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Undertrained, underarmed and outnumbered. In fact i think it was the first time in WW2 the Japanese where defeated on land.
I think you are correct, hell of a job, if that fell, then ByE-Bye Australia. Mind you they came pretty close on 2 occassions, the Bombing of Darwin and the Subs in the Sydney Heads. Mind you Sydney looks like it was taken over by the Japs, look at the Asian population. :))
I live in US and I don't know about the rest of the world, but here it seems that most of the people would have a clearer view about world war 2 if they knew nothing about it rather than the myth that America won world war 2. It's pretty rediculous when you have to debate the significance of Soviet struggle against fascism with your college professor who thinks Russians won because of LL and winter.
Glad you noticed. It is very irksome to real students of the 20th Century that history has effectively been re-written by popular culture. Especially in the USA where films and TV shows on WW2 have written just about every other country out of WW2. History books on both sides of the Atlantic have also been dumbed down. Naturally a writer of history, especially one who is writing for an educational market, will put a nationally subjective gloss on the subject matter, but in the last twenty years there seems to be an attempt to do a total re-write.
If you can get your hands on contemporary copies of US newspapers and magazines or newsreels you can see how the media talked up the British and Empire involvement at the time and, once America had joined the war, always spoke of Allied (not American) forces in the European, North African and South East Asian theatres. The newsreels tended to talk about 'American' forces for the Pacific theatre, much to the annoyance of the Aussies, New Zealanders and Dutch. Later the term 'United Nations' forces became popular.
I wonder how many Americans are aware of the East Africa campaign in Abyssinia and Somaliland, the Madagascar campaign, the occupation of Syria, the Burma campaign and the partisan war in the Balkans?
As for some arguments for your history professor--I will put them in a separate post.
I don't totally disagree with you, however I think you are oversimplifying.
For instance, my son is 9th grade in school. He is taking US History from the Civil War to the present. That is a long period to cover in depth. So when the subject area of WW II is covered it concentrates on what the US forces did during the war since it is a US history course, not a world history course.
At the college level it is broken out the same way. However, it does go much more in depth and does cover all participants.
I am curious how the subject matter is covered in British schools of the same level.
As for popular culture...popular culture is about making money, not about history. Do you have specific movies, etc., which you fault?
“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain
I live in US and I don't know about the rest of the world, but here it seems that most of the people would have a clearer view about world war 2 if they knew nothing about it rather than the myth that America won world war 2. It's pretty rediculous when you have to debate the significance of Soviet struggle against fascism with your college professor who thinks Russians won because of LL and winter.
Just curious, where you went to college.
Also, do you know the area of expertise of your professor? The reason I ask is I am an adjunct faculty member in a college history department. I feel very comfortable discussing the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War II. However, I have to stick to the the lesson plan for teaching the Gilded Age or broad aspects of European history.
“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain
I don't totally disagree with you, however I think you are oversimplifying.
For instance, my son is 9th grade in school. He is taking US History from the Civil War to the present. That is a long period to cover in depth. So when the subject area of WW II is covered it concentrates on what the US forces did during the war since it is a US history course, not a world history course.
At the college level it is broken out the same way. However, it does go much more in depth and does cover all participants.
I am curious how the subject matter is covered in British schools of the same level.
As for popular culture...popular culture is about making money, not about history. Do you have specific movies, etc., which you fault?
It's a bit difficult to compare the two educational systems directly and the UK system has changed since I was a schoolboy and is probably very confusing with its 'O Levels' and 'A' Levels.
US 9th grade, presumably age 14-15 compares to the 10th school year (confusingly called the fourth form) in the UK. History is (or was) a compulsory subject from age 4/5 to the 10th school year (1500 years extra history to learn!) and always covered World as well as British and European History. ( Fair enough, British History from 1600 to 1900 IS world history). From the 10th school year through 'O' level and 'A' Level History is one of 8 to 10 elective and specialist subjects and studied in more detail. In my day there was no national curriculum and the study course depended on the examining board ( Oxford University/Cambridge University/London University etc.) so emphasis would vary. British TV also churned out a huge number of historical documentaries that covered topics in detail ( Like The 26 hours of 'The World at War' broadcast in one hour segments at prime time)
Today the position seems to have changed. With a bunch of lefties in power for so long and the provision of a National Curriculum there is more emphasis of the social aspects of history (for instance a huge chunk of WW2 is devoted to the evacuation of children, rise of social welfare and role of women. Nowadays TV documentaries appear to be 26 minute quickies to fit advertising schedules (or our reduced attention span) not that they are all bad, it is just that time constraints force superficiality. The History Channel flights a lot of good stuff, but one example was a programme on the development of the P80 Shooting Star. The programme put a lot of stress on Lockheed pre-war jet plane development (WHAT?) and the fact that the aircraft was designed and delivered in 180 days from order. No mention that Hap Arnold was astonished when he was shown an operational jet plane in England in 1941 or that off-the shelf existing and prototype jet engines were shipped to Lockheed from Britain. The programme also implied that the P80s shipped to Italy got into action chasing Arado reconnaissance craft. Anyone not exposed to real history might have believed that Lockheed were a pioneer of jet fighter development.
As for the feature films and TV dramas. This is my favourite hobby horse.
Some of the worst recent examples are:- U-571-- American submariners capture an Enigma encoding machine from a German U-Boat thus allowing America to win the battle of the Atlantic!
Didn't happen. (Neither did the Kriegsmarine have surface warships hunting American subs.) Two enigmas and code books were captured by the RN long before the US entered the war, Bletchley Park cracked the codes and the real U571 was sunk by the Royal Australian Air Force.
Pearl Harbour-- An American fighter pilot is 'seconded' to the RAF during the Battle of Britain--arriving at an RAF Station IN USAAF Uniform!
Didn't happen. Americans were precluded by US law from enlisting in belligerent forces and all Americans doing so acted clandestinely and faced jail on their return to the US until 1942. 9 Americans flew in fighters in the battle of Britain out of the 2990 pilots although there were many more in training by the time the battle ended. None of the 230 US pilots who eventually served in the RAF Eagle squadrons had ever been in the USAAF. (Pearl Harbour is inaccurate about just everything else too)
Saving Private Ryan--Perhaps one of the best ever films about the landings on Omaha beach, but not about Overlord. It's a story about an American unit tracing an American soldier in an area of American operations-so far, OK. The only mention of any other participants were gratuitous comments between two junior officers that "The British are hung up on the beach.." and that "Monty--he's overated..". Actually the British and Canadians( 60% of the troops) moved smartly off of their beaches where their landings and airborne Ops went like clockwork, as did the other US landing on Utah beach. Omaha was the place where most things went wrong.
There is worse to come. Tom Cruise has a planned movie about Bobby Fiske, a famous Olympian was lived in Britain and was one of the first to join the RAF. The script calls for him to single-handedly win the Battle of Britain in his Spitfire. ( The problem is that the undoubtedly brave Fiske only flew a Hurricane on three missions, never fired his guns and was killed when his aircraft caught fire).
Spielberg is touting a movie that is the "True story of US commandos battling Nazi troops in the Greek islands from their secret base on Symi". The true part is that British SAS and SBS commandos did have a base in a monastery on Symi and raided German positions from there. The Americans did not arrive in the Eastern Mediterranean until 1946!
Going back some years the most notorious re-write was Objective Burma In which Americans carry the most vital Chindit-style operation in Burma--there was such an uproar at the time that the film had to be withdrawn from British and Australian cinemas and Warner Brothers issued an apology and released a re-cut six years later. (I watched it a few weeks ago and I don't find it that offensive compared to today's stuff).
When I was a youngster there were two American TV shows that stick in my mind "The Rat Patrol" and "OSS". The first was all about American troops carrying out long-range commando raids on the Afrika Korps in an unspecifed desert theatre and the second about Americans operating Resistance cells all over occupied Europe. ( Wonder where they got the ideas from?)
If you are a movie buff (or an insomniac with satellite TV) you can see a big change in Hollywood movies over the years. From wartime propaganda nonsense to a high degree of accuracy in the post-war era (The Longest Day, A Bridge too Far, The Victors--even comedy films like 'The whackiest ship in the army' or 'The Americanisation of Emily'). As movies got more expensive it became mandatory to have an American Star in a non-American story to ensure box office potential, so one gets Americans in 'The Great Escape' although no American servicemen were involved in the real escape. (It was though a justifiable artifice to have American actors as an Australian, a Pole and an American in an RAF unit). Likewise in "Bridge on the River Quai" the film was fortunate enough to find the only American imprisoned in Thailand, in 'The Guns of Navarone' and 'Where Eagles Dare' Americans Gregory Peck and Clint Eastwood are drafted into SOE--all acceptable tweaks to the truth. Although why the characters have to be American rather than American actors playing other nationalities, like Donald Sutherland in "Eye of the Needle"* or Glenn Close in 'Paradise Road' escapes me. In recent years the story line must be totally Americanised or it doesn't get made.
An aside. David Putnam (who is British), tried for years to get the money together to make a film from Len Deighton's book 'Bomber'--anyone who has not read it--go out and get a copy now! None of the Studios would make a movie that wasn't American-centred, so Putnam ended up making 'Memphis Belle'--loosing 90% of the sub-plots that could have existed.
Funny thing is that there are lots of good American centred plots that haven't yet been filmed. For Spielberg, there were some daring commando raids by US marines on Hokkaido in Japan and the OSS did some sterling stuff in China and South East Asia.
Of course Hollywood has never had much respect for facts, but in an age when fewer people read in depth, a whole generation are growing up with a distorted view of history. This trend has reached such ludicrous level that there is a good spoof film on the subject--"Churchill--the Hollywood Years" that reveals that a US Army lieutentant called Winston Churchill really won WW2.
*I know that Donald Sutherland is Canadian
Last edited by diodetriode; 05 May 09,, 04:07.
Reason: spelling
Enemy at the Gates was based on a soviet propaganda myth of a sniper duel---but you probably knew that.
Personally I thought it was a great film and it was apparently a big hit Russia even though they showed the (historically accurate) scenes of the NKVD mowing down their own people.
Interestingly for a Hollywood blockbuster it goes against my argument above. There were no big American Stars in the film (Ed Harris is that rare American phenomena--an ACTOR), most of the main players were British.
Enemy at the Gates was based on a soviet propaganda myth of a sniper duel---but you probably knew that.
Personally I thought it was a great film and it was apparently a big hit Russia even though they showed the (historically accurate) scenes of the NKVD mowing down their own people.
Interestingly for a Hollywood blockbuster it goes against my argument above. There were no big American Stars in the film (Ed Harris is that rare American phenomena--an ACTOR), most of the main players were British.
Ed Harris was the only thing that saved the movie from complete embarrassment.
As for historically accurate :
The image of the t-34/85 ( a 1944 tank) on Stalingrad made me LOL :P
It follows up on Nikita's Khrushchev propaganda cult when his role on the defense of Stalingrad was made up after the war...
As for Nkvd battalions (i imagined that they are nkvd when they shot more of they're own people than the Germans ) the uniforms are from regular infantry
here is a historically accurate site NKVD/KGB UNIFORMS - INTRODUCTION
But showing soviet soldiers arriving at Stalingrad locked in trains and attacking in stupid human waves is a insult to all of the soldiers who fought there (on both sides).
However you hit on the essentials....movies are to make money. Nothing more. You can't depend on them for history. I could go all the way back and point out historical inaccuracies in MANY great war movies. So what. They are entertainment, not history. And Alistair MacLean is guilty of placing an American in Where Eagles Dare since he wrote the book and screenplay.
SPR is based on a true story. It really happened but not in the same manner. It was actually a chaplain who had the mission and it was much less dramatic. Heck, even the Abrahamn Lincoln letter which General Marshall reads in the beginning of the move, while factual, was incorrect. Of the 5 brothers Lincoln wrote of, 2 died, 1 was wounded, 1 was a POW and 12 was a deserter. Also Spielberg admits he did the story as a tribute to his father's generation and took articitc license in a lot of instances.
The History Channel is a joke....I stopped watching it years ago.
I wish instead of the BS story U-571 they had doen the story about the capture of the U-505. Much better story.
BTW, ref Enigma you left out the Poles cracking the Enigma machine and turning over to the Brits & French.
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Mind you Sydney looks like it was taken over by the Japs, look at the Asian population. :))
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