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I've watched most of the show now and it's ... fine? Picking Masters of the Air as the source material is a bit of a weird choice, since that book is generally so high level and deals with the big picture and the whys of the daylight bombing campaign, which then strangely is completely missing from the show. I mean, it's not that strange: a bunch of generals arguing about philosophies and trying to bend Churchill's ear into favouring their approach wouldn't give us the dazzlingly beautiful bomber boys we need, so that poo poo needs to go out the window. And yes, the book does also feature first hand accounts from and stories about some of the men who fought in the 100th, but I have to think it might have been better to use something like John Corner's excellent Combat Crew as the primary source material, since that book largely focuses on Corner's own crew, while also drawing from other books to get our "these poor fuckers just got annihilated" content. But hey, at least the book is more credible than Ambrose's Band of Brothers, the poster child for the "just trust me bro" school of research. I think the main thing I like here is that we haven't really had any high quality aerial combat for ages now, and the show definitely delivers that. I have some doubts about some of the specifics, and have a feeling that a lot of the dogfight scenes have been sweetened up a bit to make for more exciting TV, which is kinda understandable but also kinda lovely. It's the same thing as with Greyhound: the actual subject matter was already incredibly dramatic and gripping, and we didn't need to add a loving U-Boat commander who pops up to the surface to taunt the Americans, or make the B-17 crash landing into an RAF commander's vegetable field literally happen on the edge of Scotland so the plane's bottom can scrape the cliffs before ditching. The parts of the show that aren't aerial combat and bombing fair much less well, possibly because it's so rushed. I think topics like the mental strain of the bombing campaign on the airmen and the ways they tried to cope with it are definitely worth exploring, but doing it in part of one 45 minute episode just isn't enough. If I hadn't read the book and didn't have the additional deeper discussions in my head, I don't think I would've gotten much out of the Flak Farm episode etc. Here it just comes off as I dunno, like they feel like they had to get some ~hot romance~ and crying bomber boys in the show and so here you go, there's Bucky loving and there's some guy being sad, boxes ticked. The show also has an unfortunately one-sided point of view, and bear with me for a moment, because gently caress Nazis, I am not expecting a pro-Nazi show. But I did roll my eyes a bit in the episode where Egan gets shot down. In the previous episode we see him walking through the ruins of a bombed London city with a woman gut-wrenchingly wailing for her killed child. Then in the next episode Egan is taken through a German city that was just bombed. Would have been a great moment for some reflection, maybe? Remember that poor English woman? Well, these people are also suffering just like that, because their leaders are murderous lunatics who started a war and insist on keeping it going to the bitter and bloody end. Hell, the book IIRC has chapters dedicated to discussing the effect of the bombing campaign on German civilians, so it would even have fit the source material! But nope, instead the German mob does what a German mob does and immediately starts brutally and insanely murdering the downed airmen, making it perfectly clear that no, these are all the bad people, and fire bombing their cities is in fact a Good Thing. Which did happen, and there's no excusing it, but it also happened with downed German crews in England and with downed enemy crews EVERYWHERE and wasn't -- as the episode's description says -- the inhuman cruelty of the Nazis. Yeah I know, joke's on me for expecting nuance from my TV show, but there we are. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 08:46
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McNally posted:I know I'm painting with a wide brush here but, like the post above me says, maybe it's ok to not humanize them right now. I dunno. In general I think we should humanize everyone and try to understand how normal everyday people with normal everyday lives can end up doing hosed up things, so hopefully we can try to prevent it from happening again. And just in the general sense of "we're all human beings here". Portraying the enemy as inhuman monsters generally doesn't lead to good places. But even beyond that, I think it's kinda crap and dishonest film-making, especially when we're 80 years detached from the war in question, and have the benefit of decades of research, analysis and discussion. Turning the German villages Egan meets into a bloodthirsty lynch mob that's filmed constantly in a horror movie villain style just feels lazy and cheap, but also not true to the spirit of the book, or the men who fought in the war. They had plenty of doubts and questions about the morality of dumping thousands of pounds of bombs on cities when they knew full well that a formation of B-17s couldn't just blow up the target, but also level blocks upon blocks around it in every direction. Of course some others didn't and were glad to be bombing civilians to hell. Hell, if you don't want to humanize the Germans for some reason, you could also have shown that a lot of the victims of area bombing were prisoners of war, slaves and prisoners of the Nazis because the places that were good targets for bombing were also close to the places where the Nazis kept the slaves who toiled in them. And again, this all with the disclaimer of gently caress Nazis and gently caress everyone who idolizes Nazis. E: and this isn't a problem just about the Germans, but pretty much all the non-Americans in the show. All the British airmen we've seen in the episodes I watched (I believe the Tuskegee Airmen episode is next for me) sound and act like Family Guy level stereotypes. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 18:20
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Cojawfee posted:Thinking about what you'd have to do, there are a few things. You could send a letter to someone outside Germany, but can you do that without getting caught? Did the German authorities spy on their own mail? If you could get a letter out, would anyone believe it? They did, and the punishment for something like that would have been death. Hell, they had spies and rear end kissers everywhere to rat on their neighbours and coworkers for not being Nazi enough, and the punishment for that was death as well! A factory worker identified as Marianne Elise K. was sentenced to death for telling this joke in 1944: "Hitler and Göring are standing on top of Berlin's radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. "Why don't you just jump?" suggests Göring." It's super easy to sit here in 2024 going "well I would've done X", and as much as I like to believe I would have done something, I'm not sure I would have. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have become a Nazi believer and would have opposed them at least in my head, but beyond that, would I have had the guts to step up to a seemingly unstoppable machine of destruction, knowing it would mean my death without any actual results? Probably not. (I am saying all this in full agreement with you. Germans who knew are not blameless, but it's not like they could've realistically done anything about it. And yet many did, a lot of Germans worked to oppose Hitler and his goons to their deaths, all the way through the war. I have a ton of respect for them, just like I do for anyone who dares to oppose their tyrannical governments. On kind of a similar note I'd recommend Sam Kean's "Bastard Brigade", which doesn't deal with concentration camps, but rather the efforts by scientists both in the West and within Nazi Europe to sabotage the Nazis' efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Some of these stories are loving wild.) Also, the West knew. We know for a fact that reports started going out by the latest in mid-1941 in the form of reports from spies, captured German communications etc. By early 1942 the Western leaders knew that a campaign of total and industrial annihilation was being waged by the Nazis on Jewish prisoners and other minorities. Again, not to say this in any kind of "so it's the fault of the Western leadership for not stopping it sooner" sense. Could they have done more? Quite probably. But an invasion of Europe probably wouldn't have succeeded a lot quicker under any circumstances. Like many things in history, it's not something that has a clear cut right and wrong answer, and a lot of room for debate and nuance. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 09:46
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Yeah, I agree with all of this. quote:And above, a lot of people ask "Why didn't they bomb the camps?" and you then need to tell them about the accuracy of WW2 bombing, even low level. Oh yea, lets free the prisoners and Dachau by dropping bombs on the camp, we won't hit any prisoners! The best way to end the holocaust was to destroy Nazi Germany, which is what they did. Yeah, it's a complicated topic. The idea of bombing the camps was floated early on, but was largely turned down for a variety of reasons. Allied leadership maintained that bombers couldn't fly to the camps (which is bullshit, because they frequently bombed industrial sites very close to the camps, and in fact once accidentally bombed Auschwitz during a raid on one of those sites as bombs fell short and demolished the SS barracks at the camp), and while some bomber command staff explored the possibility, it was never given a green light. It was considered unrealistic, because (as you point out) strategic bombing wasn't accurate enough to damage the camps without killing the prisoners, and the distance was extreme for smaller aircraft. Additionally, as the larger camps were located close to industrial sites, they were heavily protected by AA, and ultimately (rightly or wrongly) bomber command leadership figured the small delays inflicted by for instance bombing the railroads wasn't worth the effort when resources were so limited. Opinions on the issue were also divided. I remember reading in some book once that some Jewish (or possibly Polish in exile?) leadership was in favour of bombing the camps to the ground, fully well aware of it meaning the deaths of most if not all prisoners, with the idea being that even if they died, they would die quickly instead of being slowly tortured to death by Nazis. And of course the raids would also kill the Nazis, as well as slow down the Holocaust while the camps were rebuilt. Other Jewish leaders at the time opposed the idea, knowing full well that it would mean the deaths of all the Jewish prisoners held at the death camps, and also play into the Nazis' hands. And as for who knew and when, by December 1942 the Holocaust was public knowledge in the West. The governments knew earlier, but suppressed publication of the reports, but in December 1942 the State Department released a report saying two million Jewish civilians had been murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust, and news of the death camps quickly spread. Every Allied soldier would've known about the camps years before they liberated them, but as was pointed out earlier in the thread, knowing is different from seeing the victims and the horror for yourself.
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Apr 16, 2024 08:36
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kiminewt posted:Yet if you read the whole article it was clear that there were very special circumstances here. It allowed the regime to do poo poo that it wanted to do anyway. Citing this as an example "oh if they had just protested even a little it would've solved it". Anyone claiming BUT IF THEY'D ONLY PROTESTED is disingenuous or ignorant as gently caress, because this is what usually happened to protesters in Nazi Germany: quote:The White Rose (German: Weiße Rose, pronounced [ˈvaɪ̯sə ˈʁoːzə] ⓘ) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students and one professor at the University of Munich: Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942; they ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943.[1] They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People's Court (Volksgerichtshof); many of them were imprisoned and executed. If anyone is interested in the topic, I'd recommend the game Through the Darkest of Times which is kind of a life simulation set in Germany during the rise of the Nazis. You operate a small resistance cell, and it's a pretty good (and well researched) primer on the atmosphere in Germany at the time, and the dangers even non-violent protesters and dissidents faced. It's also extremely depressing, for obvious reasons. And this isn't to say that every German or even most Germans opposed the Nazis. Many obviously agreed with them, many more didn't care as long as it didn't affect them personally(*). But instead of saying "why not more", I think it's valuable to understand the hosed up oppression even Germans were under at the time, and appreciate the people who did risk their lives. * and hell, not just in Germany. Nazis had a lot of sympathizers throughout Europe and the world. On a topic very related to this thread, for instance Switzerland was actually anything but neutral. The Masters of the Air book describes Allied bomber crews trying to land in "neutral" Switzerland, only to get shot down (or shot up) by Swiss fighters, or if they succeeded in landing, getting violently beaten up by Swiss soldiers and police, many of whom were either Nazi sympathizers or outright Nazis themselves. And then sent to prison camps where conditions were so poor they would've made many Nazis think this poo poo was getting a bit out of hand. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 08:38
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Stegosnaurlax posted:Hard to have a conversation about it when you are flying a fortress. Yeah, because the captain keeps yelling to keep the intercom free from chatter  E: Considering the topic of this thread, people might be into these books: John Cormer: COMBAT CREW -- Corner's own war autobiography, written based on the extensive diaries he kept during the war. He was the flight engineer (and therefore top turret gunner) on a B-17 crew and completed his tour of duty over Europe. He did not fly in the 100th, but his bomb group took part in most of the same missions, so he experienced Schweinfurt and all the other horrible poo poo. It's a very personal account, mostly dealing with Corner's own crew and his close friends in other crews. Very highly recommended, the audio book is also really good. Frank Murphy: LUCK OF THE DRAW. Frank did fly with the 100th, and it's not surprising that he did not in fact complete his tour of duty. Instead he was shot down and spent a portion of the war in brutal conditions in a Nazi prison camp. Also good, and has a different perspective than Corner's book. The audio book is again recommended, James Holland: BIG WEEK. As we all know, "Big Week" was a special operation by Bomber Command where they basically hammered Germany around the clock. Holland has written many excellent books about both wars, and this is no exception. He draws from a variety of sources to give an in-depth look at the massive operation from all perspectives. Once again, the audio book is excellent. Max Hastings: CHASTISE. Max Hastings is possibly my favourite war historian. He is very accurate and does high quality research, but he's somehow able to write extremely engrossing narratives out of his research. In this case, the book naturally deals with Operation Chastise, ie. the Dambusters raids. It's a wild story of mad inventors and daredevil pilots. Also discusses the effects and failures of the operation, so it's pretty harrowing reading. Or in my case, listening, because I listened to the audio book, and can definitely recommend that option. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Apr 17, 2024 |
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Apr 17, 2024 11:09
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Jerusalem posted:The level of horrific brutality that would be on display during the Pacific Theater was only starting, and for both good and bad it should be clear right from this first episode that this was going to be an entirely different kind of series than Band of Brothers. drat, J-Ru. Great write-up. It inspired me to rewatch The Pacific for the first time in years, and you are definitely on the money about how the first episode is shot and styled completely differently from BoB. I remember quite liking the show when I first watched it, even though there was one episode I didn't like (]spoiler]it's not the Australia episode, it's the one where that one guy tools around some hospital for most of the episode[/spoiler]), and this was better than I remembered.
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Apr 17, 2024 19:37
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I've been watching more of The Pacific and Leckie's kind of a pretentious little tit, isn't he?
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Apr 19, 2024 16:14
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Arc Hammer posted:He's a writer. I remember vaguely hearing that either his book, or Sledge's With the Old Breed was pretty poo poo, but can't remember which it was. On instinct alone I'd put my money on Mr. "It's a sonnet for the fallen".
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Apr 19, 2024 16:31
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Arc Hammer posted:Leckie's writing was in Helmet for my Pillow. And apparently The Pacific is heavily based on it.
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Apr 19, 2024 17:15
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Re: The Pacific It's wild that this guy  was in Fury Road. 
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Apr 19, 2024 17:29
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:At times, yes, but I liked him more and more every time I watched the series. He is a really well rounded character, as written and as acted. The Pacific lets you see even the "good" main characters be dickheads, in a way BoB does not. BoB's big weakness is that it's entirely based on Ambrose's book, which is the number one in "just trust me bro" history, as well as primary source information in the form of interviews with the Easy Company vets, who are understandably not the world's most objective sources. I still love the show and think it does a lot of stuff really well, but it's worth remembering that historical accuracy isn't always one of those things. On the topic of The Pacific, I watched all of it again for the first time in some years, and really liked it. For the most part. My big problem with the show is that they tried to cram too much into just 10 episodes, and then spent three episodes with the Marines tooling around Australia, a hospital colony and the United States. All of that tooling around is valid and valuable stuff, because they are topics worth exploring and also significant factors in the war time experience of two of our PoV characters, so cutting them isn't the option, but I would've loved to see more episodes. Because of the time constraints, the time skips are pretty loving extreme, and if someone doesn't know the history, the show doesn't do a great job of conveying just how long the Marines spent on some of these islands. What the show DOES do a great job of conveying is the horrible, monstrous inhumanity of their war experience. It should go without saying that all war is horrible and for all the "ahm yes but we fought a war of honour with the Germans in Europe" poo poo, there's no such thing as honourable or clean war. It's all human misery and suffering. But that being said, the Pacific theater was especially monstrous, and THAT comes through clearly. Of course the show only gives us the American perspective of Iwo Jima, Peleliu etc, but holy gently caress I don't understand how any of those guys came out with anything remaining of their sanity. I know that many (most?) of them didn't and spent the rest of their lives trying to deal with undiagnosed PTSD and their trauma, but the fact that they were able to function at all is astonishing. The blasted hellscape of volcanic rock and more different volcanic rock just looks nightmarish even before you consider that every nook and cranny could potentially conceal an enemy sniper or soldier who will patiently wait for you to go to sleep before unloading on your guys. The whole place is littered with mangled human corpses. What's also depicted well in the show is the mental toll it takes on the Marines, and this is IMO one of the big strengths of The Pacific over BoB. It's not afraid of showing them breaking down and being vulnerable, which BoB mostly didn't do except for when Buck finally snapped after losing one too many of his old pals. But here everyone just either breaks down in tears or starts trying to intentionally kill their emotions to make it through. I really loved the scene in Episode 7 where Sledge, having seen the beloved Captain Haldane randomly shot dead by a sniper, psyches himself up to start mutilating that one Japanese soldier's corpse. Snafu, himself being a profoundly unwell and unhinged person from the moment we meet him, intervenes. He doesn't want Sledge to cross that border and desperately wants to see him retain some of his humanity and soul, possibly because he knows what it's like to not have one anymore, or possibly out of love for Sledge. And then he goes right back to tossing small pebbles into the exposed brain matter of the other dead Japanese soldier in the blasted dugout, because he's so far gone it doesn't matter to him anymore. And then we get to Okinawa, and things go from hellish to unspeakably monstrous, as the Japanese soldiers use Okinawan civilians as cover, and force them to suicide bomb the Americans, sometimes literally carrying their babies with them as they got, because that increases the likelihood that the Americans will let them get close enough. It gets so bad that if I didn't know that 100% happened, I wouldn't believe it. But then again that applies to so much of the poo poo the Japanese got up to during World War II. It's a great show, but god drat it's hard to watch.
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Apr 24, 2024 08:13
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:good post First of all: mind blown at Sledge being Little Timmy. Holy poo poo. Second, the Gunny Haney thing reminded me of the general duality of these Marines. On the one hand all the veterans are at this point brutal and hardened killers who won't blink twice at the idea of roasting a bunker full of enemies with a flamethrower and then yelling "don't shoot them, let the fuckers burn" when they stumble out. They also relentlessly bully each other, but when the chips are really down and someone is TRULY having a hard time, they are capable of expressing surprising amounts of gentleness and consideration. Aside from the scene where Snafu protects Sledge (and you're right, it is incredibly well acted both by Lil' Timmy and Rami Malek) there's many others where someone gently leads a person away, or where they just collectively make up some convenient excuse to get someone away from the front lines to have a break. I don't really know where I'm going with this. I guess it's just a nice contrast and some pretty good acting from these guys.
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Apr 25, 2024 07:48
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Arc Hammer posted:Can't recall off the top of my head but I think in reality the nurse mentioned in BoB was from Africa rather than Belgium. Yeah, there was a real nurse there that had some kind of connection to Doc Roe, but she was indeed black and from Africa. As a fun aside, the unit that broke the German siege of Bastogne and rescued the 101st? The 761st Tank Battalion, although it was left out of the show (and IIRC Ambrose's book) for mysterious reasons. I wonder what those could be?  Oh. I do super recommend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's amazingly titled "Brothers In Arms: The Epic Story of the 761St Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes", because holy gently caress those guys put up with some poo poo and got next to no credit for their amazing heroics, again for mysterious reasons. Apparently it's finally being made into a movie, and I sure as gently caress hope it's better than Lucas' poo poo-rear end Red Tails.
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Apr 25, 2024 20:16
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Arc Hammer posted:I actually did know about the 761st breaking through. Granted, I learned it from watching Archer Dreamland, but still, that's such a cool historical note that I otherwise wouldn't have known. Yeah, it's some real loving bullshit that not only were the unit's heroics acknowledged for decades, they were actively suppressed. They had to wait until 1978 for their Presidential Citation, despite being now recognized as one of the best Allied tank units in the war. They fought for something stupid like 185 days straight in Europe, liberated a concentration camp, broke the siege at Bastogne and suffered horrible casualties because turns out Patton, being the racist turbo rear end in a top hat that he was, figured he'd send the Black Panthers to the worst places. (and Patton 100% was a loving turbo racist, even though later history has tried to white wash him, pointing to a speech where he says he doesn't care what colour his soldiers are, as long as they kill Germans. Sounds good, until you hear the less famous comment he made immediately afterwards to his aide still so close to the men of the 761st that they could easily hear him, to the effect of 'I asked for fighting men and they send me {N-words}") Another fun fact: baseball legend Jackie Robinson served in the unit. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Apr 25, 2024 |
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Apr 25, 2024 20:32
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vuk83 posted:The 761st weren’t directly part of the main relief of Bastogne. That was just one of the things they did. From their own records from December 19th 1944 to January 1945: quote:Moved with 3d Army thru Maginot Line into Germany between Saarbrucken and Strasbourg; arrived at Offagne. In support of 345th Inf Regt of 87th Div, Rondu and Nimbermont, Belgium were taken (31 Dec). With intense fighting, Tillet was taken. Closed the Marche-Bastogne Road, a supply artery for the enemy (5-9 Jan 45). Working with the 17th Airborne Div in an area North of Bastogne toward Houffalize, cut the road from Liege and Bastogne. Gouvy and Hautbillan fell to the combined assaults of 761st Bn and the paratroopers. Forced enemy back to Watermall, Espeles, and Thommen, and captured the towns. Road from St Vith to Bastogne cut (Dates not given). 29 Jan – In support of 3d Bn 346 Regt, moved thru 82d Airborne Div on the north flank; attacked to the south. In support of 345 Regt, attacked town of Huem (30 Jan). Engaged enemy column near Emmerscheid and again over the German border (31 Jan 45). But I admit it's been a few years since I read Brothers in Arms, so I may be misremembering. Many of those places can feasibly be inside the siege cordon, but it's hard to say because the report is so vague. I should fish out my copy and check. E: Or maybe conflating with four segregated (read: all African American) field artillery units that were directly involved in the Siege of Bastogne by being inside the siege: the 969th Field Artillery Battalion, the 333rd Field Artillery Group, the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion and the 578th Field Artillery Battalion. After they took some horrendous losses in the Siege, "the 333rd, 969th, and other artillery groups were commandeered by the 101st [Airborne Division], and formed a temporary artillery group". Also mysteriously absent. I'm not saying Ambrose and the Easy Company guy are racists or anything. It's just strange that there was a really good and easy opportunity to get some non-white people into the show and bring up units that sure as gently caress had their deeds glossed over, but at every turn they just didn't. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 18:51
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toggle posted:I'd highly recommend watching episodes 5, 6 and 7 back to back. It's really exhausting, and in hindsight the misery can be too much, but it's the best way to experience those episodes, one after each other. That's how I did it. Watched episode 5, thought "ehh, I'll watch six now too" and then just couldn't leave 7 until the next night. As you say, it's definitely exhausting, but considering that's clearly the thing The Pacific is going for, I'd say that's a good thing. As we say in the wrestling forum, I'm getting worked and loving it. And seconding the thoughts (and J-Ru's insanely good post) above, I really think the show's biggest failure is that they tried to cram too much into just 10 hour long episodes. Almost everything feels rushed, and the time scales involved definitely do not come across in the show. Would've benefited from two or three more episodes at least.
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Apr 29, 2024 07:50
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twistedmentat posted:That's kind of a over simplification of it, but its hard to say the British conducted the war in this really weird way, that it was just a matter of time before they won simply because they're British and have a can do attitude. Well I mean, they did a lot of stuff REALLY WELL. Their military intelligence and code breaking people were incredible and ran rings around the nazis. They also had really skilled air force pilots, and their work during the Battle of Britain is rightfully still hailed as some of the best aerial campaigning of all time. They also pioneered the use of commandos and special forces in a way that's still felt to this day. And of course, with a few exceptions, the Royal Navy also did some sterling work during the war. You're not wrong though. I think they were kind of caught with their pants down when the war started. The British army was quite small and had really bad equipment in many ways (their tanks for instance were comically poo poo). Then their first attempts to defend France with the French went completely pear shaped and they lost most of what little equipment they had in the mad dash for the coast and the rushed evacuation. And then they had to scramble. They also suffered heavily from their pre-war (and even during-war) officers largely being people who had gotten those positions through connections and their last name, rather than any actual skill at commanding men. This improved during the war as they started replacing large adult fail sons with actually capable officers, but never really got fully fixed. And probably still hasn't even to this day. I think they, like many others, were also caught unprepared for what modern war in the 1940s was actually like. They had planned and trained with a set of assumptions that didn't turn out to really hold a lot of water, and then had to test those theories against an enemy who -- for all their own failures and Hitler's lovely leadership -- were fighting a whole new kind of war at least in the early years. In contrast, because the United States didn't really enter the war in Europe until much later, they got to react and adapt to it for several years before actually putting boots on European soil. Also I'm not entirely sure what you mean about Italy, the Allies (as in the Americans and the British) both invaded Sicily and then the Italian mainland together in 1943. And I'm also not entirely sure what you mean about Holland. I assume you're specifically talking about Operation Market-Garden, which was indeed something of an command failure. Intelligence had picked up German units in the area and apparently photographed German tanks in the area, but those reports never fully made it down the chain for whatever reason. And the idea that the German army was on its last legs was not some kind of British invention, it was generally shared by the entire Allied leadership. Prior to Market-Garden Patton famously said that if they gave him 400000 gallons of gas, his tanks could be in Berlin in two days.
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May 9, 2024 12:30
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