WWII in popular culture

The Bridge at Remagen

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:21:25 +0000

This article is about the book. For the 1969 movie with the same name, see The Bridge at Remagen (movie).

This is the incredible story about one day, March 7, 1945, when American forces (9th Armored Division) captured the Ludendorff Bridge — better known as the bridge at Remagen. A bridge across the Rhine, more or less the last defense the German army had on the western front. Nobody had counted on capturing any standing bridge over the Rhine, the Allied forces bombarded the Rhine bridges from the air almost daily and the German forces blew up all bridges as soon as the enemy were closing in. The capture of the bridge at Remagen came as a major surprise to both sides, and for the Allied it meant that they could get tens of thousands of troops and equipment over the Rhine in just a matter of days.

Ken Hechler — serving under S.L.A. Marshall, the chief U.S. Army combat historian during WWII — was attached to the 9th Armored Division during the time of the "Miracle of Remagen". He was there at the time of the action, and he interviewed several of the main soldiers involved, both American and German. (Later on after the war Ken Hechler also interviewed such high ranking Germans as Hermann Göring, Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel.) Hechler is a man with great attention to the small details and he must have spent a long time editing this book and going over his notes. It’s well structured and this is actually a book that you can read cover to cover in just one day, it’s that captivating.

I will go as far as saying that this book is a masterpiece in it’s area. No other book I’ve read so far has give such great detail on both sides of a conflict. The Germans contribute just as much information to the story as the Americans, which is a rare feat in this kind of book. There are some great illustrations in the book although the maps could have been a little bit clearer, but that’s a minor issue if anything. Civilian accounts are there, but not to the same extent as the armies obviously, and they add even more feeling and details to this amazing piece of military history.

Just as an end note I would like to thank Steve Fesenmaier, since he was the one that made me go out and buy the book after a comment he left on this website here.

Short info

Format: Book
Author:
Ken Hechler
Year: 1957
Pages: 272

One of Our Aircraft is Missing

admin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:49:28 +0000

A British bomber crew of the RAF is shot down over the Netherlands but are able to bail out before crashing. Five of the six crewmembers find each other soon on the ground, but the sixth one is missing. Their duty is now to find their missing friend and get back to England in one piece, but how? The Dutch resistance plays a major part in the story and in the airmen’s escape.

One of Our Aircraft is Missing is a bit unusual in the way that it’s not the RAF pilots that are the heroes, the heroes are the Dutch people and the resistance. It’s their plan, their job to try and make it work, they set everything up and the pilots are merely tagging along. For a wartime film it is strange not to have the RAF pilots the heroes, but it works without a doubt and it’s great to get a look into the resistance’s underground movement. It’s primarily the Dutch women that helps them with the escape plans, risking their own lives doing so. It’s also unusual for having a large part of the dialog in Dutch, but even without subtitles you will be able to understand the majority of it, with the important parts being translated for the RAF pilots.

With no musical score the only sound we hear are the same sounds the pilots hear, this helps to contribute to the realistic feel of the movie. Powell and Pressburger is a great team, this is their first movie where they both share writing, producer and director credit and it’s a brilliant movie, one of the best made during the wartime era.

Short info

Format: Movie
Year: 1942
Director:
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Length: 102 min
Language: English, Dutch
Country: UK

Events:

Fictional

Military Unit:

Links to:

D-Day

admin — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:14:27 +0000

“D-Day, June 6, 1944: the climactic battle of World War II” as the full title reads is in fact simply a book about D-Day, it’s written by author Stephen Ambrose of Band of Brothers fame. The first third of the book is about the background to the attack, a short biography of the commanders Eisenhower and Rommel, and finally the training and preparation for the invasion. After that initial background information the book moves on the invasion itself.

This book is rather the opposite to what I expected, which might be one reason I did not find it to be a good book. D-Day was the third book by Stephen Ambrose that I read, after reading Band of Brothers and Pegasus Bridge I knew that Ambrose was a great storyteller. Band of Brothers tells a story that spans several years, Pegasus Bridge is basically just about one day (D-Day), so therefore I thought this book would be somewhat the same style. But instead this book is nothing like the ones I’ve read before, you don’t get to know anyone personally — except for maybe Eisenhower in the first part of the book. I do understand that the number of soldiers fighting during D-Day were far greater then just Easy Company or John Howard’s men at Pegasus, but I still think it would have been possible to tell some of the soldiers stories in greater detail. Most of the time a soldier only gets between one and three sentences, at the maximum half a page. So there you are, every third sentence you’re introduced to a new soldier and are able to read a few lines of his story then it’s on to the next one.

Another thing that I found really annoying to be honest is the centralization around the American forces. This book is not about D-Day as an historically account from all sides of the battle. There are very few stories told from the German side, and the same goes for resistance, the Free French forces who assaulted Ouistreham aren’t much accounted for et cetera. The British and Canadian forces who landed on and captured Gold, Juno and Sword beaches don’t get nearly as much room combined as Omaha gets by itself. The same goes for the British Airborne, which gets less then one third of the number of pages as the American Airborne gets. Not only is it that Ambrose writes far less about the non-American soldiers but also the overall tone of the whole book is more Americanized if you don’t mind me saying so. I’m not saying that American didn’t contribute enormous forces and sacrifice on D-Day and during WWII, all I’m saying is that this book is not the best book to read if you want to read about all sides of the battle. I made a chart just to better be able to show how much is written about the different nationalities who fought.

As you can see, the blue fields outnumber the green and red ones with quite a large margin. The red fields, the German side of the battle, are barely visible. The fields “Home News: USA” and “Home News: World” might need an explanation: These are about how the people back in the states and all around the world took the news about the invasion. The USA section is mostly about the people in New York but also small towns all around the nation. The World section mentions how the news were received in London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Moscow and Berlin — and as you can see the American section is once again considerably larger. What was even weirder, to me the strangest thing in this book, is the fact that after the chapters on Utah and Omaha the following chapter is that on the home fronts. Even before Ambrose mentioned the British beaches we already learn what the Americans, Londoners and people all around the world said about it. (I chose not to have that order in the chart since I thought it would confuse some people if I split the beaches.)

There are nine maps in the book. Two maps about the overall invasion plans, one about the German strength in Western Europe, two about Utah beach and four about Omaha. Not a single map about any of the British beaches. Am I the only one to find that strongly irritating and rather stupid? Overall I find this book lacking in detail, some parts are very detailed but most of the time the focus is more on the small “meaningless” details then the more important ones. I know this has been a quite negative look on this book, but this is what I felt after reading it.

Short info

Format: Book
Author:
Stephen Ambrose
Year: 1994
Pages: 655

Campaign:

Events:

Military Unit:

Real Life Personalities:

Links to:

Amazon.com

Zvezda

admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:16:37 +0000

Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944, on the Eastern Front, is the location for this story. The Soviet army on the front lines has sent out two patrols go gather information about the enemies’ positions and their strengths, primarily about their tank divisions. None of the patrols have returned and the need for information is strong enough to send out a third patrol, the task falls on seven men some of them just sent to the front line. These seven scouts, in the cover of darkness, goes behind enemy lines with orders not to shoot to give away position and not to take prisoners.

We follow these seven men very closely, and see the battle as they see it and we know nothing more then they do. I really like this style of story telling, were you have no insight into the enemy’s plan or know where the other two patrols are/were lost. The cinematography is another part of the movie that is very well done, one scene stood out for me as a masterpiece of cinematography — were you have two of the soldiers in a German truck and one of them is looking out through a ripped part in the fabric on the side of the truck. What he sees there, how it’s filmed, the acting and the editing, it’s all very well done and shows the brilliants of the director. The sound editing is also something extra, both with the score and the sound effects, and sometimes the lack of both.

There is a little love drama as one of the side-stories, which feels a bit out of place sometimes. It doesn’t seem to fit, but I do get the purpose of it and just think it could have been handled a little bit better in the beginning. Other then that it’s a great piece of filmmaking and I wish more people would see these mostly unnoticed movies.

Short info

Format: Movie
Year: 2002
Director:
Nikolai Lebedev
Length: 97 min
Language: Russian, German
Country: Russia
Also known as:Звезда or The Star

Campaign:

Links to:

Amen.

admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:52:26 +0000

Amen. is the story about Kurt Gerstein, an SS officer responsible for disinfection during the war. His job is to disinfect bunkers, purifying drinking water and keeping the German soldiers as healthy as possible, or at least that is what he think he’s doing. In fact the SS uses his gas in the gas chambers in the death camps all over eastern Europe. When Gerstein learns this truth he is sickened and has a hard time believing and understanding what he’s a part of. He tries to contact both the Swedish embassy and members of the Catholic Church to get the information about the Holocaust out to the world. The movie tells two stories, the one of Gerstein and one about a Jesuit priest that Gerstein comes in contact with.

The story about Gerstein is historically correct, but the rest of the story is a bit harder to validate. Most of the information about it on the Internet is biased, they seem to have their own agenda for either praising or condemning this movie. The movie is based on the play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth. This seems to be one of the most controversial movies I’ve seen. And there’s so much misinformation about it, even with such a simple thing as what language it was shot it. I’ve read that it was filmed in: French, German, French and German, and English. I’ve come to the conclusion myself that it must have been filmed in English, because I saw the English version and it did not look dubbed at all. Many people however is saying the same thing about the French version.

The movie begins with a very powerful scene in which we see Stefan Lux’s suicide inside the League of Nations in Geneva. I would personally say that it’s the most powerful scene in the entire movie, but I think most people would disagree with me there. Either way, it’s based on an actual event — Stefan Lux did commit suicide in the hope to reach out to the world about what was going on inside Germany, sadly it had little effect.

There are some good scenes and the story is interesting but it’s not very well directed. There are some really weird lines and the dialog is in general rather unconvincing. I do however don’t mind that you never learn about what date it is, even what year it is. The character talks about events, such as the Battle of Stalingrad, which gives us some information about the date.

Short info

Format: Movie
Year: 2002
Director:
Costa-Gavras
Length: 132 min
Language: English
Country: France, Germany, Romania

Events:

Concentration Camp

Links to:

Das Boot

admin — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:21:22 +0000

Das Boot is generally considered to be one of the best WWII movies as well as one of the most authentic and realistic. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. The story is about one mission for German U-boat U-96. Almost the entire movie takes place inside the U-boat, were we get to know the crew on a very personal level.

I’ve only seen the Director’s Cut version of the movie, which is three and a half hour long, so I can’t comment on the other versions of the film. There are only a few scenes shot outside of the submarine, which creates the feeling of really being inside it since the majority of the time you as a viewer don’t know more then the crew about what is going on around them.

The director is a master of suspense, that’s by far the best part of this movie, and it’s executed brilliantly. Thanks to the long time running time the suspense is able to build up during the entire movie. This also lets your feel the loneliness and horror the crew is feeling throughout the mission. There are some great and memorable scenes and the acting is overall very good.

Short info

Format: Movie
Year: 1981
Director:
Wolfgang Petersen
Length: 209 min (director’s cut)
Language: German
Country: West Germany

Campaign:

Battle of the Atlantic

Links to:

Pegasus Bridge

admin — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:52:36 +0000

The British 6th Airborne were the first Allied soldiers to see action on June 6th, D-Day. Six platoons from 2nd Ox & Bucks’ D and B companies, 181 men strong, went into France on six Horsa gliders. Their mission was to capture the two (intact) bridges over the Caen Canal and the Orne River and hold until relieved. These bridges were located on the very eastern flank of the entire Normandy campaign, and capturing them intact would be of great importance.

The raid was featured in the classic movie The Longest Day, although it’s not entirely accurate. After successfully capturing the bridges, which was done in under ten minutes, the long wait for reinforcement began. The company, only armed with a few PIATs for anti-tank defense, repelled an armored counter-attack as well as survived hours of sniper fire.

Stephen Ambrose interviewed soldiers from both sides and these are their stories. Around 100 pages of the book are surrounding the crucial first 24 hours of the invasion with the capture of the bridges and the fighting around them — the rest of the book, about the same amount of pages, are about the planning and training as well as the after match. There are some great accounts on the French resistance work and the whole chaos on the German side, both from foot soldiers and commanding officers. It’s well put together with maps, photographs and the actual orders. A great read about an astonishing raid, with very much side information and personal insights.

Short info

Format: Book
Author:
Stephen Ambrose
Year: 1985
Pages: 224

Campaign:

Events:

Pegasus Bridge

Military Unit:

Real Life Personalities:

Major John Howard

Links to:

Amazon.com

Die Brücke

admin — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:04:02 +0000

Die Brücke tells the story of seven 16 years old boys in Germany. The end of the war is near and American troops are approaching the town. The boys spend their afternoons playing war games around the local bridge leading into town, chasing girls and are just being kids. All the boys are exhilarated when they learn that they have all been recruited to join the Wehrmacht — much to their parents and teachers horror.

After only one day in the army the garrison is called into action on the front line, but fearing that the boys would run away at the first sight of an enemy leads to the commander ordering them to stay behind and guard the town bridge, which is of no strategic purpose. The bridge is in fact scheduled to be blown up.

The movie is based on actual events, and it’s one of the first anti-war movies produced in (West) Germany after the war. This movie is heartbreaking, honest and very emotional. The anticipation of the battle, the battle itself and the after match, is all very well done on every stage. Cinematography, sound, editing, acting, props; everything is at it’s finest in this movie. I would recommend everybody to watch the original version with German dialog since so much of the greatness of this movie is in the spoken word, I doubt the dubbed version can do it justice (I haven’t seen that version myself). This is one of the best WWII movies I’ve seen, it’s a shame that so few outside of Europe have seen it.

Short info

Format: Movie
Year: 1959
Director:
Bernhard Wicki
Length: 105 min
Language: German
Country: West Germany
Also known as: The Bridge

Campaign:

Western Front

Links to:

Empire of the Sun

admin — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:07:27 +0000

A story about a young British boy who lived with his parents in Shanghai, China when the Japanese military occupied the country. (Shanghai itself had been occupied several years earlier but not the foreign quarters.) It’s a touching story — some of it is fiction and some based on real events — based on the novel Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard.

The main character, played by a 13 year old Christian Bale, is amazing, his character is 9-10 years old in the beginning of the movie. He is probably the best actor in the entire movie, and this movie wouldn’t have worked at all with any other actor. His acting at such a young age is reason enough to see this movie.

However I must say that this movie wasn’t as good as I expected, maybe a bit because I was expecting more from Spielberg (director). It’s slow, which I usually don’t mind that much, but I can’t figure out why I didn’t like it. Maybe I will give it another try at a later date – some movies needs to be viewed at least twice.

Short info

Format: Movie
Year: 1987
Director:
Steven Spielberg
Length: 154 min
Language: English
Country: USA

Campaign:

Pacific Theatre

Links to:

Twelve O’Clock High

admin — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:33:04 +0000

A very authentic look at an American Bomber Group serving in England doing daylight bombings over occupied France and Germany in 1942 and onwards. The movie uses authentic WWII combat footage for the flight battles, and since the movie was made just after WWII the quality of the film isn’t very different from the reels from WWII (unlike modern movies that uses authentic footage that often just looks odd and out of place).

The plot itself is just as authentic, many survivors that took part in these daylight bombings have said that this is the only movie that describes their war effort correctly.

They US commanders wanted to know how much the soldiers could take, how many missions they could fly, how many days in a row they could stand being fired upon and seeing their friend perish. According to IMDb this is one of the first Hollywood movies to deal with the physiological effect the war had on soldiers, and I must say that it does it perfectly. There are some really emotional moments, but I don’t want to give anything away.

Short info

Format: Movie
Year: 1949
Director:
Henry King
Length: 132 min
Language: English
Country: USA