Ken Burns "The War"

[Little Whiskey]

Anybody else watching this?

Outstanding! very very well done. just heart breaking stuff

great insights into WWII that we never got a chance to learn in school.

Ive not watched any other TV since Sunday.

any thoughts?

[BallHawk]

Anything Ken Burns does is excellent. I own his Civil War set and the Jazz set, both excellent and very informative. I've seen his baseball one which is also very good. I set my TiVo to record The War, but for some reasons it got deleted and if I started watching now I'd only catch the last 3 episodes. I hope they'll re-air it before putting it onto DVD.

Also, on the topic of history and TV, a really good historical miniseries is "Napoleon." it's not new, it aired in 2002, but I just got finishing watching it after I got it from the library and it is very good. Great special effects and for the most part very accurate.

[Harlan Huckleby]

ya, it's awesome. HArd to watch it all, I do a lot of listening too.

One thought keeps reoccurring: Over and over, our generals sent waves of troops, ships and aircraft into harms way, very often for questionable purpose.

It seems like war is so different now, we're more concerned about minimizing casualties.

I keep thinking there had to be a better way. So often they spent so many lives taking this or that piece of territory. Was that really wise? It seems like they could have slowly blockaded and strangled the German empire. What was the rush?

I don't know shit about military tactics, this is just a novice reaction.

[MJZiggy]

I think the rush was to stop the slaughter in the concentration camps...but as a fellow non-militarist, I agree with you. Why send 100,000 guys in to take a beach? And if they hadn't let the Germans get so entrenched in the first place, it might not have been so hard to get them out...but I'm a pacifist, what do I know?

[hoosier]

The Germans were developing their own new military technology, and England--whose cities had been bombed continuously for several years--was pressuring to end the war in Europe quickly. And the US was happy to end it quickly and concentrate on the Pacific. I don't think a slow end was seen as a good option.

[Zool]

Part of the problem with the original push into France was the para drops. They were no where near as accurate as they needed to be. The idea was to sandwich the Germans at the beach. That did not happen as intended.

[Harlan Huckleby]

I think the rush was to stop the slaughter in the concentration camps

I don't think this was the case at all. To begin with, we stood-by and ignored the genocide for a very long time. They could have slowed it down by bombing railroads , but declined to make this a priority.

My memory of this history is a little fuzzy. But I'm pretty sure that the record of the western powers aiding the Jews was disgraceful. I don't think the number of concentration camp survivors left by 1945 was very large.

edit: I just looked at some websites. rough figures, 5 to 6 million Jews exterminated, maximum of 200,000 survived in concentration camps.


...but as a fellow non-militarist, I agree with you. Why send 100,000 guys in to take a beach?

sorry to dissappoint, but I'm not actually a non-militarist. I'm one of those rare birds, a liberal hawk. I find the stories of WWII baffling. Just one incident from a couple nights ago: they sent several thousand aircraft to attack some ball bearing factories. 60% casualties, little success. Two weeks later, they do it again, same result.

Ummm, I think it made total sense to drive the Germans out of Africa. Cut them off from oil and other natural resources. By 1943 (4?) I think the allies had control of the sea. It seems to me they could have isolated the Germans on the European continent and worn them down. Cut them off from resources, make targeted attacks.

Or maybe we were worried about the Germans getting a nuclear bomb? Maybe that explains the massive land invasions that cost so many lives.

[MJZiggy]

There was an arms race at the tiime, I can't remember if it was the Germans who were trying, but obvously we won the race.

[MadtownPacker]

You WI folks should be ashamed to share the same bloodline with those guys. :D

[Deputy Nutz]

Here is an idea for all you bright WWII history wanabees, don't you think that the great good capitalist wanted to get to Berlin before those nasty terrible godless communist?

[BallHawk]

I think the rush was to stop the slaughter in the concentration camps

I don't know of this is right or not, but I always thought that the United States didn't know the full extent of what was happening at the Concentration Camps.

[Joemailman]

There were a number of reasons why the allies were in a hurry to engage Hitler. British cities were being reduced to rubble, and German U-boats were taking a terrible toll on shipping headed for Britain. There was concern that Hitler would be the first with a nuclear weapon, although after the war it was learned that Germany didn't get very close. Stalin was also pressuring Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front to relieve pressure on Russia, which was suffering millions of casualties at the hands of Hitler.

[Deputy Nutz]

There were a number of reasons why the allies were in a hurry to engage Hitler. British cities were being reduced to rubble, and German U-boats were taking a terrible toll on shipping headed for Britain. There was concern that Hitler would be the first with a nuclear weapon, although after the war it was learned that Germany didn't get very close. Stalin was also pressuring Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front to relieve pressure on Russia, which was suffering millions of casualties at the hands of Hitler.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

[Harlan Huckleby]

Mailman cheated and looked it up.

[Joemailman]

One of my customers subscribes to World War II Magazine. I should probably deliver it to his house one of these days.

[Scott Campbell]

Didn't much of our neuclear brainpower come from German defectors?

[HarveyWallbangers]

Didn't much of our neuclear brainpower come from German defectors?

Indeed. From what I've read, German engineering was outstanding and they were on the verge of developing weapons (rockets) that were much more advanced than ours. In fact, after reading Jame Michener's book, Space, the Allies were in a hurry to get to the German engineers--before Hitler killed them off. They were the driving force behind our early success in our space programs.

[mraynrand]

Didn't much of our neuclear brainpower come from German defectors?

some. and rocket technology. Germans were ahead in jet engines and rockets. While I think they only launched a couple of the V2 type rockets at england, they had a huge psychological effect even if people weren't imagining a nuclear warhead. I think we also advanced in dentistry - Nazis were very experienced at removing gold fillings. Shitty horrible war.

[Deputy Nutz]

About nine months before the war ended, the Germans had a fighter squad of jet powered airplanes. far superior to anything the Allies had at the time, but they had not worked out all the kinks and were under staffed. They didn't have the nuclear bomb but they did develop missiles and rockets, unfortunately for them they were the Germans at the end of the war and didn't have the production abilities to mass produce these weapons to give them any significance in the war. I tell you what the British were lucky that the Germans didn't invent the rockets two years earlier.