Posted on 09/23/2007 8:54:51 AM PDT by submarinerswife
Edited on 09/23/2007 9:01:27 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Premeires tonight at 8pm on PBS. 7 part series
Certainly, with the Civill War, race was a central issue -- and Burns did a service to history by illustrating that the Yanks were usually only slightly more concerned about blacks than the Rebs were.
Jazz was entirely about how black folks were raped by white folks who both revered and reviled them. In the crowning injustice, Louis Armstrong, the one man who might have given more to American music -- let alone African-American music -- than anyone in its history was reviled by those who thought him too much an entertainer and not enough an activist.
In baseball, the above is less clear, but it's certainly there too. I lot of first-rate ballplayers spent their years playing in second-rate leagues for tenth-rate pay. I couldn't swear on a Bible that Babe Ruth would have gotten more than a homer or two off of Satchel Paige in his career.
When I mentioned that gripe, I described it as a slight one -- by which I meant that he gave it something like 60% and I thought it should be something like 45%. A minor gripe, and I liked all of those works. Actually, I'm watching the last episode of Jazz tonight, but I've paused it and switched to iTunes-- the film was talking about Coltrane, and I decided I'd rather hear him than hear bout him for a little while.
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.
WWII was almost entirely a racist war. It just depends on how you define "race." Of course, the Nazis wanted the annihilation of the Jews -- and if they had finished that job, I have no doubt that the Slavs would have been next. After that, who knows?
The Japanese did not treat the Chinese, Westerners, or any of the people in the lands they conquered as human beings. The FIlipinos certainly got no mercy/ The Americans, the Australians, the Kiwis, the Burmese, the Ghurkas, got no mercy. There was no mercy to be found.
One lesson of WWII is that when blac Americans went to save those victims from those racists, they were then sent to segregated train cars when they crossed a state line. How could that not make an impression? Cross the globe to fight racist oppression and then come back to it at home?
The WWII experience was a formative experience for black Americans. It let them to feel that equality was not a favor they asked for hat in hand, but a birthright they had earned. They were right. But winning that fight would take far longer than the war did.
It will be a challenge for Burns to describe history WITHOUT a significant racial theme.
He chose to take the microcosm -- a few families from a few towns. We'll see which way he rocks on that. Segregation of the troops had little influence on the conduct of the war. It has massive impact op the change in American society after the war.
It is simply absurd that you can send someone to save a Jew in Europe and then call him a nigger when he gets home. The war convinced a lot of people that this was no longer acceptable. Those people rose to claim their birthright. It's not the main story of the war, but it's not a small one.
Head Sup!
I’ve watched the first two episodes.
One thing certain is that if you want to understand your mother/father & grandparents (regardless of which side they may have been on), watch the show.
Try not to watch it with too much alchohol.
Yes, my husband was raised in rural Wales, worked on local farms and hunted rabbits for dinner. He went into the National Service after he quit school, and was a sergrant when he was nineteen years old. He served on Cyprus, where the photos of the insurgents were on the walls of the barracks - thousands of British troops and 86 or so insurgents. Sounds familiar to what our troops are experiencing today.
Thanks Bud.
I’ve been watching some of it. Frankly, Ken Burns is the only thing besides Red Green ever worth watching on PBS.
The War is quite compelling.
Thanks for the ping, raygun. I haven’t watched. Five of my six uncles were in the armed forces during WWII. The sixth was in Korea. My uncle Bill’s graphic experience on the beach on D-Day was recounted in a multi-page article in The Detroit Free Press several years ago.
None of my uncles ever said one word to me about their experiences. Three are gone.
America’s finest.
And which a Democrat -- one from a border state, at that -- made a reality. I think it's a pointless exercise, though a common one on FR, to paint the civil rights era along party lines as if they applied to today's parties. Most of the opponents of civil rights were Democrats -- and so were most of its champions. The South was a one-party region at the time, nd had been since the Civil War.
Some of those politicians who opposed civil rights most vehemently became Republicans, as did many of the voters who supported them. The parties then aren't the parties now -- not their leaders, their platforms, or their supporters.
The job done by black units was recognized by senior military leaduers, and by many white soldiers in the lower ranks. It changed the opinions of many folks, some of whom, up until WWII, had never really been around blacks or who held certain opinions that were changed by the War.
All true. And on the other side of the "color line," blacks were angered and energized by the war and its aftermath. Imagine the slap in the face -- you've just spent four years fighting for your country, and on your way home -- still in uniform -- you're told that you have to move to another train car, or give up your seat on the bus, or eat a meal standing outside the kitchen door. Folks who'd spent years fighting for democracy in Europe were primed to fight for it at home.
The was gave black GIs a taste of something more -- of a meritocratic system where they could achieve and advance and enjoy, if still short of equality, camaraderie with whites. Little wonder they didn't want to go back to the status quo ante.
Of course, the liberals would never want to admit that the military led the way in integrating our society...
I think it's pretty widely accepted by any serious student of the era that the war led directly to the civil rights movement. And in a similar vein, the war also led to the women's movement -- millions of Rosie the Riveters answered the call when needed, and many didn't take kindly to being told, "okay, we don't need you any more, go back to the kitchen now."
And going back to the previous war, World War I contributed greatly to the collapse of the English class system, because when you're all hunkered down in a trench eating the same mud, no one gives a good damn who your grandparents were or whether you went to the right schools.
The first concentration camps were built by the English to hold Boer prisoners in South Africa. The detainment camp for Japanese-Americans (and a smaller number of people of German and Italian descent) fit that mold, and Manzanar and the other American camps fit the definition that prevailed at the time.
The German concentration camps were something wholly different. The more precise term would be death camps -- places of slave labor and mass murder on a huge scale with industrial efficiency.
Meanwhile, in the south Atlantic, German U-boat activities were pretty much the end of Jekyll Island. It had been a private preserve, a hunt club for the super-rich, for decades -- a lot of leading families had "cottages" that most of us would call mansions.
When U-boats appeared off the coast, those folks started having second thoughts about cruising down the coast in their huge yachts. Business dried up, and the state bought the island after the war.
The happy ending is that because it was in the state's hands, it was sheltered from the kind of huge-scale development found on a lot of the coast, and it's one of the most nicely preserved barrier islands from Florida until you get to Cape Hatteras. Blue water to tour right, pine barrens to your right, and nary a condo in view. And nice resort and history tour, too.
Correction. 7 uncles (forgot my dad’s brother), 6 in the armed forces in WWII. 1 served in Korea. All made it home. 4 have died.
America’s finest.
(thanks again for the ping, raygun)
I’ve been disappointed overall with the first part I saw. I will get through the rest.
But here’s my critique so far:
First, he makes joining WW2 sound like it was a fun idea to do something exciting. He does not show the lines for enlistment after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. How did that fact escape him?
2. - He spent quite a bit of time on internment camps in the US. He even has someone call them concentration camps. He mentions German and Italian “aliens” held in the camps. There are no figures given. No one claims they were place in “concentration” camps.
3. The Battle of Midway is given short shrift. How the most key naval battle in US history gets less time than Japanese American internment camps, I don’t know.
And this is only the first episode.
Saw a brief interview of him before the series. He most definitely comes across as a liberal. But you would hope it doesn’t impact the series. The comparison to Studs Terkel is a valid one.
He’s basically positioning this a working man’s war. And clearly he’s not placed this in the context of the mighty fight for freedom it is.
To his credit, black soldiers speak bravely about fighting and dying to build a better America in the future. They along with the other brave men of that day deserve all the credit in the world.
Led to Harry Truman’s order to desegregate the military. Of course, that went slowly until the Korean War, which ironically showed the undesirableness of all-black units. The men were more effective in integrated units.
To his credit, black soldiers speak bravely about fighting and dying to build a better America in the future. They along with the other brave men of that day deserve all the credit in the world.
I agree that is poignant, but they did no where near the "fighting and dying" as their proportion of the population. This was due to segregation and where most of the blacks were assigned in military units, i.e., a support role versus a combat role.
During the Battle of the Bulge, 2,500 blacks were formed into all black Infantry platoons and attached to larger units. The famed 761st Tank Battalion spent 183 continuous days in combat in the European Theater, earning a Presidential Unit Citation. The 333rd Field Artillery bravely supported ground operations in France. Three all-black air units flew overseas: 332nd Fighter Group, 477th Bombardment Group and the 99th Fighter Squadron. Sixty-six Black pilots were killed in action. A total of 140,000 blacks served in the Army Air Forces. Nearly 150,000 Blacks served in the Navy. Of the 12,000 Black Marines, 9 were killed in action.
There is no way to keep politics out of any documentary.
At least not a documentary about a war. Wars are political by definition. But what a good documentary - like Ken Burns is known for -- is to minimize and balance the politics, to at least try to avoid judging the past in the eyes of the present, and not to paint the issues in terms of current controversies or party lines.
You missed my point. Black Americans were fighting and dying in WWII in order to see a better day when discrimination and JIm Crow were no longer around.
The labeling of German concentration camps to American internment camps is frankly abysmal.
You missed my point. I agreed with you, which is why I stated that it was "poignant." My earlier point about Burns magnifying the Japanese and black experiences in the war far out of proportion to their actual contributions still obtains. It is revisionist history. And it is still going on.
Which makes it less history and more fable.
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