I think that of all 'history based' films, the one that comes closest to doing it right is "Tora, Tora, Tora". But even there the Naval Intelligence officer played by Martin Balsum (sp.?) is a composite of several different individuals, and Yamamoto did not make the sleeping dragon speech to the...
The archival footage in the R1 World at War set looks terrific for it age and origin! I am sure that it must have been transfered directly from a film source, not video tape, and been cleaned up a bit. The 'making of' documentary at the beginning of the first disk seems to be from a PAL source...
I always demo my surround sound with Teminator 2: Judgement Day. The initial future war scene has great directional effects tied to the onscreen action. Also if you want to hear an aggressive and unsubtle 5.1 mix check-out Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Collectors Ed. of course).