most historically CORRECT WAR movie

[Stefan Haertel]

I'm not attacking you or your statement or anything AoA, but what exactly is your proof that the Americans haven't done any war crimes, if none of them have been documented and nobody talked about that? You can't just say something like that and have no proof.
With all due respect to your brother, but just beacuse he hasn't experienced any war crimes in Vietnam doesen't mean there were none.

namely, US forces committing or considering war
crimes

Again, no attack to anybody, but this is the same as if I would claim the same of any German forces throughout history. It hasn't anything to do with what their goals were and what they fought for, but I think you'll have to accept the fact that American forces could have commited war crimes without this ever becoming public. There simply is no plain good and bad. Sorry.

 

[stalin006]

well american forces are said to had done war "crimes" in vietnam, by killing many woman and children in some villages, but it was few adn because of war weariness adn needed some psychological help, but i cant really find another war where war crimes could had been commited........what does this ahve to do w/ this thread topis?

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

Actually guys, many of you are victims of a long drawn out lie concerning the war in South-East Asia, the ONLY case of a war crime is well documented, by Lt Calley who was court-martialed and sentaced to 20 years (and commuted by Richard Nixon, but that isn't the army's fault).

During the war, and shortly after, a number of rear area folks, as well as PHONIES claimed they witnessed all kinds of war crimes, of which there was not ONE SHREAD of evidence.
One infamous book called "The Nam" was filled with these war "Stories", the author (who was part of the anti-war movement) never bothered to run backround checks on any of the people he interviewed, when this WAS done (for a great book called "Stolen Valour"), it turned out that NONE them had even BEEN to Vietnam!

Over the years, the propaganda of Vietnam was repeated over and over, for example, their is a claim that Young black men were killed in droves to fight the White man's war.
Do you know how many 18 year old balck men were killed in Vietnam in the 10 years us forces were there?
FOUR.
I'm not kidding, this is all documented.
Another favorite is the North and Cambodia were subject to saturation bombing, referred to as "Carpet bombing".
Another myth, the US bombed the North in well defined grids (that the NLF had determined), at the same time every day, and rarely hit anything.
They bombed the same bridges, the same roads, ect.
NEVER was the civillian population a bombing target.
In Cambodia, the airforce attempted (and failed) to interdict the Ho Chi Mihn trail (and it's odd that Vietnam detractors have NO PROBLEM with the NLF violating Cambodia's neutrality, which was the ONLY reason US forces bombed the trail there).
The Famous "invasion" of Cambodia in 1970 covered about 20 miles from the border, attacking a NLF held village, finding a handful of weapons, followed by a rapid withdrawl. This was heaivly condemned at the time (and again, nobody cared that the North had violated international law by being there), yet it was a small scale tactical operation.

It's hardly shocking that people still get this war wrong, I have seen respected history professors repeat these lies verbatum as fact, because it justifies the anti-war movement so beloved to the American liberals, yet runs completely counter to the historical facts presented by the people actually there. Many of them cannot seperate truth from their own ideology, and thus do a complete dis-service to history and their own professions, because they cannot command their own emotions.
History MUST be viewed dispationatly, or you learn NOTHING.

I am a veteran, one of the things the US army stresses is you MUST NOT obey an illeagal order, and killing civillians IS such an order.
Sorry, the Vietnam myth is exsposed.

As for WWII Stefan, there is exactly ONE instance of US forces killing prisoners in the ETO, during latle december of 1944, a misunderstood order was issued to execute SS prisoners from Piper's unit, an order happily carried out, as the Malmedy massacre story was spreading rapidly through the US army.

Sorry Stefan, just because you don't want to believe it won't change it.
If it makes you feel better, US forces happily gunned down any Japanese they could find, reguardless of orders all through the early part of WWII.
The US Marines had a saying on Gaudalcanal, "The only good Jap is a dead Jap".
They tried their damnest to make them good.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

In "Band of Brother" American soldiers were shown several times to execute German prisoners.

In the Normandy Operation one officer killed a group of Germans that had surrendered to the paratroopers. My father says it was probably due to the problems that the 101st would have holding prisoners and in consideration of their position.

Indeed later in the series there are 2 other cases at least of Americans shooting prisoners of war or simply German civilians against the rules of war.


Were the veterans who advised on that series ignored? Or were they lying or indeed did American forces on numerous occasions (extrapolate) commit war crimes in WW2.

 

[Illustrious]

My father served in Normandy with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment (British Army). He was reluctant to talk too much about the war (lost too many friends), but his opinion on atrocities never varied: don't ever believe that the other side were the only ones who committed them; both sides did things that wouldn't stand up to close scrutiny, whether in the heat of the moment or because they knew they were unobserved and could get away with it.

AoA: You say that in WW2 "there is exactly ONE instance of US forces killing prisoners..." Actually what you mean is there is one detected and verified instance. That is not the same thing at all.

 

[Dr. Dr. Doktor]

I think 100 accuracy is difficult to achieve, nevertheless it is always healthy to look at what other countries' movies has to offer. So I urge you to take a look at this website on 'artistic' War movies. There is a short synopsis of each movie and box covers for the video version.

I personally recommend 'Land and Freedom' and 'The Ogre'. (The only ones of the bunch i have watched)


http://www.1worldfilms.com/war_stories.htm

 

[Kryten]

Speaking of "Saving Private Ryan"....

....what on earth was going through Steven Spielburg's mind?
I know that the allies in WW2 were no paragons of virtue (personally, I think that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime), but was it necessary to have so many instances of Americans shooting German prisoners?

And that scene at the end of the film, where the coward (I can't remember the characters name....the ammunition carrier) shoots the big German grenadier prisoner after the battle in the town....why was that included?
The art of a film director is to provoke emotions in the audience....
....well I'm sorry Mr Spielburg, the only emotion that provoked in me was utter revulsion and hatred for that bastard.
I wanted to see the coward die horribly after that.
Or was the scene ment to show that even gutless punks with a gun can kill an unarmed and helpless prisoner who is ten times better than they are, and it's ok so long as they wear your nation's uniform?

If I was an American I would be deeply insulted by that scene.

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On a lighter note, what about the historical correctness of some of the older films:-

Battle of the River Plate
Sink the Bismark
Charge of the Light Brigade (NOT the old black & white version, but the later colour one, staring Trevor Howard and John Gielgud)

And last of all....my personal favourite....Waterloo (in which Rod Steiger should have won an oscar for his portrayal of Napoleon. )

 

[Richard III]

I have to weigh in as well, AoA, and say that I agree with the spirit of your remarks: the US army is not as a rule a body of war criminals, and it is important in movies of this ilk to be careful with portrayals of such things. BUT, it is going a bit beyond the realm of credibility to imply moral perfection, and frankly I think it's a mistake to, since it creates too high a standard for the public to expect in a profession that has to make allowances for errors, mishaps and slaughter.

No armed mass of men is perfect. I remember with interest the 20-odd charges laid for various felonies - rape, theft and so on - against US troops after Desert Storm, and the comments from various pundits about how that was less than the crime rate for any other city of 500,000 men for the same time frame in the continental 48 states. Less, yes, but there were still crimes off the battlefield. (Don't make me look up the articles, please, it would have to be a microform search and I'll be a little pissed if you don't take my word for it...)

So, with crimes off the battlefield, is it so hard to expect that there might be a few on it? Hell, some have even gone so far as to suggest that Barry McCaffrey's post-truce order to the 24th Mech to start shooting at Republican Guard armor on March 2 was a "war crime" because the reports of scattered Iraqi firing were unconfirmed, and because the 24th was not ordered to isolate who was doing the firing from a division-sized unit (the Hammurabi) on the move. I disagree strongly with the idea that shooting anyone in the Republican Guard is a crime, truce or no! But the point is this - if McCaffrey himself can come under scrutiny, then why not a few infantry in the jungle?

I think the important thing to recognize - as I often have to do in arguments about Bosnia with the likes of Civaddict - is to restate the point about moral equivelancy.

Yes, war is sh*te. Yes, large bodies of armed men tend to do violent things. However, the random acts of rage or immorality by a few individuals in one side's army does not compare in the slightest to organized crimes by armies organized and deployed for the purpose of committing those crimes.

I always took the aforementioned scenes in BoB, Platoon and SPR to be attempts by the filmmakers to demonstrate that war is, indeed, a violent and chaotic pursuit where, golly, people lose their sanity, or their temper, and shoot each other. To apply the technical definition of "war crimes" to every portrayal of these events is, I think, taking the point too far.

To take one example, should the guy who shot the prisoners in Band of Brothers be up for charges? Sure. Should it force you to question the morality of the entire exercise in each case? Not necessarily. Does it make the US army guilty of "war crimes?" Not at all. I've applied the same questions to my grandfather's ruthless performance in Burma, and the equally ruthless performance of his colleagues. Same answers. The point is not to pretend that the odd moral line is not crossed; it's to be clear about what that means - and, more to the point, what it doesn't mean - in the context of a larger war.

R.III

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

As I said "documented and confirmed".

Band of brothers DOES NOT show this, it HINTS at it, WITHOUT actually doing it, if you go watch it again.

Modern writers LIKE to believe that men under arms are animals, but this is opposite of the actual case.

I can give you unsubstantiated accounts of WWII warcrimes, some I know are truthful (for example, my old division is reported to have shot some of the guards at a concentration camp in 1945, they were so appauled by what they saw, but this is not in the offical history).

But don't be fooled, I know from long experience interviewing service people, "tall tales" are quite common, and they often include BS about war crimes.

 

[Richard III]

Originally posted by Alcibiaties of Athenae
As I said "documented and confirmed".

Band of brothers DOES NOT show this, it HINTS at it, WITHOUT actually doing it, if you go watch it again.

Modern writers LIKE to believe that men under arms are animals, but this is opposite of the actual case.

Sure, sure. I agree. But all I'm saying is that A FEW men under arms are animals. Is that so hard to beleive, even in the most disciplined army? And in a way, isn't that all Platoon is saying, for instance?

R.III

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

Platoon shows an act that NO US Soldier would cover up, the Platoon Sargent executes a woman to make a headman talk.

If that REALLY happened, most of the unit would turn him in, and be totally disgraced.

There are many unkown warcrimes, here is one that Len Deighton mentions in his fine "Blood, Tears and Folly".
British forces during the retreat on Dunkirk executed 73 "German spies" amoung the civilian Belgian population.
They didn't even get a trial.
German post war records confirm they had no such civilian spies in the area.

 

[Stefan Haertel]

Am I the only one who seems to realize that this discussion is rather pointless?
I could write books to AoA with contents like "you shouldn't believe everything that is written", and he'd reply with books about documents, statements, interviews and everything, and nobody would be satisfied at all. A good healthy discussion is one thing, but this is purely pointless. I accept the fact that AoA wants to defend himself and the US Army. I don't share his point of view at all in this particular case, but I know that I can't win such a discussion and he can't win such a discussion, at least not in my eyes. Why don't we get back to the original thread topic?

 

[stalin006]

i agree w/ stefan

 

[Globber]

Originally posted by Kryten
Speaking of "Saving Private Ryan"....

....what on earth was going through Steven Spielburg's mind?
I know that the allies in WW2 were no paragons of virtue (personally, I think that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime), but was it necessary to have so many instances of Americans shooting German prisoners?

And that scene at the end of the film, where the coward (I can't remember the characters name....the ammunition carrier) shoots the big German grenadier prisoner after the battle in the town....why was that included?

Did you not watch the whole movie or something? Miller let him go to turn himself in to the nearest Allied force, even after all his men tried to kill the prisoner (not too smart, but that's besides the point). He then joined up with that SS unit attacking Ramelle and shot and killed Miller with a sniper rifle (the same guy who had spared his life). Upham watched the whole thing and singled him out in the end (Notice he didn't kill anyone else). So, please, please, don't bash on a movie if you don't understand the bloody thing.... jeez

 

[TrailblazingScot]

AoA did you watch the last episode of Band of Brothers?

They shot a German civilian who one soldier suspected of being involved in the camps. The man was beaten up and finnally shot in the back as he was running away.

That is a little more than a hint of a warcrime.


On the other occasion it was earlier in the last episode when the convoy of troops is moving past a barn and 3 unarmed german soldiers burst out, go down on their knees and get executed by an American soldier with a pistol.


As for the case in Normandy, SOMETHING killed those unarmed German soldiers and it was seen by one of the American soldiers who then spread the story.


It WASN'T a hint, it was shown on several occasions in Band of Brothers...for me this interpretation on this case puts in massive doubt your objectivity when you commented earlier on this subject.

 

[Kryten]

Originally posted by Globber
Did you not watch the whole movie or something? Miller let him go to turn himself in to the nearest Allied force, even after all his men tried to kill the prisoner (not too smart, but that's besides the point). He then joined up with that SS unit attacking Ramelle and shot and killed Miller with a sniper rifle (the same guy who had spared his life). Upham watched the whole thing and singled him out in the end (Notice he didn't kill anyone else). So, please, please, don't bash on a movie if you don't understand the bloody thing.... jeez

Thank you Globber for answering my question about that last scene in "Saving Private Ryan" that I didn't understand.

So Upham befriended the big German when he was a helpless prisoner, and pleaded with Captain Miller not to shoot him, but later in the film during the heat of battle the German shot and mortally wounded Miller.
And Upham, who saw the whole thing (and was also spared when the big German passed him on the stairs), and who doesn't have the courage to fight in battle, even to save his friends, only finds the 'courage' to shoot the big German when he is again a helpless prisoner after the other Americans have won the battle....in which Upham played no part.
("I befriended you, and Captain Miller let you go. But like any good soldier fighting for his country, you rejoined your army and continued to fight, and ended up killing the man who spared your life. So I, a coward, will seek justice by killing you when it's nice and safe and you can't fight back, even though I didn't have the guts to do it in battle.")
I’m sorry…..I still don’t feel any empathy for the character Upham.

Anyway, this is just a fictional scene from a largely fictional film.
What about the historical accuracy of the film Waterloo?

 

[Illustrious]

Originally posted by Kryten
What about the historical accuracy of the film Waterloo

Overall pretty good.

Apart of course from the usual endemic problem with the cinema's representation of 17th/18th century artillery: yes I know it's difficult to represent roundshot accurately, but that isn't really an excuse to have every single gun firing high explosive shells.

And don't get me started on the subject of recoil (or rather its absense) in movies....

But clawing desperately back to the topic.... Waterloo tried very hard to be as accurate as it could be. Certainly the uniforms were a lot more accurate than most films, and the fact they had almost unlimited supplies of disciplined extras* meant that the regiments actually looked like regiments. Too many films suffer from lack of manpower, so that big battles end up looking like "spread-out skirmishes", not to mention that most of the time actors - especially extras - simply don't move like soldiers.

The attempt to fit in every single famous quotation and event made it look somewhat bitty at times, but the sheer sense of familiarity that gives to anyone who's read up on the subject lifts the film to a higher level.

I think the charge of the Union Brigade was a little bit over-sentimentalised (BTW, whatever happened to the Royals and the Inniskillings? To judge by this and every other movie, the Scots Greys were the only regiment in the Union Brigade...!) but effectively captured the concept of an overstretched charge being cut to pieces.

I remember seeing the film when it first came out in the cinema. I was a young lad and it was the summer holidays. The sight of Ney's heavy cavalry milling around the British squares set light to my blood, and it was probably that which got me interested in the Napoleonic Wars in the first place.

*I can't remember the details, but they had extras supplied by an Eastern European army.

 

[Kryten]

Originally posted by Illustrious
Overall pretty good.....

*I can't remember the details, but they had extras supplied by an Eastern European army.

Yes, apparently they used ten thousand ( ) Russian soldiers as extras, which is why the battle scenes are so spectacular.

There is a story about Ney's cavalry charge in the film.
Despite all the careful preparation, such as placing wooden stakes and string to mark out the British squares and everybody knowing that the thousand cavalry would be passing them by down pre-prepared lanes.....when the actual scene was shot, the sight of a thousand heavy horsemen thundering down on them was too much for some Russian soldiers, and a square 'broke'!
(This can be seen in some of the helicopter shots.....and makes you think about the bravery and discipline of the actual troops in reality.)

Another good film of the same type is "Gettysburg", although that concentrates mainly on the fight for Little Roundtop and Picket's charge rather than the whole battle.
I did think that MartinSheen was a bit weak and vacillating as Robert E. Lee, but it's still a good spectacular historical film.

 

[Panda]

Die Brücke looked reasonably realistic to me.

 

[stalin006]

mmmh.....waht about "das boot" or "the widowmaker"