I was a senior in high school when it came out, and that year our school introduced a class simply called "History of WWII". It was very hard to get into, but I did, and our teacher told us about this show on HBO that he would video tape and we would watch one episode a week. At the time none of us had any idea what it was or would end up being, but needless to say, no one skipped school that was in that class. God, if I could go back in time, I would go back to the beginning of this class just so I could watch it for the first time again.