Heads up!! "The War" begins tonight on PBS

PBS.org ^

[Chgogal]

My mother was in Berlin at the same time as your dad was. My grandmother ended up in a town close to Hannover. I prefer Lake Constance.

My dad was in Holland, patiently waiting to be rescued by the 101st/82nd Airborne. Both are not impressed with the series so far - too negative and lack of context.

My uncle, my mother’s older and only brother died in Normandy, no he is MIA - SS Panzer Division of some sort. It’s my understanding he escorted the tanks??? He just turned nineteen. My grandfather was in Italy and lucked out. He ended up in an American POW camp. The Russian POW camps were a nightmare from what I heard.

I really have to admire my mom. She is the most optimistic person I know and has some amazing stories. I have no idea how she and my grandmother, or anyone for that matter survived Berlin in 1945. I just thank God my parents met in Vancouver and managed to immigrate here to the good old U.S.A.! There I said it even though Burns doesn’t seem to recognize how blessed he is and how blessed the world is that there is a United States of America. No other country would have sacrificed so much for others. It was a tremendous effort on each and every American's part and they pulled it off magnificently. It is a shame that a significant percentage of today’s Americans do not have the same vision or will.

[Borges]

How was the Civil War or Baseball or Jazz or his pieces on Mark Twain and Jack Johnson leftist propaganda?

[Misterioso]

Regarding Jazz and Baseball, he dwells on racism in American history in almost the same way the Communist Party of the USA did in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Making baseball legitimate by finally including black players is a disservice to the game and by neglecting the white musician’s contribution to jazz serves to perpetuate the myth that the black player has more credibility.

[PGalt]

I really have to admire my mom. She is the most optimistic person I know and has some amazing stories.

Thanks for the ping and the amazing story. Mom's greatness lives on through you.

life

family

[Borges]

For better or worse, the focus on racism is a constant in Burns’ work. As I said earlier he sees American history through the prism of Civil Rights. I just don’t feel that automatically makes him a propagandist. I don’t have to agree with a writer/historian on every little insight.

[Misterioso]

My comments refer to the “worse” in his work. To the extent that it is prismatic it is (automatically) propagandistic, by definition. His programs certainly have value, as many Hollywood films do, but the propaganda is unmistakable.

[Borges]

Everyone sees the world through certain presuppositions and primary concerns. Herodotus and Gibbon weren’t exactly free of those. If you’re defining propaganda as anything with any point of view then just about everything is propaganda.

[desertlily]

Here's a blogger's condemnation of "The War" as an attack on one of America's greatest achievements......the liberation of millions!

[af_vet_rr]

This isn't exactly related, but Peter Jackson (of King Kong and Lord of the Rings fame) is producing a remake of the 1954 film Dambusters. That was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Some of you might find it interesting, although it's a ways off - casting later this year, filming next year. Over the past 10 years, we've had a string of really good WWII movies (along with the Military and History Channels) and hopefully this will help continue the trend.

[goldfinch]

On MacArthur...I don’t think asking soldiers how they felt in 1945 would have made much difference. I never heard a good word about him when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. I remember one soldier who was still mad at MacArthur because he took his two dogs with him when he left Corrigidor when he could have taken two soldiers or two nurses to safety. The ‘I shall return’ remark didn’t play real well with the folks in the farming community I grew up in, either. Those who lost loved ones in the fight to make that ‘return’ possible, did not appreciate the arrogance.

I read a couple of biographies about MacArthur back when I was on my WWII reading kick. Operating from memory only (always hazardous, in my case), the biographers concluded that there was a nearly total switch in the way the soldiers who served under MacArthur in WWI viewed him versus the way the soldiers in WWII viewed him. Those who served under MacArthur in WWI thought he was a physically brave man. In WWI he visited his men at the front lines, they saw him in dangerous spots and they admired him. The WWII soldiers did not see the same MacArthur...maybe because they did not see MacArthur at the front. They saw him as arrogant and distant...and some questioned his courage. So I did not find the Burns take on MacArthur out of line with what the common soldier thought at all.

As you may have guessed, I am not a MacArthur fan. He was right, however, when he urged Roosevelt to enlarge the army in the 30s rather than putting people to work in alphabet soup programs. Roosevelt ignored him, of course, leaving the US short of trained soldiers when they needed them. His biggest service was probably in getting Japan started on the road to democracy and economic recovery in the years immediately following the war.

As a general in WWII, I am not convinced he was the best man for the job. But he was probably not the worst choice, either.

[RobbyS]

In WWI, MacArthur was a brigader general and necessarily on the front lines. In WWII, he played a different role. and, really, too old to be in the field. It was only by accident that he was even in the war. In the Phillipines he made many mistakes, but as commander of Southwest Pacific, he went farther and with fewer casualties than any commander in the war. Much of his success he owed to his subordinates, of course, but he made a virtue of the refusal of of Washington to give his war a greater share of resources by strategic and tactical inovation. My understanding is that he made better use of air power than any other Army theatre commander. His” I shall return” was a promise to the Filipinos, and I think, it was a manner of honor that we return to rescue that nation which we had abandoned in order to fight Hitler.

[kabar]

MacArthur also enraged many veterans because he was involved in putting down the 1932 veterans’ [Bonus Army] riots in DC. Although Eisenhower and Patton were also involved, MacArthur took most of the heat. MacArthur was not a soldier’s general.

[af_vet_rr]

I'm just going to say that MacArthur made some major mistakes, but eventually redeemed himself during the rebuilding of Japan (I don't know that anybody could have done what he did after the war was over).

Speaking of Japan and the end of the war, I wondered how they would treat the atomic bombs, and when they kicked it off with the lady talking about how glad she and many others were that they were used, I was happy. I figured it might be something they danced around, and they did use a low casualty estimate for an invasion of Japan (President Wilson's estimate of half a million dead Americans always seemed extremely low to me, when you look at the island campaigns). The fact that they led up to that by mentioning Okinawa and 100,000+ civilians and close to that in military dead on the Japanese side put things in perspective as well.

I also found it interesting on the issues of race - people complained about Burns injecting race into it, but I don't think people understand that WWII was probably the second most important event for African-Americans, next to the Civil War/Emancipation Proclamation. You had these vets talking about how they were treated when they came back, and how they just dealt with it and moved on with their lives, and made something out of themselves with the G.I. Bill, etc. Nowadays, when you see somebody who feels discriminated against, half the time they get lawyers and whine about it on TV with Jessie Jackson. A huge contrast.

Something else last night's show dealt with, was the stress and trauma some came back with. When I was a kid, I remember my dad having nightmares, and I remember people we knew that had problems, that weren't discussed openly. I remember my parents talking about one man that when he wasn't at work, seemed to drink a lot and just was kind of a shell at times, and they just said "he had a hard time in the war". It wasn't until much later that I comprehended what exactly they meant. I found out the guy had been a medic in the Army and had went through a lot of the major island battles. God only knows what he saw and went through. There were a lot of people like that, and it just wasn't openly discussed.

[submarinerswife]

It's the slant that comes through in spades. Burns is the leading propagandist for the left. The fact that so many on this forum can't recognize it tells me he has his viewers right where he wants them.

Your ignorance of what you are speaking is astonishingly astronomical. I can't get through your pap without wondering how you manage to remember to breath.

This was an amazing doc. on WWII in the words of those who lived it. The story of Carlson's raiders was so intriguing that I am glad Burns added the Latino segment. I want to hear the stories of what really happened. Not the John Wayne version that we have been used to over the past 40 years.

I think he did another amazing historical documentry and you are too damned jaded to see through your own deranged logic.

You lose in so many ways.