The History Buff's Guide to World War II (49 page)

Much like the failed attack, the film is plagued from the beginning. Martial music, needless subplots, and an excessively famous cast are inappropriate and distracting. Poor continuity and uninspired acting further erode the production.

Nonetheless,
Bridge
is largely accurate and an invaluable lesson in modern warfare, aptly demonstrating the monumental complexity of combat. Hastily assembled, the actual Market-Garden operation lacked adequate intelligence, cohesion, and leadership. Inclement weather, obstructed roads, insufficient weaponry, and broken communications added to the debacle, making all the courage in the world count for little. This tragic picture becomes considerably clearer when the film is viewed with a battle map in hand.

Despite the movie's impressive portrayal and blockbuster lineup,
Bridge
fared poorly at the box office. Evidently a detailed account of a military catastrophe held minimal appeal for a post-Vietnam audience.

Actor Dirk Bogarde, who played Lt. Gen. Frederick Browning, knew the story of Market-Garden well. He had participated in the actual battle as a member of British intelligence.

6.
TORA! TORA! TORA!
(1970)

Taking objectivity to an extreme, the quasi-documentary of the Pearl Harbor attack ranks as one of the most balanced and accurate screenplays of the genre. Originally intended to be two films (one American, one Japanese), escalating costs forced a hybrid production, resulting in a rare case of equal time for both sides of the story.
¹⁸

In step-by-step fashion, the mechanics of the raid come into view, with the accompanying U.S. intelligence failures to detect its approach. Shown in great detail is the critical breakdown of communications, where links between governments and their armed forces (and even within each branch of service) played a dominant role in the outcome of events.

Unquestionably, the picture's limited scope has cost and gain. Focusing purely on Pearl Harbor, there is no reference to simultaneous attacks upon Malaya, the Philippines, Guam, and elsewhere. Nor is there mention of Japan's aging war with China. Yet by concentrating on Pearl Harbor, the dramatization provides a concise snapshot of a tragic moment in time.

Perhaps of equal value is the film's indication of Japanese-American relations in 1970. The concerted effort required to make the film, and its message of courage under fire, demonstrate how once-mortal enemies can eventually achieve mutual respect.
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Commercially successful in Japan, the picture fared poorly in the United States, so 20th Century Fox recouped losses by selling impressively staged attack scenes to other studios. Thus footage of
Tora! Tora! Tora!
appears in
Midway
(1976) and
MacArthur
(1977).

7.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
(1998)

The story: News reaches the U.S. high command that three of four brothers in uniform have perished in quick succession. To rescue the sole-surviving sibling, a squad fresh from the slaughter of D-day enters the French interior. On the way, the team faces its own battles and losses, only to find Pvt. James Ryan (Matt Damon) and a few other soldiers guarding a key river viaduct in enemy territory, setting up a climactic fight against all odds to spare brother and bridge.

The reality: It took weeks rather than hours for casualty manifests to reach headquarters. The June 1944 Normandy countryside contained far more hedgerows and hostile Wehrmacht than was depicted. U.S. Army captains tended to be much younger than John Miller (Tom Hanks) and much less willing to tolerate insubordination, engage overwhelming forces, or repetitiously divert from their assignment.
²⁰

As frail as the story line may be, the manner in which it is presented rivals all other war films ever made. Contrary to the teachings of traditional filmmaking, battles are chaotic, mangling affairs of ultraviolence. Per Spielberg’s design, engagements become cauldrons of rolling smoke, stinging shells, and tearing flesh. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski's use of handheld cameras, close-ups, and fast-action shutter speeds incorporate the viewer into the fold. The twenty-minute rendition of Omaha Beach alone may be the most realistic vision of combat ever re-created.
²¹

Saving Private Ryan
was inspired in part by the story of the Sullivan brothers. Serving in the Pacific theater on the light cruiser USS
Juneau
, all five Iowa brothers perished when enemy torpedoes sank their ship near Guadalcanal on November 13, 1942.

8.
KANAL
(1956)

The second installment of Andrzej Wajda’s war trilogy (
A Generation Ashes and Diamonds
) follows a dwindling platoon of Polish resistance fighters in the final days of the 1944 Warsaw uprising. Surrounded, outgunned, and outmanned, the unit's ragged mix of soldiers and civilians enter the sewers (kanaly) in hopes of escape.

An otherwise moving tale suffers from an awkward musical score, tepid special effects, and poor sound quality. Actors blatantly unfamiliar with their weapons (such as a bazooka crew who stand behind their gun while firing) cause further reduction of authenticity.

Yet the director refuses to let his story falter into cliché. The platoon does not band together in unified triumph (per American war films of the 1940s), nor is there a celebration of heroic sacrifice (per Soviet Bloc war films of the 1950s). Instead, the dark and claustrophobic stench of the sewers unmasks everyone, revealing the heights and depths of human behavior under inhuman conditions and the ruinous fate of a people trapped between two military giants.
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Perhaps the strongest scene ever shot in Wajda's long and celebrated career comes in the final moments of
Kanal
, when the bright and beautiful Daisy (Teresa Izewska) and her wounded love, Jasek (Tadeusz Janczar), reach the end of a tunnel. They are inches away from freedom only to find their exit blocked by a metal grate. A master of metaphor, Wajda manages to symbolize war-torn Poland in this single moment, a country barely surviving years of Nazi onslaught only to be caught behind an Iron Curtain.

The director's father, Capt. Jakub Wajda of Poland's Seventy-Second Infantry Regiment, was one of approximately forty-four hundred Polish officers executed by the Soviets in the Katyn Forest massacre of 1940.

9.
THE STORY OF G.I. JOE
(1945)

Generally, World War II veterans envisioned themselves as neither heroes nor victims. Rather, most reasoned they had a job to do, unpleasant as it was, and addressed their uninvited challenge to the best of their abilities. Few films represent this soldierly self-assessment better than
The Story of G.I. Joe
, released while the war was still in progress.

Tagging along with a fictional outfit marching through Italy is the factual war correspondent Ernie Pyle (played brilliantly by a middle-aged and genial Burgess Meredith). Pyle was one of the few reporters who ventured to the front lines, and his experiences in Africa, Europe, and the Pacific forged a grave respect for the unsung and virtually unknown soldiers of lower rank.

Filmed in black and white, the movie portrays vividly the muddling grayness of infantry service, in which mire, boredom, and exhaustion are constants in life, and death is neither glamorous nor unexpected. Second only to Meredith in this candid picture of subtle acting and bold honesty is Robert Mitchum (as Lieutenant Walker) in his first starring role.

Despite its inglorious tone, the film was well received by war-weary Americans. Commanding general and future president Dwight D. Eisenhower called
The Story of G.I. Joe
the best war movie he had ever witnessed.
²³

Though Ernie Pyle inspired its creation, the prolific and straightforward journalist never saw the film. In April 1945, while on assignment near Okinawa, he was killed by Japanese gunfire.

10.
BLACK RAIN
(1988)

For such a pivotal time in Japan's history, there are relatively few indigenous films directly addressing the atomic bombings. In fact,
Black Rain
was the first major Japanese feature on the subject in thirty years. Yet the piece well represents the treatment of the war as a whole within the national cinema.

Laden with imagery and allegory, the tale begins with the unleashing of atomic fire upon Hiroshima. Just beyond the doomed city, fallout descends upon the faces of women, including the young, angelic Yasuko (Tanaka Yoshiko). Ever after she is an unwilling witness to the disintegration of her village, her family, and her body.

In this epic story of a half-life,
Black Rain
weaves supreme performances, a haunting score, and transcending symbolism. In 1989, the film rightly won Best Technique at Cannes and Best Picture in Japan. Yet hidden within its frames is a theme often repeated in Japanese war films. Though condemning militarism and warfare, it is void of context, making no mention as to why so much suffering befell a populace. Devastation appears almost as happenstance rather than harvest, as if the fire purged a nation of its recent memory.
²⁴

Recognizing the power of images, both the Imperial Government of Japan and the American Occupation Forces confiscated every print and negative of the atomic bombings. Decades passed before unedited photos of the aftermath were publicly released in Japan.

POPULAR MYTHS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

Mysteries and conspiracies tend to be more alluring than cold facts and hard truth. Such is the case with the Second World War, a veritable factory of compelling fiction. Rumors had squadrons of Japanese bombers over California, German armies marching through Moscow, and Hitler dying several times before his actual suicide. Often the sources of mythology were government propaganda machines. For years Washington contended that only the
Arizona
had been sunk at Pearl Harbor while Tokyo proclaimed that virtually the whole U.S. fleet had been destroyed.
²⁵

Over time, information becomes available, evidence emerges, governments declassify documents, and sometimes accuracy topples illusion. But like slag from a cauldron, falsehoods continue to rise from history and reside within the general psyche as assumed truths. Assembled here in chronological order of their origination are the most enduring myths and misconceptions of the war still widely held in the West.

1.
HITLER WAS INTO THE OCCULT

Mysterious, fanatical, and laden with symbolism, the Third Reich appeared to many as an ideological cult led by its author, Adolf Hitler. Yet Hitler was personally indifferent to religion. Although Catholic all his life, he felt annoyed by Germany’s attachment to Christianity and its messages of love and forgiveness. He once lamented, “Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?” But the occult never interested him.
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