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From a german perspective, no less. Good read
My grandfather, on my mother's side, fixed the P-51 towards the end of the war after serving as a G.I. for the first half of the European Theater and seeing action in Italy. My Great Uncle was involved with D-Day, but I'm not sure in what capacity. I also lost a cousin in the Vietnam War that I never had the chance to know. I can only imagine what lifelines were eradicated and what might've became of the millions that were killed in the wars of the 20th Century alone...wow.
Pretty disturbing to say the least...
Love the Mustangs, extremely well built planes from what I've read. Those and Boeing's B-17s were marvels. In a similar vein of the horror of trench warfare, I also can't imagine the balls it must've taken to be a ball-turret gunner on a bomber.
Good book, I have it. There's also a 1930 black and white movie that is very good.
The crucial part of the bombing of German targets would've been way more perilous without the design change to a better engine and the bubble canopy in the latter version of the P-51. The additional ability to fly nearly 3 times the distance of its predeccessor was definitely a blessing for the B-17 squadrons. I remember a story my mom used to tell me, and I'm not sure if it was true, about a friend my grandpa made with a side gunner of a B-17 that was from the same town he was and how they were good friends. He said that the last mission his friend went on was on earth and that when the B-17 came back, it was full of holes and looked like it was on its very last flight. His friend managed to make it back, but was later killed in a car accident in which the jeep he was riding in went off the road and into a grove of trees.
*Also, there are many who were there and those that are now historians that said the refusal by North American to make the must needed alterations to the Mustang delayed the end of the European Theater (and D-Day as well...) by a considerable time. It would've allowed the bombing raids to have been more well-guarded and more accurate.
I think the more important argument to be made as a history major is that people who were at Versailles argued that it would just lead to another war.
Can't remember the name but one of the French officials said and I'm paraphrasing..."This is not a peace treaty, but a cease-fire for 20 years." Crazy how right he was.
On topic, mine would have to be the American Civil War. I love reading about it because in my mind and of course historians would also agree that the war was more than just 4 years. It was almost 75 years prior to the '61 that the build up started and 12 years after '65 that it really ended.
Me personally as a history major, I simply despise the Lost Cause revisionism that the South has regarding the Civil War. I loathe that kind of revisionism and the more I study it the more I have nothing but contempt for the South.
I think alot of them did, although they probably wouldn't have been able to elaborate. I think it had alot to do with the build of nationalism in Europe at the time. So every soldier was fighting as a German, or French, or British soldier and had their own sense of nationalism.
All Quiet on the Western Front, possibly my favorite war novel, says it best when the main character is describing his enlistment and people who refused to volunteer he said "Even one's parents were ready with the word 'coward'."
I think that sums up how people felt about WWI, you were fighting for your country more than anything else and those who didn't were cowards. There was no such thing as objecting.
There is a John Boy Walton movie adaptation too that is surprisingly good.
Yes, you're absolutely right about those who forwarned the masses at Versailles of a posibility return to all-out war. I think there were a few Americans who were echoing the same sentiment and some British as well. I wonder, even with their noblest of intentions at the forefront of discussion, that even Wilson and other heads like Clemenceau had to have an inkling of the future ramifications of the treaty being signed...
I just re-watched the Thin Red Line again a few weeks ago, and I don't know if I'm in the minority--but I thought that was an amazing movie depicting the psychological aspect of war. The super low downtime between battles and the high octane violence that when a skurmish broke out you went to the opposite side of the spectrum.
+1...and he wasn't the only one to make his voice known. What's crazy is that Ho Chi Minh was at that treaty too...needless to say it had far-reaching effects on future military policy.
You and Gem both brought up the Civil War, and to some extent I agree. Especially the Andersonville prison camp...not sure if ya'll are familiar with it, but it's one of the most atrocious examples of war crimes in American history
Was Ernest Borgnine in it?
Andersonville was definitely an American atrocity and the sad part is that it is often a sidenote to the more glamorized battles of the Civil War such as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Sherman's March to Atlanta (which, was a act of brutality it its own right...). I guess that is what comes within the borders of war. I have to give credit to Glory for my interest in the Civil War and actually, war itself. Just wanted to study it because I do believe that as time passes less and less of the memories of the 20th century and its abundance of warfare will be dangeroulsy forgotten. I would like to tell my grandchildren, or at least attempt to educate them on the sacrifices the American people made...
I never saw that movie but I think it suffered from the fact that it came out the same year as possibly THE greatest war movie of all time Saving Private Ryan. It's also about the same war as well.
Well done and well acted...my only beef was that they went a little too overboard with the inner monologue imo.
Interesting add-on to this: Pol Pot was also educated in France and studied the ramifications of the Versailles treaty as well...and well, we all knew what transpired in Kampuchea (Cambodia) under his watch.
I forgot about that tidbit. Though you're probably right about the movie and its release...the two theaters were different as they were the same...The style of fighting were different and you could possibly make the argument that the European Theater was still steeped in the old style WWI type of fighting and the Pacific Theater was the beginning of the jungle-style guerrilla fighting that influenced the Vietcong and NVA in the Vietnam War and in some aspects, the Korean conflict and the Afgani/Iraqi Wars that followed...
I'm not patriot, and don't study history for the American side of it since U.S. history is probably my least favorite but that's not a knock on it. But I think history is so important because well in my Historical Methods class we studied the Holocaust and had to write a paper on it.
Needless to say our main area of focus was Holocaust denial and i think it's so important that people study history because if nobody does, we allow these liars to claim things that just aren't true. People like Ernst Zundel and the IHR can use pseudo-history and claim it to be true while nobody else can say other wise because they don't know.
I think they were attempting to make it seem overdone because of the need to make the experience ornate. But now that I look back at it, I can't disagree with you on that.
I'll agree with that. I think in Europe you had a sort of overwhelming force in order to take the continent. While in Asia because of the terrain, there were tunnels and the likes dug in order to escape and elude much like in Vietnam.
The Killing Fields is a great film about that. Malkovich is great in a supporting role.
Yes, he was the sergeant.
It was a great movie about that and one of the fiew films that came out about the Killing Fields. Growing up in the Long Beach area, I was immersed in the Cambodian ex-patriate community that is large out here and to hear some of the stories that these people lived through is just amazing. I mean, just the terrible things humans do to each other used to be a shock...but now the more I read about our history, the less surprised I am and that's a terrible viewpoint to really have.
*Note: The main actor in Killing Fields was gunned down in L.A. for his watch in the 90's I believe...
I'll make sure to check it out.
It would have to be the Cambodian actor if it happened b/c Sam Waterston was the main lead. Sad to hear though, if it is in fact true.
Getting back to what you both were mentioning earlier, I agree about the need for education of these wars. One of the inspirations (for lack of a better word) for starting this thread was a conversation me and one of my former students (used to teach broadcasting and publications at a high school back in 04-05) had about good WWII movies." I said I wished there were more WWI movies period, to which he followed with something like, "nothing really happened in that war anyways." Just astonished by the ignorance, and of course it's not all his fault.
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