Hiya, Nick- I'll reply then.
(1) It is sort of true about the cliche though- the Germans are there purely as cannon fodder to be gunned down in droves and are nearly always hilariously incompetent at tactics. The real German armed forces were somewhat more proficient than ever shown in most movies and that's precisely why it took so long and took the combined efforts of the US, UK, the USSR and numerous other allies to defeat them.
The movies should show the Germans as being the fierce adversaries they were as then the Allied victory looks more impressive not less. Hollywood makes it look as though all we really needed was a small army of Clint Eastwoods armed with Schmeisser MP40s to do the job! And lots of magazines for the MP40s...
(2) Tricky one. Movies do tend to have a nationalistic core and focus on their country of origin's contributions and the other participants are often ignored or forgotten. Exceptions to this are both versions of Sahara, the Devil's Brigade, the Battle Of Britain (the Poles, French, etc) and a few others. I don't mind this except when the mention or inclusion is derogatory- SPR's infamous "They're taking their time..." conversation, Episode 4 of Band Of Brother, etc. where the British are shown/suggested to be incompetent and badly led, where I would also have to include A Bridge Too Far, where Horrocks, Vandeleur and Frost apart the British officers are shown as a useless bunch of hooray henrys.
(3) It's propaganda- nope, it's movie making! Where reality rarely intrudes and screenwriters fall prey to the cliches and repetition that they love so much, painting the good guys as whiter than white and the bad guys as irredeemably evil, forgetting that in the real world they could all do a swop sometimes. Of course, they will occasionally include a bad "good" guy- often a looter- and occasionally an honourable German- a cliche in itself- as an attempt at texture but it is occasionally comical.
The problem as ever is that most audiences want predictable results- a beginning, a middle and preferably a happy ending. Apart from bleak buggers like me who'd happily see all the heroes obliterated by flamethrower or whatever. Especially Matt Damon as Private Ryan in SPR, "Earn this"? More like burn this...
I'll have a think about troll cliches but an obvious one is the Allies committed as many or more war crimes than the Nazis. That rape was a common act by American troops. Also that German armour was superior to Allied tanks and the claim that the Allies were bloodthirsty murderers because of Dresden/Hiroshima, etc but that is sort of the same as my first one.
Trust me. I know what I'm doing.
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