi jackboot.Many of you military historians out there may have noticed that the idea for a successful German invasion, that the program puts forward, kinda falls down when it comes to crossing the channel and not mentioning the Royal Navy, which as the Sandhurst War Game proved, could have straddled the German's supply and reinforcement line via the Channel. It also mentions the successful German paratroop landings. Which would'nt have been possible. Even in October 1940 the German Airborne divisions were still re-equipping and training replacement recruits for their losses in France and the Low-Countrys. Even if the BEF had been cut off at Dunkirk the Royal Navy would have made a massacre of the invasion fleet which consisted mainly on Rhine River Barges. About a quarter would have capsized in the Channel anyway. So there's the history.Whilst the actual invasion itself was poorly thought out by the writers the content of the program was fascinating. The German's prepared a list of about 2,300 Britons to be "detained" if Britain was taken. With Einzatzgrupen sqauds (Death Sqauds) at London, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh. Also mentioned was the treatment of Freemasons and Jews but most of you pretty much know all about this so I wont go into it. How the Britsh police force was to be handled. And of course the big question, who was going to be the Prime Minister ? (The program killed Churchill off in an air raid). The first name that will pop into someones head is probably Oswald Mosley the interned leader of The British Union of Fascists. You might be screaming TRAITOR, TRAITOR at Mosley but it was not to be the case. The Nazi's rarely let local Fascist or Nazi party's run occupied country's governments and anyway Mosley announced he was supporting the British war effort and called on BUF men and women to resist the invaders. The program settles on Lord Halifax becoming leader and surrendering the country after the British counter attack is defeated due to lack of armour. (Which also doesn't stand up as we had an armoured division that was nearly fully equipped and also that Air Chief Marshall Dowding had a plan to withdraw what was left of the RAF to the Midlands, and don't forget there was also a considerable force in Scotland and the North of England at that time). So anyway the the writers have the Royal Family as we know it George VI, Queen Elisabeth (later Queen Mother), Princess Elisabeth (later Queen) and Princess Margret, fleeing to Canada. It has Edward VIII being instated as Prince Regent and Wallis Simpson, his Princess. They rule from Balmoral Castle in Scotland. I'm guessing they rule the North of England, Scotland, Nothern Ireland and a part of the British Empire (as the Dominions, the West Indies, the South Atlantic Islands and some African colonies would remain loyal to King George.) Others like India would stay loyal to the puppet government so that Germany could restrain Japan from trying to seize British colonys there.Anyhow it ends up with another program on the Auxiliury Units or "The British Resistance". The Auxiliury Units were set up in mid 1940 to act as a resistance movement in case the country was occupied. This is the most interesting program as it has interviews with former members and charts a fictional one in a what-if scenario.All in all it's a good documentary, if flawed on the historical side. Worth a watch though and much better than ITV's horrible attempt to put their view of it in "When Hitler Invaded Britain".

This documentary is actually the first part of a (two-part) miniseries entitled "Hitler's Britain." Part One gives a terrifyingly convincing picture of what might well have occurred if the Nazis had launched a successful invasion of Great Britain in 1940. It suggests that eminent appeasers, such as Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, would have collaborated with Hitler and that "enemies of the Reich" (Socialists, Freemasons, and of course Jews) would have been rounded up and shot or sent to the European death camps. Part Two visualizes the collapse of British military resistance within a few months of the invasion, the activating of Churchill's civilian underground fighters, and their ultimate destruction. That would have left Hitler free to perfect his long-range missiles and launch them in waves against the Soviet Union and the United States. Having lived through the World War 2 Blitz (in Liverpool), and knowing how the Nazis treated many millions of so-called "Untermenschen," I believe that these two documentaries provide a clear idea of what the British people's fate would have been under Nazi occupation.