What have you learned from this series?

I think for anyone who was not actually a history major (like I) the series is full of information. Most of us 1946 baby boomers were always exposed to the big facts of the war during our childhood because it had just taken place. The horrors of "the War" were always fresh in our memories, as it were. Our childhoods were inundated with war movies in the '50's, peppered with commentary by Dad.

But the series, that I have been watching on the Military Channel via DVR, is full of small details that I had never known. In fact, my guess is that your father and my father (both armor cavalry, sounds like) would not have known about the small details either. They certain could not have been history majors in school and studied WWII! And they were certainly rather busy dwelling on the details of their own lives during World War II -- just trying to keep their lives.

I don't know about your father, but mine never went back to Europe again after the War. My mother went several times, but not my father. Of course, I know why; there were just too many bad memories to relive by visiting even a peacetime Europe.

My father has been gone now 20 years (come this Labor Day), but I am quite sure he never saw this 1973 gigantic undertaking when it first came out. I never had either. But as bad as television is by and large, in the final analysis, when things like this come along, one has to admit that television does have its redeming qualities sometimes.

And, yes, I would have liked to have been able to watch this series with my father. I would have had the remote in hand, so I could pause and ask questions. It would have driven him crazy.

I have not seen this series since I saw it on TV in the mid-1970s. Even though I don't remember as much of it now as I did then, I still did learn a lot from it.

Only the losers committed war-crimes.

No suit - no tie - no service ~Vopv

One of the many things I learned, as I posted in a separate thread, was that at least some of the Japanese were so deluded and/or brainwashed that they still thought 30 years after the fact that the "comfort women" were spreading their legs of their own free will and were not forced into a life of prostitution by the Japanese government and generals.

I also did not know about the French village that is shown in the first and last eps that was never rebuilt after all of the residents (save for a handful that escaped) were murdered.


And for the moron that posted that only the losers commited atrocities, as I pointed out in the above mentioned thread they (along with the Russians) were the governments that encouraged it while the western allied governments did punish their soldiers that were convicted of rapes etc. and certainly did not encourage or condone such actions as the Japanese, German and Russian governments overtly did. Only fools cannot understand the difference, hence we have yet another fool on the board.


The terrorists won a battle with America on 4/21/10 thanks to the cowards at Comedy Central

10 of many learnings in no particular order....

1) How Ike was been the best people manager of all time.....Getting Patton to work with Montgomery must have been a nightmare.

2) El Alamein was crucial...not some obscure skirmish in the sand.

3) Tactics win battles, strategy wins wars, Eh Adolf??!!

4) Although it's from a British perspective it's scale was just phenominal...it is a model for excellence in documentary making.

5) I saw it first in 1973 - and it gave me a passion for history. I remember my shock at the #20 Genocide, I was 11 years old then, my mother couldn't watch it.

6) The cunning of Stalin

7) The unbelievable resilience of the ordinary Russian soldier

8) The bravery of the boys in Bomber Command and USAAF going deep into Germany in the earlier days without fighter escort

9) The helplessness of German civilians who at this stage thought Hitler had to go but were helpless.

10) War is a miserable business

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nothing learned everything in battlefield series already. this series was not very accurate and failed to mention a lot of things. in the north africa episode they totally forgot to mention the air force. The narrator also claimed that tobruk holding out was a symbol of the British as Churchill's bulldog face was. in fact tobruk was not held by the British. It was the Australians who defended it. But it was good entertainment to watch.

You get an understanding of why WW2 happened. How WW1 was not settled properly and allowed Hitler to grow to power by the weakness of people to be manipulated into seeking revenge and selfish but delusional glory through nationalism. Hitler really was an ultra-nationalist. You get a sense that he cared a lot about Germany, to a point that it crossed the edge of the field, rather than just passing the line.

Maybe I'm simplifying it too much, but there's a lot more to it.