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

PBS.org ^

[submarinerswife]

Premeires tonight at 8pm on PBS. 7 part series

[Theo]

Not sure what “Band of Brothers” has to do with PBS or Ken Burns. Wasn’t it an HBO production? Or maybe you’re talking about something else....

[Non-Sequitur]

More obfuscation by the hunjjmaster?

Well, can you point out the leftest leanings? And after one episode please point out the leftest leanings to date in The War.

[maica]

Many people who served in the military did not have what I would call “soft” backgrounds -

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Interesting side comment: a guest on cspan yesterday commented that a disproportionate number of men who join Special Forces come from rural backgrounds. He was lamenting the future loss of this pool of talent as the family farm disappears, and the military age folks are growing up in suburbia and exurbia.

The farm-raised boys are much more independent, tough, and pro-active in problem solving, etc.

[af_vet_rr]

He was lamenting the future loss of this pool of talent as the family farm disappears, and the military age folks are growing up in suburbia and exurbia.

The farm-raised boys are much more independent, tough, and pro-active in problem solving, etc.

Don't forget being responsible - coming out of the Great Depression, you had guys that were helping to put food on the family table when they were 12, 13, 14 years old. They got up well before school to go do chores, and then did the same when they got home. These weren't kids that sat on the couch playing video games. The guy from Minnesota who dreamed of being a pilot while he was driving a tractor around - the guy was 15 or 16 years old and was partially responsible for the success of the family farm.

Those kinds of things make you grow up fast and help you later on in life, and we are losing that. We are cranking out a lot of whiny brats who expect everything handed to them on a platter.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Not sure what “Band of Brothers” has to do with PBS or Ken Burns.

The War is done for PBS by Ken Burns about WWII. Band of Brothers was about WWII. They are both elegiacal. QED.

[dfwgator]

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.

Amazing how many of those "Soviet Firsters" changed their tune, once Hitler invaded Russia.

[KosmicKitty]

Amazing how many of those "Soviet Firsters" changed their tune, once Hitler invaded Russia.

Exactly!!

And add Dr.Suess to the list

[SuziQ]

LOL! Love that badge! I was there with the choir for Christmas of 1968. I just remembered it was the 10th grade; that's the year I was in Mam'selles.

Did y'all live on base? I don't really know much about Keesler cause I didn't grow up on the coast. I was down there during the summers at my family's Fish Camp over in Gautier.

[msnpatriot]

Having gone out of my way to ask questions of any WWII veteran I’ve encountered, and family involved, I think this documentary is very accurate and worth watching. It defines the events chronically with personal touches throughout. There is a chain of information to understand the events in the war which few know, and, what the participants didn’t know at the time such as the promise to relieve our ‘cut off’ troops in 42.

Revisionist documentary? How many noticed the point in the segment last night that Burns accepts the official story that Pearl Harbor was a surprise? With nothing mentioned of FDR fore-knowledge.

I think this an excellent production for anyone interested in WWII

[go-dubya-04]

I agree with your guys’ points. First, I think the overall documentary was excellent, as are the other Burns docs that I have watched. I think he did a good job distinguishing the atrocities of the Japanese versus some of our soldiers’ reactions to those atrocities. The show was an “A” in my book for it’s ability to bring us back to a time and place, almost as if we were there. Burns has an amazing knack for pulling this off.
I was commenting on another Freeper’s post and stated in definitive terms that I noticed the same thing that he did.
Sometimes I get my antennae too tuned in for liberal BS while watching PBS because all I want is to be able to seeall the stories of the heroes who saved the world from Fascism without any of the usual propaganda that accompanies it.
My only beef was how he presented this guy as more of the typical GI as to what motivated him to join and, I believe, this one veteran tried to give the impression that this was the motivation for a significant portion of young men. Timbo, I do not have a problem with why this guy personally joined the fight. God bless him for his service as a Marine pilot during our country’s toughest time. I do not have a problem with him relating a personal story. But, to me, it came off as him representing his motivation as the common motivation for most young men and playing down any sense of patriotism. He has every right to speak and I have every right not to agree with him. That was a right I earned as well.

[Timbo64]

You make some very valid points, Sir.

[af_vet_rr]

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

Context is just as important as the words used.

After all, I've heard several older folks use the term "concentration camps" when referring to Japanese Americans during WWII.

My dad still calls them concentration camps as a matter of fact, and he said many folks back then called them that, because, as he put it, "until the Germans came along, that's what we called them. After the war, everybody acted like we had to call them something else".

He jokes that the people who would get on to him for saying "concentration camp" were the first PC Police, and this was back in the '50s.

[af_vet_rr]

I think this documentary is very accurate and worth watching. It defines the events chronically with personal touches throughout. There is a chain of information to understand the events in the war which few know, and, what the participants didn’t know at the time such as the promise to relieve our ‘cut off’ troops in 42.

I was impressed with that. People don't realize how much was concealed from the public (for fairly good reasons) and so sometimes it's hard to understand the context of why people felt our troops were left to die, etc., and Burns did a pretty good job of showing things how people saw them at the time, not how we see them with 60+ years of hindsight.

We got some nice fancy maps last night (especially if you watched in HD) that made it clear that at that point the Philippines were a lost cause for the time being. They weren't exactly letting the public see such maps for good reasons, and so it's easy to see how some in the public felt we were simply leaving them to die.

How many noticed the point in the segment last night that Burns accepts the official story that Pearl Harbor was a surprise? With nothing mentioned of FDR fore-knowledge.

Burns could spend 15 hours alone on the run-up to WWII. You could go back to the early '30s and see signs of an eventual collision of the US and Japan. In fact, several times Japan did things that they thought would draw the US into a war with them. Why FDR wanted to appease, or at least try to avoid conflict with the Japanese, that's hard to say, or at least judge, because a good case can be made across the board for every reason FDR could have come up with.

[kidd]

In the Civil War, Baseball and Jazz, the main theme is always race.

To be fair to Burns it would be impossible to accurately describe any of these three topics without race as a central issue.

OTOH - WWII was largely a fight between nations with significant white-on-white religious persecution. Japanese-American internment camps should be presented (breifly), but I see little reason to give black-white segregated units any more than a brief mention.

It will be a challenge for Burns to describe history WITHOUT a significant racial theme.

[hawkeye101]

There was an error in stating where the Sullivan Brothers were from in this show last night. The documentary stated last night they were from Fredericksburg Iowa, when it is very, very well known that they were from Waterloo Iowa. Waterloo is a city of 70,000 people; Fredericksburg has less than a thousand people.

This may not seem like a big mistake, but to the proud people of Waterloo Iowa and their most famous sons, this is an egregious error that is both disheartening and puzzling.

[Charles Martel]

Had no idea that the German’s blew up American oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oh yes, the Nazis were indeed active in the Gulf waters. My father-in-law was a navigator aboard a naval patrol bomber (Martin PBM Mariner). After initial training, his squadron was formed and continued training flights out of Corpus Christi (where there was, IIRC, a German POW camp co-located with the Navy base). His aircraft sighted u-boats several times and dropped aerial bombs, but never got a confirmed kill.

His squadron did eventually move on the the west coast and then the Pacific theater of battle, but another squadron formed at the same time never left Corpus - they were retained there to patrol the Gulf.

Luck of the draw.

[Yorlik803]

As a fellow reenactor, I would say Quality before quantity, but you have a point also. It is cool to have another eenactor on the FR...what unit do you belong to.

[VOA]

Just a bump to note:
Part 2 starts in a couple of minutes
at 7PM (Central) on Monday 9-24-07.

I’ll bump a few times as a reminder.

[mware]

Looks like they are going to begin with Kassarine Pass.

[mware]

That last song they sang at the end of last nights episode was really nice. Hope they play it again.