The Unknown War (Season 1)

The Unknown War (1978) is a Soviet-American documentary series you can watch online on iFILM — assembled from over 3.5 million feet of combat footage shot by Soviet frontline camera crews between June 1941 and the fall of Berlin in May 1945.

Legendary Soviet documentary filmmaker Roman Karmen led the project on the Soviet side; Burt Lancaster narrated the English-language cut, giving Western audiences their first sustained look at the Eastern Front from the other side. Each episode takes on a specific question: what left Soviet forces exposed on that Sunday morning of 22 June 1941, why the early retreats cost so many lives, how the war shifted from Moscow to Stalingrad to the German capital.

Made at the height of the Cold War, the joint Soviet-US production was itself a geopolitical event. The footage — some of it shot under fire — had sat in Soviet archives for decades. Stream The Unknown War online on iFILM.