This special and the ongoing shows that followed have done an excellent job detailing WW2 battles. I especially enjoy the ones about the Pacific campaign as those are so often lumped together & not examined one by one. Via the old aerial photographs, one gets a better sense of the lay of the land in these battles which is sometimes hard to visualize when simply reading about them. Includes achieve footage, interviews with those who were there & historians and some fairly good recreation footage (at least they get uniforms & weapons right). Plus they don't do such long recaps when returning from commercial, a big pet peeve of mine with the History Channel.
2 Reviews
Success.
rmax30482315 September 2015
It's an unusually honest presentation of events on D Day, mostly a series of maps, talking heads, reenactments, and some newsreel footage.
It's honest because it describes incidents on our side that were errors. Usually this sort of stuff is skipped over in documentaries and in feature films like "The Longest Day" and "Saving Private Ryan." For instance, the late historian, Steven Ambrose, has written that the French farmers of Normandy were sullen towards the Allied troops and he attributes this attitude to regional character, maybe a dislike of the Allies.
A more reasonable explanation is that before the invasion Normandy was a peaceful backwater. Then we put 5,000 bombers in the air on D Day and the vast majority of bombs fell miles behind the beaches, destroying villages, killing civilians and all their livestock. The fields were filled with bloated carcasses of dairy cows. Shortly after, the ancient city of Caen was flattened. One of the participants, an American soldier, points out the mistake. He may have come from a farm himself -- farmers were more abundant then -- because he seems to regret the loss of so many cows in the numerous dairy farms of Normandy.
The naval bombardment didn't help much either. The shells landed inland from the beach. "The Longest Day" shows what is assumed to be a typical French reaction to the destructive bombardment. A French farmer dances for joy and waves a flag as his farmhouse is shot to pieces around him.
I've dwelt on that particular error -- others are mentioned in this program -- because the general outlines of D Day are probably already familiar. An Allied force of Americans, British, and French troops are landed on the beaches, overcome obstacles, and successfully land hundreds of thousands of soldiers. In retrospect the effectiveness of the assault meant the end of the war -- sooner or later.
It's a fine idea to have these talking heads contribute to the narrative. The entire generations is fast dwindling. These are no experts, just ordinary men who did extraordinary things. We can overlook the fact that one of them sounds like a case of arrested development -- as a young man he sought adventure and killing was the biggest high of them all. Now, in his age, he still feels that way and chuckles over his memories of combat. I call the documentary "honest" because his account hasn't been edited out.
It's honest because it describes incidents on our side that were errors. Usually this sort of stuff is skipped over in documentaries and in feature films like "The Longest Day" and "Saving Private Ryan." For instance, the late historian, Steven Ambrose, has written that the French farmers of Normandy were sullen towards the Allied troops and he attributes this attitude to regional character, maybe a dislike of the Allies.
A more reasonable explanation is that before the invasion Normandy was a peaceful backwater. Then we put 5,000 bombers in the air on D Day and the vast majority of bombs fell miles behind the beaches, destroying villages, killing civilians and all their livestock. The fields were filled with bloated carcasses of dairy cows. Shortly after, the ancient city of Caen was flattened. One of the participants, an American soldier, points out the mistake. He may have come from a farm himself -- farmers were more abundant then -- because he seems to regret the loss of so many cows in the numerous dairy farms of Normandy.
The naval bombardment didn't help much either. The shells landed inland from the beach. "The Longest Day" shows what is assumed to be a typical French reaction to the destructive bombardment. A French farmer dances for joy and waves a flag as his farmhouse is shot to pieces around him.
I've dwelt on that particular error -- others are mentioned in this program -- because the general outlines of D Day are probably already familiar. An Allied force of Americans, British, and French troops are landed on the beaches, overcome obstacles, and successfully land hundreds of thousands of soldiers. In retrospect the effectiveness of the assault meant the end of the war -- sooner or later.
It's a fine idea to have these talking heads contribute to the narrative. The entire generations is fast dwindling. These are no experts, just ordinary men who did extraordinary things. We can overlook the fact that one of them sounds like a case of arrested development -- as a young man he sought adventure and killing was the biggest high of them all. Now, in his age, he still feels that way and chuckles over his memories of combat. I call the documentary "honest" because his account hasn't been edited out.
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