Though I wonder how much more horrifying an similary done episode(s) about the Battle of Stalingrad would be in comparison. Goddamnit, someone needs to make a show about the Red Army. Sure, they were an army of a dictatorship too, but they probably had the most to do as far as beating the Nazis went.
Pacific on the other hand, that's all Americans. I'm pumped for this show.
I just rewatched episode 9 of BoB ("Why We Fight", the one with the concentration camp), and maybe I am just a dense person but there is one scene there that I still wonder about.
The scene is when Nix is doing a final walk of the camp before the battalion moves out to Thalem. He spots the wife of the German officer, whose house he attempted to loot earlier in the episode, cleaning up the dead bodies. They share a glance, and the woman has a surprised yet knowing look on her face.
I still think about that scene and what it means, and I can't help but think I just missed something important in Nix's character by not being able to understand it.
2- Private Ryan (Matt Damon) didn't get anyone killed. The pussy typist who convinced Tom Hanks to let the prisoner go is the cause. He let the Jewish dude get stabbed in the heart then the dude they let go shot a bunch of 101st dudes and Tom Hanks.
I've read before that its two different guys (the soldier they let go and the one that kills Nellish), but that the one that Upham shoots at the end is indeed the one from the radar tower.
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2- Private Ryan (Matt Damon) didn't get anyone killed. The pussy typist who convinced Tom Hanks to let the prisoner go is the cause. He let the Jewish dude get stabbed in the heart then the dude they let go shot a bunch of 101st dudes and Tom Hanks.
I've read before that its two different guys (the soldier they let go and the one that kills Nellish), but that the one that Upham shoots at the end is indeed the one from the radar tower.
Yeah they are two different dudes (I didn't mean to confuse). What you wrote was exactly correct.
I really want to see a movie about the battle of Wake Island. Those poor, crazy f'ing Marines.
I just rewatched episode 9 of BoB ("Why We Fight", the one with the concentration camp), and maybe I am just a dense person but there is one scene there that I still wonder about.
The scene is when Nix is doing a final walk of the camp before the battalion moves out to Thalem. He spots the wife of the German officer, whose house he attempted to loot earlier in the episode, cleaning up the dead bodies. They share a glance, and the woman has a surprised yet knowing look on her face.
I still think about that scene and what it means, and I can't help but think I just missed something important in Nix's character by not being able to understand it.
It's been a while since I watched it, but I think it's basically that she made him feel ashamed for looting her house at the beginning of the episode, and now the roles are reversed.
I think that scene has a lot to do with the officer's role. The townspeople all claimed to not know about the camp, clearly the woman in the red jacket's husband ran the camp - from the look of his uniform I'd say he was an Oberstleutnant or thereabouts (Major, Lieutenant Colonel) and his wife knew what he did.
Nixon's moment watching her having to dig through the corpses I think was a bit of satisfaction, the others may not have known - she certainly did...
Anyhow, my interpretation - probably doesn't hold water, but that was my impression from one watching of that episode.
Whatever it was in that scene, I liked that there was an element of defiance in her look back (at least that's how I remember it). It wasn't a scene of Good USA triumphing over Evil Germany - there was an ambivalence there.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I thought it was more comparing the wife's pride in her husband at the beginning and her shame at the end. Maybe some anger too, at the US troops for shattering her illusions.
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
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Dish Network is currently running a promotion for 3 free months of HBO and Showtime.
I took them up on the offer a couple days ago, specifically in order to be able to watch this. So excited.
The Red Army also had another movie - Stalingrad (1993) it's actually about the Germans at Stalingrad, the movie isn't particularly well done (a number of minor historical inaccuracies - T-34 in bulk, wrong helmets etc.) but what the movie does convey quite well is how desperate both sides were. The film follows a German company in the 6th Army and like BoB you see the company shrink, only in this case they get no replacements, the unit just eventually ceases to exist.
For anyone who has Comcast and HBO, Comcast is done a horrible job of marketing it but you can go to fancast.com and watch every Band of Brothers episode (as well as a lot of other HBO series) in HD for free.
]His memoir is a front-line account of infantry combat in the Pacific War. Sledge writes of the brutality displayed by American and Japanese soldiers during the battles, and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "this was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands." Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, including one Marine whose genitals had been cut off and stuffed into the corpse's mouth. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses (and, in one case, a severely wounded but still living Japanese soldier), as well as other disturbing trophy-taking.
Sledge describes in detail the sheer physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth. "Fear and filth went hand in hand," he wrote. "It has always puzzled me that this important factor in our daily lives has received so little attention from historians and is often omitted from otherwise excellent personal memoirs by infantrymen." Marines had trouble staying dry, finding time to eat their rations, practicing basic field sanitation (it was impossible to dig latrines or catholes in the coral rock on Peleliu), and simply moving around on the pulverized coral of Peleliu and in the mud of Okinawa.
Beginning with boot camp in MCRD Parris Island, South Carolina, the story follows Leckie through basic training and then to New River, North Carolina where he is briefly stationed, and follows him to the Pacific.
Leckie is assigned to the 1st Marine Division and is deployed to Guadalcanal, northern Australia, New Guinea, Cape Gloucester, before being evacuated with wounds from the island of Peleliu. "Helmet for My Pillow" is told from an enlisted man's point of view; a contemporary book jacket stated the book was about "the booze, the brawling, the loving on 72-hour liberty, the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the U.S. Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, across the Pacific.
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
The entire town smelled of death. Everybody knew.
There's a cliche in Germany that everyone's Grandfather drove ambulances in the war (or was part of the resistance). There's simultaneously a lot of national shame and personal denial. Like "we did terrible things... but we didn't do it."
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
The entire town smelled of death. Everybody knew.
according to a german historian at the resistance museum in Berlin, about 90% of germans knew about concentration/extermination camps.
My university research led to a similar conclusion. Even more disturbing is that individuals who were morally opposed to the "Final Solution" found themselves participants for fear of isolation from a population where, by the end of the war, they were completely dependent.
NOT actively seeking Jews and their protectors was as bad as protecting Jews in the eyes of the larger populace. Furthermore, the past 60 years have done a lot to wipe the collective memory of those who committed the atrocities directly, but even today there is a large amount of guilt for those who didn't act out to protect their Jewish, homosexual, gypsie, mentally or physically disabled neighbours.
Seriously. Around 12 million people died. You are going to need a lot of participants to reach that sort of an number. Has it ever been estimated how many soldiers had something to do with the concentration camps?
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
The entire town smelled of death. Everybody knew.
according to a german historian at the resistance museum in Berlin, about 90% of germans knew about concentration/extermination camps.
Not to mention the fact that....you know...every Jew/Homosexual/Catholic in every town was openly rounded up and carted off. With things like The Singing Forest I find it impossible to believe that they didn't know what was going on. Not, at least, by the end of the war.
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"We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them."
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
The entire town smelled of death. Everybody knew.
according to a german historian at the resistance museum in Berlin, about 90% of germans knew about concentration/extermination camps.
Knowing about the existence of the camps isn't the same as knowing what was happening inside them.
I knew of the existence of US-run jails in Iraq. I didn't know what was happening at Abu Ghraib until it was on 60 Minutes. I used to work a block from a county jail. I didn't know what actually went on in that jail, if inmates were being abused or not.
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I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
The entire town smelled of death. Everybody knew.
according to a german historian at the resistance museum in Berlin, about 90% of germans knew about concentration/extermination camps.
Knowing about the existence of the camps isn't the same as knowing what was happening inside them.
I knew of the existence of US-run jails in Iraq. I didn't know what was happening at Abu Ghraib until it was on 60 Minutes. I used to work a block from a county jail. I didn't know what actually went on in that jail, if inmates were being abused or not.
I don't think you can make comparisons between jails now and then. Especially a United States Military run jail on an island with heavy security circa year 2000, to a prison near a small town during the 1940's. I'm sure a lot of the townspeople worked at the camps and it's really hard to hide ginormous atrocities like what happened then, compared to what went down at Guantanamo.
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
The entire town smelled of death. Everybody knew.
There's a cliche in Germany that everyone's Grandfather drove ambulances in the war (or was part of the resistance). There's simultaneously a lot of national shame and personal denial. Like "we did terrible things... but we didn't do it."
I have a number of extended relatives who fought in the German army. Oddly enough, according to the stories my family tells about them, every single one of them deserted and spent the latter half of the war in hiding or in prison camps.
I've always been rather skeptical of most of those stories.
I had a family friend tell me flat-out that he served in the Panzer Grenadiers. His war ended in '45 when he was shot in the chest by an American soldier, then saved and medivaced by an American medic. He emigrated to the US in '47. To put it in his own words, "Any country that produced people willing to save enemy troops in a pitched battle is a country I wanted to live in."
I just recently found out my uncle's dad fought with a volksgrenadier division. Never met the man, but his last words to my uncle before he (my uncle) emigrated to the US were
I did not want to fight them. They told me it was the army or prison camp. I hope you do well there, I wish I could have seen it (the US).
After that he never spoke to my uncle again because he was afraid that if people knew about his service they would think badly of my uncle.
I had a family friend tell me flat-out that he served in the Panzer Grenadiers. His war ended in '45 when he was shot in the chest by an American soldier, then saved and medivaced by an American medic. He emigrated to the US in '47. To put it in his own words, "Any country that produced people willing to save enemy troops in a pitched battle is a country I wanted to live in."
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
The entire town smelled of death. Everybody knew.
according to a german historian at the resistance museum in Berlin, about 90% of germans knew about concentration/extermination camps.
Knowing about the existence of the camps isn't the same as knowing what was happening inside them.
I knew of the existence of US-run jails in Iraq. I didn't know what was happening at Abu Ghraib until it was on 60 Minutes. I used to work a block from a county jail. I didn't know what actually went on in that jail, if inmates were being abused or not.
I don't think you can make comparisons between jails now and then. Especially a United States Military run jail on an island with heavy security circa year 2000, to a prison near a small town during the 1940's. I'm sure a lot of the townspeople worked at the camps and it's really hard to hide ginormous atrocities like what happened then, compared to what went down at Guantanamo.
How well-known were the conditions at Japanese internment camps among the American public during the 40s? Granted they were much better than at German concentration camps, but they were still undoubtedly spartan, akin to the tent city Sheriff Joe Arpaio runs in the Arizona desert these days. It's not something that showed up in movies Frank Capra was making for the War Dept.
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Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
Buck Compton's reaction and "Medic!" after the 2nd barrage at Bastogne is probably the saddest thing I've ever seen.
Though I wonder how much more horrifying an similary done episode(s) about the Battle of Stalingrad would be in comparison. Goddamnit, someone needs to make a show about the Red Army. Sure, they were an army of a dictatorship too, but they probably had the most to do as far as beating the Nazis went.
Pacific on the other hand, that's all Americans. I'm pumped for this show.
The scene is when Nix is doing a final walk of the camp before the battalion moves out to Thalem. He spots the wife of the German officer, whose house he attempted to loot earlier in the episode, cleaning up the dead bodies. They share a glance, and the woman has a surprised yet knowing look on her face.
I still think about that scene and what it means, and I can't help but think I just missed something important in Nix's character by not being able to understand it.
I've read before that its two different guys (the soldier they let go and the one that kills Nellish), but that the one that Upham shoots at the end is indeed the one from the radar tower.
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They also had Enemy at the Gates.
Yeah they are two different dudes (I didn't mean to confuse). What you wrote was exactly correct.
I really want to see a movie about the battle of Wake Island. Those poor, crazy f'ing Marines.
It's been a while since I watched it, but I think it's basically that she made him feel ashamed for looting her house at the beginning of the episode, and now the roles are reversed.
Nixon's moment watching her having to dig through the corpses I think was a bit of satisfaction, the others may not have known - she certainly did...
Anyhow, my interpretation - probably doesn't hold water, but that was my impression from one watching of that episode.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
edit apparently it is actually about the Battle of Hürtgen Forest in WWII, so I guess its more like a filler episode.
I don't think the wife would have necessarily known what was going on at the camp. It doesn't really seem like something that even a private would talk about over dinner, let alone an officer. And in the 1940s, to boot.
I took them up on the offer a couple days ago, specifically in order to be able to watch this. So excited.
I think it wouldn't be as bittersweet though. More bitter. And death. Lot more death.
Stalingrad fun fact - four times as many people died in this single battle then all American casualties in WWII.
edit: Here are the books that the new series is based off of ( click the images to be taken to each Amazon page.)
With The Old Breed by Eugene Sledge
Summary:
Helmet For My Pillow by Robert Leckie
Summary:
Red Blood Black Sand by Chuck Tatum
Summary:
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The entire town smelled of death. Everybody knew.
There's a cliche in Germany that everyone's Grandfather drove ambulances in the war (or was part of the resistance). There's simultaneously a lot of national shame and personal denial. Like "we did terrible things... but we didn't do it."
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
according to a german historian at the resistance museum in Berlin, about 90% of germans knew about concentration/extermination camps.
NOT actively seeking Jews and their protectors was as bad as protecting Jews in the eyes of the larger populace. Furthermore, the past 60 years have done a lot to wipe the collective memory of those who committed the atrocities directly, but even today there is a large amount of guilt for those who didn't act out to protect their Jewish, homosexual, gypsie, mentally or physically disabled neighbours.
That movie has one of the most cringe-worthy scenes I've ever viewed in a war movie (missing jaw). Ugh.
On the upside, I've been looking forward to The Pacific since they started talking about it almost nine years ago (maybe more?).
Not to mention the fact that....you know...every Jew/Homosexual/Catholic in every town was openly rounded up and carted off. With things like The Singing Forest I find it impossible to believe that they didn't know what was going on. Not, at least, by the end of the war.
Knowing about the existence of the camps isn't the same as knowing what was happening inside them.
I knew of the existence of US-run jails in Iraq. I didn't know what was happening at Abu Ghraib until it was on 60 Minutes. I used to work a block from a county jail. I didn't know what actually went on in that jail, if inmates were being abused or not.
I don't think you can make comparisons between jails now and then. Especially a United States Military run jail on an island with heavy security circa year 2000, to a prison near a small town during the 1940's. I'm sure a lot of the townspeople worked at the camps and it's really hard to hide ginormous atrocities like what happened then, compared to what went down at Guantanamo.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
I have a number of extended relatives who fought in the German army. Oddly enough, according to the stories my family tells about them, every single one of them deserted and spent the latter half of the war in hiding or in prison camps.
I've always been rather skeptical of most of those stories.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
I did not want to fight them. They told me it was the army or prison camp. I hope you do well there, I wish I could have seen it (the US).
After that he never spoke to my uncle again because he was afraid that if people knew about his service they would think badly of my uncle.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
That's pretty awesome.
How well-known were the conditions at Japanese internment camps among the American public during the 40s? Granted they were much better than at German concentration camps, but they were still undoubtedly spartan, akin to the tent city Sheriff Joe Arpaio runs in the Arizona desert these days. It's not something that showed up in movies Frank Capra was making for the War Dept.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.