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While we can debate how Hollywood portrays historical events (given that movies don’t run in real time, and in The Sound of Music’s case the vista of the Alps is much better than the reality of leaving by train, as film is a visual medium), I think the most offensive part of the Bishop’s letter is his trite dismissal of the Nazi reigime as merely “nasty.” But given his denial of the Holocaust we shouldn’t expect anything less, I guess.

Anyone who gets their history from film or television deserves to get an F on their exam. After seeing a fact-based film, for example, the first thing I do when I get home is to do more research to fill in the gaps.

I couldn’t watch a film on TV with my dad that featured railroading—he worked for the Southern Pacific for 30 years, and would point out the flaws in every scene.

I would tend to extend your comments on getting history from film or television to television news, newspapers, and popular magazines. At an early age, my father told me that most reporting in Viet Nam consisted of reporters sitting in bars talking to each other and soldiers. I used to think that this was a low standard of reporting, but am beginning to think that it would be quite high by today's standards. The present controversy of Bishop Williamson is a good example.

From what I understand, the Bishop does not deny the holocaust per se, but holds two positions contrary to the historically orthodox position (1) that the six million figure normally used for Jewish deaths is unduly high (I have seen one post stating that he holds that this is off by a full order of magnitude) and (2) that gas chambers were not the method used for execution, at least for the Jews. However, short of seeing the unedited footage of the original interview, the only way Bishop Williamson has to demonstrate his views are more moderate than they are portrayed is to speak again on the issue—but if they deviate at all from historical orthodoxy, they will be misconstrued in the same way.

No serious follower of Archbishop Lefebvre would deny the existence of the death camps, as the Archbishop's own father, a strong monarchist, died in one in 1944 after having been sent there for his work for the French resistance. (Discoverable by reading the first paragraph after the two paragraph summary of the Archbishop's bio on wikipedia). Of course, while this is a somewhat relevant fact, I think I've seen it pointed out once in perhaps 500 posts I've seen on the topic. That Bishop Williamson believes that at least hundreds of thousands of Jews died in concentration camps is something that most posters on various forums (and reporters) seem to miss.