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

PBS.org ^

[submarinerswife]

Premeires tonight at 8pm on PBS. 7 part series

[flaglady47]

oops, tale = tail

[kabar]

I liked the comments and sign that showed EVERY American was behind the war effort...

Leading up to the war, not everybody was in favor of the US getting into the war. The Japanese attacked us and the Germans declared war on us a week or so later. I wonder if the Germans had not declared war against us, if we would have declared war against them. There was the America First Committee that was established September, 4, 1940 by Yale law student R. Douglas Stuart, Jr., along with other students including future President Gerald Ford, Sargent Shriver and future Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart. At its peak, America First may have had 800,000 members in 650 chapters, located mostly in a 300 mile radius of Chicago.

To preside over their committee, America First chose General Robert E. Wood, the 61 year-old chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co.. While Wood would accept only an interim position, he remained at the head of the committee until it was disbanded in the days after Pearl Harbor.The America First Committee had its share of prominent businessmen as well as the sympathies of political figures like Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Senator Gerald P. Nye, and Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas, with its most prominent spokesman being Charles A. Lindbergh.

Other celebrities supporting America First were novelist Sinclair Lewis, poet E. E. Cummings, author Gore Vidal (as a student at Phillips Exeter Academy), Alice Roosevelt Longworth, film producer Walt Disney and actress Lillian Gish.

[kabar]

I agree with you, which is why I said seriously and then provided you with some real information about the battle. The US Army suffered one third of the casualties on Guadalcanal. You would never know that from the Burns version of history. But that's the point. It really isn't history, just a collection of personal anecdotes of people who participated in the war, just like my father and his four brothers. Over 16 million Americans served in uniform during WWII and only a small percentage saw actual combat.

I am a Vietnam vet, but my personal experiences don't constitute the real history of what happened, just my narrow view.

[donnab]

at least those immigrants knew where there allegiance was...unlike today where you hear things like they cannot be separated from their homelands.

[Chgogal]

If God forbid I had to chose between a German, Japanese or U.S. Concentration Camp (as characterized by the Japanese American) I will chose the U.S. Concentration Camp. Some how comparing the atrocities of the German Concentration and the Japanese POW camps to the nasty U.S. detention camps in the U.S. minimizes and belittles the great human tragedy that occurred in all of the Nazi camps and all who suffered in the Japanese camps throughout Asia. Millions and millions of people died at the hands of the Nazis and the Japanese as opposed to 120,000+ Americans who lost their homes, businesses and freedoms. All three scenarios are dreadful but the depth of evil and horror of the first two are unimaginable. I am uncomfortable of equating the U.S. “concentration camps” with what happened in Germany and the Japanese camps. They are not equivalent. The choice of words in this documentary was sloppy and in liberal language, not “nuanced” enough for me.

[SuziQ]

I didn’t get any sense that he was equating the camps. He showed quite graphically the conditions in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and the treatment of the Polish at the hands of the Germans. The stories of the Japanese internees was mainly to show that this was done to American citizens within the borders of this country, mainly out of fear. It was wrong, and we know that now, but there’s no question that it was disturbing and created ill feelings among the Japanese for the American government, and rightly so.

[Chgogal]

Ah, but the editors allowed the Japanese American to point blank call the American detention camps “concentration camps”. Words are important.

[WL-law]

The Battle of Midway got only the briefest description, about 20 seconds. Although Burns has a general disclaimer that he can’t cover everything, it seems odd to leave that out.

So far, it doesn’t match the scope of “The World at War”, and doesn’t come close to WAW’s great score and Sir Lawrence Olivier’s narration.

[Chgogal]

I second your post - guess many PBS intellectuals done know what the acronym NAZI stands for - Nationalsozialist, aka, national socialist. Oh well....

[Chgogal]

I would agree with that. Watching this version, the word “quagmire” kept popping into my head. ;) The fall of Singapore was huge and he barely mentioned that except in passing. I know it wasn’t an American territory but it was huge from a strategic POV - making the Battle of Midway so much more important to the Allies.

[Chgogal]

; )

I prefer the war bonds ear marked for the Military and not some bloody war on poverty! ;)

[Chgogal]

I am sure the Navy and Army recruiter would have met the same fate had he joined either of those branches.

[dr_lew]

You have to be rather naive to speak of “the facts of the war” as though there’s a single correct perspective on it. I thought this presentation was rather humdrum. The home front perspective didn’t really go much beyond things I’ve seen on the History Channel, and it was very light on details of engagements. I was particularly disappointed in the coverage of the Pearl Harbor attack and the way it was received; it just didn’t seem to go much beyond the obvious.

Re “the facts”, have you read Guadalcanal Diary? This was contemporary wartime journalism, and I suppose it has to be counted as part of the “rah rah” propaganda. However, it does not gloss the realities, and it speaks with the voice of the time, which is something the Burns thing lacks. E.g. “Jap” seems to appear several times on every page. “That’s the way it was.”

[SuziQ]

Ah, but the editors allowed the Japanese American to point blank call the American detention camps “concentration camps”. Words are important.

I'm sure that's exactly how those interned thought of them. But the viewer can see, quite easily, that there was no comparison among the three, since the Japanese camps, and their treatment of prisoners is discussed quite plainly. I'm sure the German's treatment of their prisoners will be covered in later episodes.

One comment, by an understandably biased source, will not change the facts of the war.

[SuziQ]

This is not meant to be a full scale documentary of the war. It states, right at the beginning that it will concentrate on stories from participants and their families in four American towns. The bigger picture is shown, mainly as it intersects with those soldiers, or sets up the situations in which they served. Then it allows the soldiers to tell their stories, and the family members of those soldiers, to share their remembrances of that time.

It's not meant to be all encompassing; I didn't expect it to be.

[CDB]

I wish someone would do something on little Known units, like the “ Bloodbucket” A PA National Guard unit that fought hard and was almost destroyed. I do, too. The "Bloodbucket" (28th Infantry) Division was featured for a few minutes in the movie--they were the troops that were shown marching down the Champs Elysées below the Arc de Triomphe. Still, they weren't identified by their unit. (The 28th march through liberated Paris in August 1944 was also featured on a US postage stamp). I hope that units like the 28th are identified by Burns in later segments of "The War."

[CDB]

IIRC, I saw a WWII-era movie about the raiders.

"Gung Ho: The Story of Carlson's Makin Island Raiders" (1943) starring Randolf Scott, et al.

[higgmeister]

Keesler AF base in Biloxi MS

I was there for the last half of 1975! I had my wife there with me so I didn't go to a Christmas show in the triangle. Come to think of it, we never went to the theater there even one time. Keesler involved just marching, with briefcases, to Wolfe and Allee Halls for classes and studying to become a Tech Control Water Walker.

[Altura Ct.]

“I was there for the last half of 1975!”

Me too! Air Traffic Control school. Arived the end of May and stayed till sometime in October. Man marching to school in all that Summer humidity was brutal!

[af_vet_rr]

Absolutely no mention of the Air Force. So--this has to be viewed from a very narrow perspective. At least that is how I saw the 1st episode.

Two points - some jumped on you for the Air Force comment - don't sweat it. My dad was in before it became the Air Force, and rarely do I run into anybody that refers to it at the Army Air Corps or Army Air Forces. I've never heard him call it Army Air Corps or Army Air Forces other than when it pertains to a particular point in whatever he is talking about (usually when talking about the Army).

It's the same as people saying Alaska or Hawaii as if they were states in the War. They may have been territories then, but everybody has known them for decades as states. It's been the US Air Force for 60 years as of last week, and the numbe of people who remember it as anything but the Air Force are rapidly dwindling.

Second point, I've seen some sneak peaks, and you'll get your fill of the Army Air Forces here very shortly. The clips I've seen were from later episodes, and since they are going in chronological order, the Navy (and Marines as well as US Army) deserve plenty of screen time in the early going, but as we get towards the middle and end of '43 and into '44, you'll see plenty of air action. I hope that Burns does a good job of conveying just how brutal the air war was, because unfortunately these days most people get their idea of the air war from the Memphis Bell movie (let me put it like this, the 8th Air Force alone had 5,000 - 6,000 more men killed in the skies over Europe than Marines that were killed in the Pacific).