The World War II Database has it all: Event Summaries, Book Reviews, Participant Profiles, detailed specs on ships and aircraft, and 3500+ photos. The DBs RSS feeds are here and here.
Some readers of this sight may remember Joe Medicine Crow from Ken Burns’ The War. His story certainly added to the drama of the series, in telling how he fulfilled the requirements to become a chief: “touch a living enemy soldier; disarm an enemy; lead a successful war party; and steal an enemy’s horse” (source). The last part certainly caught my attention.
What viewers of the series might not know is that Joe Medicine Crow is a big deal historian, writer, and advocate for his people. Read more here.
Episode 6 marks a high point for me in the series, especially the discussion of Iwo Jima. All the color footage was amazing to see, mixed in with sound to boot, and that certainly heightened the drama of the descriptions. Amazing stuff.
This is been the surprise of the series for me…the sound of it all. Most of the footage I’ve seen from the period is without sound. Certainly the capability was there, but the process too cumbersome, I think. But Burns’ crew has mixed it all together to create “an experience” (machine gun fire, shelling, etc), all cued up to match the images on the scene. Docu-movie magic, I’d say.
So in the Invasion episode of The War, I found the discussion of Operation Cobra a little short. I mean, how is it possible to discuss this event and not mention the fact that Allied bombers also killed and wounded American soldiers due to “short” drops? One web page…
Over 100 U.S. soldiers were killed and approximately 500 were wounded. One unit, 1st Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, from the 30th Infantry Division, suffered 25 soldiers killed (including General Lesley J. McNair) and 131 wounded.
150 Americans were killed by accident by these bombs. The highest ranking fatality of this massive friendly fire incident was a three-star general of the US Army, “blown out of his slit trench some two miles behind where I had been hole up…”
This seems like a pretty big detail to exclude. How hard would have it have been to mention that in one sentence, out of respect to the dead?
For you folks surfing in looking for Eugene Sledge info, check this review of his book, With the Old Breed-At Peleliu and Okinawa. It’s a shameless plug to a review by a pretty talented writer at the DB. Enjoy.
Additionally, I took this photo at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in VA a few months back. As I walked through, reading about the history of the Marines, I stumbled upon this. It’s a display about Sledge’s book with a video narrative, much like the kinds of things you see on the History channel. It was one of the few video displays there. I couldn’t get a good shot straight on.
If you happened to catch Episode 4 of Ken Burns’ The War (this is the invasion episode), you may have noticed the paratrooper/smashed pumpkin simile, with no author attributed. It was referenced as “one man described it as…”. That one man is Don Burgett, member of the 101st Airborne (A-1st-506), and noted author of four memoirs concerning the war in Europe.
So on page 87 of Currahee: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy, Burgett sets the scene: he has just landed and was getting out of this jump gear laying on his back as another plane flew overhead, “hedge-hopping” out of cowardice the author suggests, with paratroopers jumping. Burgett writes:
Their chutes were pulling out of the pack trays and starting to unfurl when they hit the ground. Seventeen men hit the ground before their chutes had time to open. They made a sound like a large ripe pumpkin being thrown down to burst against the ground.
It’s a shame Burns’ crew chose not to highlight this writer by name. I mean you can’t even say “paratrooper Don Burgett” and let others in the world google the name and discover his work? Please, visit his web site and buy his books.
Viewers of Ken Burns’ The War no doubt noted the reference to Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series in Episode 1. The offerings on youtube are pretty scant, though there is one clip, likely from early in the series, where all the setup is taking place. Note the emphasis on different religions in uniting against the “dark” half of the world. Sorry to say, too, that the clip is one small part of a larger piece that is cut off pretty abruptly, though it’s still worth viewing.
The link above will play all the movies online (a national archives page), with the proper software on your computer.
Saw this rather interesting review of Ken Burns’ The War due in September 2007. The lead graf (in bold) caught my eye. Imagine that.
Ken Burns continues his long march through key passages in U.S. history with “The War,” a characteristically serious, patriotic yet flawed account of Americans and their memories of World War II. Utterly of a piece with the work of PBS’ favorite documaker, this 14-hour epic contains a fresh wrinkle only in that there’s no parade of history experts to offer a distanced perspective. Rather, Burns has made a deliberately populist American version of the so-called “good war,” with all the assets and deficits that entails.
This article hits Burns a little for his narrow nationalism, in the choice to construct the series through the lens of 4 American towns. The criticism here has to do with perspective, according to the article by Robert Koehler. There is much more to this conflict, and “[a]s such, WWII as a whole is short-shrifted in ‘The War,’ with such enormous conflicts as the Japanese conquest of East Asia and the painfully protracted but finally victorious Soviet defense against Hitler’s invading army either ignored altogether or reduced to a footnote, merely because the U.S. wasn’t involved.”
This is a fair statement, and it’s good to know going in, especially the part concerning “no history experts.” What’s up with that, Ken? Populist, indeed. Flawed/fading memories, probably. But I’ll still watch. But I’m not giving any $$ to PBS, no matter how many times they cut from the show.
So Ken Burns set his sights on WWII after giving us projects like The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The West (one of my favs), among many projects. To this I say:
“Hey, Ken. What took you so long?”
I read in a forum a while back about a guy who just happened to bump into Burns on an NYC street corner. He relayed parts of that conversation to the forum about the necessity of getting certain things in the mini-series regarding his field of interest. It’s an interesting side note for me for this upcoming series. That’s some cajones right there to have some words with the biggest documetary filmmaker in the US about content.
I found this bit on youtube as well that features parts of the series with commentary from Burns. It looks like a news report from VOA (Voice of America). The series is set to air in seven parts this September.
