Sliming the greatest generation on PBS?
Adam Buckman at the NYPost blew the whistle last week on a moral equivalence-marinated PBS documentary that airs tonight. Melanie Morgan and I chatted about the smearing of the Greatest Generation with Rush Limbaugh during the “From the Frontlines” web-a-thon on Friday. I’ve heard from many upset WWII vets. Read Adam’s column here.
Excerpt:
Members of the Greatest Generation - especially those with weak hearts - might want to steer clear of an upcoming PBS documentary that suggests the Allied victory in World War II was “tainted” and questions whether it can even be called a victory.
Moreover, the documentary, titled “The War of the World: A New History of the 20th Century,” asserts that the war could only be won by forming an unholy alliance with a dictator - Joseph Stalin, who was as brutal as the one they were fighting, Adolf Hitler - and by adopting the same “pitiless” and “remorseless” tactics practiced by the enemy.
The three-part documentary is a companion to the best-selling book, “The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West” by Harvard and Oxford historian Niall Ferguson. The one-hour Part One of the documentary premieres Monday night at 10 on Ch. 13 [in NYC; check your local listings]. The other two parts air the following two Mondays. World War II is the focus of Part Two.
…it is Ferguson’s revisionist view of the tactics applied by the Allies in World War II that is likely to raise the hackles of those who have always believed in the “necessity” of bombing German and Japanese civilians, culminating in the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to end a war we did not start.
“I think it’s very hard for those who have imbibed the idea of a ‘great generation’ that what the Allies did to defeat the Axis was in some measure to adopt totalitarian tactics,” Ferguson says in a Q&A on PBS’s Web site.
Tune in and let me know what you think.
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Trackbacks
- The Greatest Generation : BigMouthFrog
- Greatest Generation | BitsBlog
- OETA to Air Anti-American, Anti-Military Propaganda « Green Country Values
- WWII American Troops were the Bad Guys, According to Taxpayer-Funded PBS
- The War of the World; Niall Ferguson; PBS; The 100
- As Canada Rushes Towards Governmental Censorship « Expat Texan
- War of the World - Part II - Nazi/Communist par. .
- War of the World - Part III - transition - Isla. .
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Some history for Puff Daddy
September 1, 2008 07:53 AM by see-dubya
Somebody needs to tell Ferguson that WW II was a war, and not a string of “surgical” strikes.
Sorry Michelle,
I’ve been boycotting PBS for years - it’s a bad idea who’s time has come and gone.
I hate seeing my taxdollars sucked into that stinking cesspool as they beg for more money at their non-stop beg-a-thons.
Well,my father was with a US Navy occupation team on Okinawa in 1945…went into liberated villages in a jeep full of K rations,50 lb bags of rice,cigarettes,and Hershey bars for the kids….aside from having to waste a couple of isolated Japanese snipers with his Thompson .45 who had been endangering the village, he was looked on as some kind of semi-savior since he fed them and didn’t beat them up or shoot them like the Japanese troops had…I guess the clowns who put this program together don’t care to hear about stories like that though
PBS equals Political Bull S.
Quick, someone write a book about how coffee makes you drowsy so we can send it to PBS to be aired as fact.
I’d never give PBS a dime. If they can’t make it according to basic laws of business, let ‘em stink, I mean, sink.
3 words
rape of Nanking…
My late father was drafted in 1943, though he never left the country. He did have pictures from The Hollywood Canteen, and stories about various AAF bases in the Western US.
It isn’t really “news”, is it, that FDR and Churchill decided it was a good idea to ally with the brutal dictator who wasn’t trying to control all of Europe by military force, against the one that was?
The airmen flying over Europe didn’t pick the targets, their commanders did, and very few of their commanders are still alive. But considering the technology of the time didn’t permit pin-point bombing, and German military/industrial infrastructure was located in/near civilian population centers, it would have been pretty hard to prosecute the war without killing German civilians.
It isn’t like the Germans hadn’t been bombing London or Coventry…
Too late. Somebody did that years ago.
I do question “the greatest generation” label though. It seems to me that generation failed to do well training their children. The parents fought the hard battles but failed to instill into their kids the moral foundations such that their grandkids have raised complete self centered wimps. It only took two or three generations for it too all fall apart.
I’m not trying to belittle what they did on behalf of this country fighting enemies of freedom - and I’m very grateful.
Raising kids well is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING a parent can do.
As I remember my history, the RAF was pretty much on its last legs when the Germans were concentrating their attacks on the airfields. They were able to survive as a fighting force because Hitler changed the focus to terror bombing of London and other cities.
#10
They were so affected by living through The Great Depression, they tried to give their kids everything. Hard to blame them for that, even though being given too much has a lot to do with the Baby Boomer/”Me” generations problems.
I just missed the Baby Boom, being born in 1964, and all the commericials aimed at them make me want to wretch.
I dunno, my parents were from that generation, and were Depression era children, and they certainly instilled the moral foundation you speak of to us kids…
I blame the Baby Boomers. They are the ones who are crappy parents… I was born in the 60’s at the tail end of the boomer period, and if it weren’t for the values and morals of my parents, I’d probably be a dumb, smelly hippie in Berkeley, flashing my boobs to end war…
I think it’s more that they came home, went to work and prospered. Their kids didn’t live through anything approaching the Great Depression, and did’t have the maturing influences that their parents did, and of course their parents did spoil them by not making them earn what they got. Speaking only of my own experiences and my own observations, most of the kids turned out pretty well (although I was a pre-boomer). The rotten ones just got all the publicity. The real problem started when the radical left infested the government and the school system and started indoctrinating the kids as they came up. That’s what causes most of our current problems, IMO.
ohhhh, now that communism is dead, Stalin was a ‘brutal dictator.’ before, he was just the benevolent leader who had a heart of gold and was the target of negative propaganda.
these liberals know no shame.
they’re in full revisionist mode. i’ve noticed lately this uptick in “rethinking” WW2.
I can’t stomach PBS, so I won’t be watching.
I -know- the real history through family members who fought, those who fought alongside them and reliable sources.
My family and my kids will also know the truth. They may eventually be outnumbered by those who subscribe to this revisionist version of history, but they will have the knowledge to debunk it.
The point that he is missing is that WWII is the last war we actually won. If this putz wants to complain about the way a war was fought, he should pick one of the subsequent wars:
Korea (still fighting this one),
VietNam (we surrendered),
Gulf I (we stopped short of the objective of killing Saddam),
Gulf II/Afghanistan I (letting the lawyers/reporters establish rules of engagement).
Oh wait, there was Granada and Noriega, so I guess those count as “Wins”. Of course we fought these two the same way we fought WWII. . . overwhelming force until we met the objective.
If we had fought the current wars with the same gusto we had in Europe and the Pacific, we would have won the hearts and minds of the survivors 5 years ago.
Since I too quit watching PBS long ago, I’ll wait for the You Tube version.
I’m sure Pat Buchanan will be watching…intently.
My father was a signalman on a troop transport carrier. He lied to get into the war at the age of 17. Dad was involved in a number of conflicts including both Okinawa and Iwo Jima, where he helped tranport our Marines to and from the beachhead under enemy fire, and he saw many of his mates die horrible deaths at the hands of kamikaze pilots. He came home from the war with a purple heart and disabling injuries that he struggled with his entire life.
One of his brothers was a Pearl Harbor survivor, and president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors’ Association for many years. The other brother stormed ashore on Omaha Beach with the first wave from the US 1st Division.
I seriously doubt that my father or any one of his brothers for that matter, would give a flying * what someone like “Harvard and Oxford historian Niall Ferguson” thinks.
Won’t be watching. Let me guess, written by an “intellectual” who supports Obama…
Just doing the revisionist history Americans won’t do…oh, wait.
There is no way in the world I would watch this show. My uncle was on the Utah on 12/7 in Hawaii. Thankfully he survived, many thousands did not. His brother was captured and forced to dig his and his other Navy buddies grave, they be-headed them all and put them in the grave. My dad was on the Saratoga in the Pacific and played taps for all the killed sailors that died and buried at sea. Other family members served in the ‘greatest generation’ and thank God a precious few are still alive, my dad is not. Thank all here are from the ‘greatest generation’. Thank all who serve. Sorry, I am mad and tears from this crud to de-grade our military.
L
Exactly. Criticizing the methods used doesn’t in any way imply criticism of the soldiers. Pilots didn’t decide to bomb places like Dresden, which had no military significance. The higher officers did. Those higher-ups, the brass in the war department, were older and not really part of the ‘greatest generation;’ at any rate, whenever I hear folks talk about the ‘greatest generation,’ they are talking about the people who volunteered and were drafted as soldiers, airmen, marines, and sailors, who fought the war and made the sacrifices necessary to support the war effort. How does criticizing their commanders amount to a criticism of them? My grandfather was in the war, in the corps of engineers with a cavalry division. When Ferguson says,
I don’t see how that touches on what my grandfather, or any other solder, did during the war.
My parents never “gave” us everything… hell, we had to earn whatever we wanted. We kids all started working in our early teens in the summer when school was out. My parents’ culture was a saving culture - they did not like buying on credit - and preferred to pay everything with cash. They had savings accounts for all of us kids and we had to put away money we earned into that savings for college.
I read an interesting book years ago by Camille Paglia, who claimed that it was the introduction of the portable radio and rock music which “tainted” (my word) the Baby Boomers into the radicals they were in the 60’s. She said it was a pagan force that could not be held in check.
Now I like rock music, but I think Ms. Paglia has a point. If you look at the lyrics of music now, compared to those of my parents, there is a marked difference in attitude and tone… Paglia calls it the “unleashing” of the Dionysian influences in the 60’s which created the society we have now, and I think she may be right.
er, troop transport
carrier.My dad was on the USS Lubbock.
My son works on a carrier, the USS Nimitz.
/PIMF
Pat Buchanan will love this.
I don’t believe I will watch this steaming pile of PBS excrement.
Just say “No” to PBS.
The Greatest Generation. What modesty.
I hope “conservatives” haven’t sunk to the level where FDR is now a hero of the “right.” It will be recalled we had to pass a constitutional amendment to keep megalomaniacs like FDR from grabbing power forever like Robert Mugabe.
I think I would have preferred a president who tried a little harder to keep us out of other people’s wars, and a generation who were a bit more skeptical about going to war and sacrificing themselves in waves. WWII was certainly a grand morbid spectacle, which we survivors all enjoy, of course. Victory at Sea is one of my favorites. Having taken one course, one can never know what other options, such as not being so eager to go to war, might have resulted in. With hindsight we could have merely developed a super weapon, the atomic bomb, and avoided the great human sacrifice of US troops, but that is hindsight.
I am loathe to watch PBS at all, and have felt that way for years. What really intrigues me is that, the few times I actually want to watch something on PBS, it is a telethon to raise money for PBS. Is it in a constant state of telethon? I’ll watch a few songs by an oldies or doo-wop group, and then 20 minutes of infomercial on why they need the money, what gift you will receive for how much donation, etc. It sickens me. Doesn’t Uncle Sam pick up the tab for PBS?
I thought the same thing jrob. It seems that everyone is condemning this piece based on the word of a solitary NYPost TV columnist. I’m going to “Tune in and let me [MM] know what you think” as MM suggests.
Niall Ferguson, Q&A on PBS Web site: “I think it’s very hard for those who have imbibed the idea of a ‘great generation’ that what the Allies did to defeat the Axis was in some measure to adopt totalitarian tactics.”
Ferguson employees a sophist argument which hinges upon using “totalitarian” in an ambiguous way. The US and Great Britain used totalitarian tactics yet were not totalitarian states.
The totalitarian tactics used were to mobilize a war economy that reconfigured their economies to raise and equip armies via such things as rationing, partial centralization of the economy, conscription, etc. The tactics were also totalitarian in that we did not merely engage the enemy armies, but fought a total war that included campaigns against the enemy war-making capability and economy.
Yet, neither the US nor Great Britain were totalitarian states. FDR ran for reelection and won unlike Germany and Japan where dictators ruled.
Niall Ferguson: “The aim of strategic bombing was . . . in large measure to kill German civilians by destroying the most densely populated parts of the country. And it only really worked when the level of destruction reached apocalyptic levels. It behooves us all to stare this reality in the face, by trying to understand what it was like to be on the receiving end of firestorms like the ones that engulfed Hamburg or Dresden.”
Ferguson is distorting the purpose of strategic bombing, which is meant to destroy the enemy’s economic capability to make war, not kill the enemy population. The massed bomber formations carrying out strategic bombing in WWII went after oil refineries, ball-bearing plants, aircraft factories, et cetera. Not people.
The fact is that people are very difficult and expensive to kill. A survey of the B-29 program determined that each Japanese killed by B-29s cost about $50,000 each, or about $600K now.
What Ferguson is doing in an intellectually dishonest way is to conflate strategic bombing with terror bombing. Strategic bombing targets the economic assets while terror bombing targets civilians. Aside from the moral distinction between the two, strategic bombing works while terror bombing does not.
Strategic bombing methodically disarms the enemy while terror bombing polarizes and energizes the population to resistance. The Germans could not fight the Allies when their armament factories were bombed, their trains destroyed, and their road and rail nets cut.
By contrast, the Brits did not break when the Nazis targeted London with fire bombs, V-1s, and V-2s. That’s terror bombing. It polarizes the population to resist.
One might consider that the strategic bombing damage was what was required to stop the Holocaust. The firestorms which swirled through Dresden were nothing compared to the ovens methodically turning people into smoke in Auschwitz or simply killing people by every method in the ten thousand camps where the Nazis ground down their ethnic enemies.
In this interview, Ferguson argues that the 20th century was uniquely violent due to progress. I think Ferguson gets things backward.
The vector of human society is toward peace. Our first five million years was spent making war on each other in small bands of hunter-gatherers where a third of the males died violently. The worst of WWII doesn’t come close to that.
The fascist, racist tyrannies of Nazi Germany and Hirohito’s Japan were archaic ways of organizing humans which saw their last gasp in the 20th century. It was human progress in the form of democracies which snuffed out such hateful societies which sought to mate tribal warfare with modern technology. WWII proved that such Frankenstein cultures have only temporary advantages.
The current fight with Muslim societies is a faint echo of that same struggle, where archaic theocracies seek to dominate their betters via the use of technology. We’ll beat them, too.
PBS = Premier Bunk Station
The hindsight of the left is always 20/20. Anything that was done to preserve Western Civilization was, of course, evil. In their view, Churchill is, at least, as evil as Hitler.
The U.S. Army Air Corps flew an awful lot of daytime missions. If indiscriminate bombing of civilians was what they intended, that could easily have been done at night when it’s more difficult for the enemy to shoot you down. Daylight mssions made it easier to see the target and reduced collateral damaged, but exposed air crews to a higher casualty rate.
PBS=For liberals, by liberals and paid for by the rest of us.
God D*mn libs! Patton should’ve took Russia.
This is just pisses me off on many levels. My grandfather was in the Navy and fought on the “Mighty Mo” during WWII and was on that ship when documents were signed that officially ended that war. I loved hearing all the stories my grandpa shared with us about the wars he fought in. He also fought in the Korean war. For PBS to air this trash is…this just makes me want to puke!
It was the Germans who coined the verb “Coventrate.” I am American. Why am I telling him this? Atlanta was burned; do we bring slavery back, fool?
It is a shame that many people will watch this and believe that whatever is said in the program must be true because they saw it on television.
Looks to me like you thoroughly digested all the PBS propaganda.
Korea - ended the invasion of the south by the north, and have maintained that status quo ever since. Victory.
Vietnam - This is a lie. We have never and hopefully never will surrender to anyone. Our military was withdrawn under a peace agreement. The S Vietnamese army was defeated when the North violated that agreement, but we had no troops in country except for embassy guards.
Gulf I - another lie. Our objective was to eject the Iraqi forces from Kuwait, an objective that was achieved brilliantly. Many, including myself, thought that we should have finished off the Republican Guard and gone on to Baghdad, but that was not the objective.
Gulf II - We won this one in two weeks. It’s the occupation that’s been the problem. We won in Afghanistan by using primarily Afghani forces. Once again, the problem has been the aftermath. We had problems in occupied Europe, too, for a long time.
Grenada - quick, clean, simple.
So was my uncle. They may not have been on the same ship, but they were in the same tussles.
This is crazy we have failed to heed the warnings of Reagan’s farewell speech. He said on Jan. 11, 1989, “Our Spirit is back but it has not been reinstitutionalized.” He is absolutely right and we are losing ground.
I believe the ground work conservatives must lay is in this speech.
I know your not making personal attacks here, it is obviously your observation and I am inclined to agree to a point. I think it depends on the parent. My wifes father was one of the first on Utah beach on D-Day, a man of great moral character and instilled into his 5 daughters (poor guy) and in turn instilled it into his grandchildren, he made his grandchildren walk the straight and narrow when they were growing up as I and my wife did also, this was because that is how he was raised, how my wife was raised and how I was raised and in turn how my children have been raised, not to say that there are’nt any bad apples in the family because there are, the difference is no one in the family will tolerate them and they know it, so they don’t show up at Christmas, Thanksgiving, Family Picnics etc…. because they don’t want to hear the truth, it’s sad really.
My Uncle George was burned to a crisp during the Battle of the Bulge and my beloved Father won the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart on Guadalcanal. Mr. Ferguson can go to He77 and take PBS with him.
Revisionist, moral-equivalence buttwipe. No matter what, any war we fight in is bad. What’s next, a documentary on how the Colonies should’ve taken it in the behind from Parliament and pay their stupid taxes?
Sounds like one of those Euro-moralists with nothing to offer but stupidity under the guise of an interesting view of something. What a giant waste of money - sort of along the lines of why do frogs have 4 legs and eat bugs.
It was a Total War. Not a piecemeal war, which seems all we’re capable of stomaching now. . .if that.
What’s Fergusson’s point in making that statement? What person, knowledgeable of WWII history, didn’t already know we had to conscript soldiers, bomb civilians, institute rationing of critical resources, etc. etc.?
I feel it is a shame that the American populace is so sheltered from the realities of war (even though we’re IN one), that many of us can’t even understand the concept of Total War anymore.
txvet said:
That is correct. The RAF was on the knife-edge of collapse, until the Germans concentrated their efforts on the cities, allowing the RAF time to re-staff, repair, and generally re-constitute. The German change of tactics is widely considered one of the greatest strategic blunders of the war.
And the winner of next year’s Gore-alike film award goes to
Liberals wanted us to take the same noble route the French did, surrender to the Nazi’s.
I haven’t read the comments on purpose. The fact is that facts speak for themselves. The Allies let Russia bleed while they took care of priorities. So what.
Stalin was Hitler from another country.
War is hell. Get used to it, it’s never going away.
When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union (and as Stalin cried for help) Churchill’s famous quip made clear his purpose: “I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”
How is what Mr. Ferguson’s arguing a criticism of your uncle or father? Were either of them the generals responsible for Dresden, etc.? Soldiers aren’t the ones responsible for the tactics and strategies chosen by their commanders. There’s a huge difference between saying that some of the tactics - i.e., choices in bombing targets - were immoral and saying that the soldiers were not moral, brave, strong, patriotic men. I mean, we were able to draw that distinction with Germans after the war, and I think most people are reasonable enough to see that there’s a difference between saying “The German war effort was evil” and “Germans are evil.” Similarly, saying ‘The Allied war effort was, at times, not as morally pure as we would like to think” is not to say ‘The Allied troops were evil.’
No one’s drawn any ‘moral equivalence.’ Saying that some of our tactics were not quite morally pure is not the same as saying that all of our tactics were as bad as the holocaust. There are degrees of bad. The generals responsible for Dresden (which had no military significance) and the generals responsible for the Holocaust both made immoral decisions; however, even the most lunatic pacifist would realize that these decisions are vastly different in both the quality and quantity of their respective immoralities and that the first is only a little more than misguided and the latter is actually evil. That’s no more a moral equivalence than “California and Montana are both states” is a numerical one in terms of their populations.
Where was General Ferguson when the fighting was going on?
Are we surprised these revisionists are doing this? They rewrite history in school textbooks, tear down our greastest achievements while building up our faults. They are following in the same footsteps as their communist and fascist heros like Lenin, Mao, Stalin and Hitler who shoved their propaganda down the citizens throats. You can only shove so much down one’s throat before it blows back on you.
The oft repeated claim that “Dresden had no military significance” is not accurate.Also, claiming that “carpet bombing” was unique in the attack on Dresden is not consistent with the technology and tactics in use by 8th AF. They had no “smart bombs” and the bombsights were primitive at best. The only way they could have a reasonable shot at destroying a target was via massive bombing. In fact, as our troops advanced and after the war, it was discovered that many of the targets that were considered to have been destroyed were barely damaged. And to think that we would have wasted the lives of our aircrews to attack unimportant civilian targets is ludicrous.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of reading “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, you can easily see how our history is spun and distorted by the left. Threw the book out; I’d like to toss PBS too. The fact that they continue to pull this cr#p and it goes unanswered and unnoticed(except for blogs like this) depresses the heck out of me. The only thing worse is the fact that ignorant people will watch this show and believe it’s gospel truth.
jroberts, if you want to stick up for him, go ahead. I do not like revisionist history, especially when most of the participants have passed on.
Stephen Ambrose has left us but we still have Victor Davis Hanson.
For a breath of fresh air read his Margaret Thatcher Lecture to the Heritage Foundation.
Sorry for the abrupt response j, long day.
Nah, I won’t watch this tripe but I would like to know who is sponsoring this show. Some Heinz foundation?
And by the way, jroberts, the people responsible for the Holocaust weren’t generals. That was the function of Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen, and they were paramilitary.
I’m going to tune in to this piece of revisionist history story before I comment too much, but I’m hoping that with Ferguson’s theory that the bombing of Germany was indicative of totalitarianism that he’ll also include the blanket bombing of London and many other cities, namely Coventry, that was done by the Germans. My parents lived through this and I’ve heard many stories of the terror and hardships that were endured by their generation. Rationing was a way of life, my mother told me the first time she ever saw a banana was when she was 5[1943] and that was because my grandfather served in Africa with Montgomery and he shipped a case to the family who shared it with the neighbors. Families were split up as children were sent to the countryside so they were out of harm’s way. Rationing in Britain didn’t end until 1954, until then, bacon, butter, meat, vegetables and fruit were a rare commodity, chocolate and candy were rationed to 12oz a month. This post would be too long to tell the many stories of hardship, but the point is that if Ferguson is trying to draw a moral equivalence to what the USA and it’s allies did to defeat the Germans, he is on very shaky ground. It has taken many years for many countries in Europe to forgive what was done to them during WW2, many still do not forgive, but those that remember, know that but for the USA, we in Europe would be speaking German as our mother tongue.
txvet2 the article in your link points out that the 8th Air Force consistently used precision bombing (as it existed then) on military targets, while the RAF used wide-area bombing. Not to criticize the Brits who were enduring bombings in London and other cities, but the two air forces had differing ideologies. This was not lost on the Germans, who told me when I lived there that they didn’t harbor animosity toward the Americans the way they did the British, precisely for that reason.
Has anyone read Pat Buchanan’s new book? He thinks Hitler would have been just an annoying little flea and easily contained if the U.S. hadn’t decided to get involved.
I’m not going to watch it, but I’ll make sure to comment on it in every instance, because reading about it and watching it is the same thing!!
Shameful. There have always been revisionists, but they ought to do their revising without any help from PBS.
Typical nonsense spewed out by the worst generation.
Why do I have the feeling that PBS interviewed Patty B and called him an “expert conservative author.”
A squadron of B-17’s dropping on the leader is somewhat short of “precision bombing”, although as you say (and as I said) it’s the best they could do at the time. However, the point of the JRoberts’ post that I was referencing is that the US bombing of Dresden was an “immoral” bombing of a non-military target. That is what I was taking issue with.
Buchanan is an anti-Semitic idiot. Don’t confuse him with conservatives.
5 minutes in… What absolute dreck, what an annoying commentator.
We pay for this crap? I can’t make it any further.
I would suggest to the idiot named Niall Ferguson go and ask the 6,000,000+ Jews just how morally equivilant the two sides really were!
Of course, like many others reading this site, I gave up watching PBS many years ago for exactly this kind of programming.
I usually ignore trolls as much as possible, but Mookie just can’t get away from Pat Buchanan’s book, he obviously thinks that Buchanan is revered by everyone on the right. Sorry to disappoint you, Mookie, but Pat Buchanan speaks for me like Louis Farrakhan speaks for you. Saying that Hitler could have been contained, is ignoring history, if the USA had not been involved in WW2, Hitler would have overrun Europe, Italy and France were already his for the taking, if Churchill hadn’t gone cap in hand to the USA, Europe would look very different today.
What’s up with that? Brutal dictator?
Stalin checklist:
Persecute religious
Endorse communism
Use Western Journalists
Promote anti-Americanism
Liberal checklist
Persecute religious
Endorse communism
Use Western Journalists
Promote anti-Americanism
hmmmmm…….
At least the libs haven’t starved millions of people yet, although with their ethanol idiocy, they’re at least on the right track.
My father and both his brothers served in the Army in World War II, my father in the Pacific with the 11th Airborne during the occupation of Japan, one brother was at the Normandy landings with the 90th Division, and the other in the Anzio landings and Operation Dragoon with the 45th division. It wasn’t until I returned from Iraq (my father was 42 when I was born) that I learned of the atrocities they wittnessed especially with my uncle who served in the 45th when Dachau was liberated (along with the 42nd infantry division)
I find it hard to believe, and hold in utter contempt anyone who would question the tactics and stratigies we used to defeat the worst evil the world had know to date.
Even to question the validity of the atomic bombings of Nagisaki and Hiroshima, following the blood shed and civilian suicides during the Okinawa operations, it most certainly saved lives on both sides over having to invade the main island of Honshu.
Sigh. Here we go again.
1. It’s she, not he.
2. I mentioned Buchanan’s book because it’s extremely similar to what’s being spewed in this program tonight. Had the book been written by any other high profile media commentator, I would have mentioned it.
3. I don’t consider Pat Buchanan to be a conservative.
4. I hadn’t heard Louis Farrakhan was the voice of independents but thanks for letting me know.
txvet2 said:
I’d like to add that a lot of Japan and Germany’s military infrastructure was located right smack in the middle of the civilian infrastructure like schools, homes, office buildings etc. And by close, when speaking in terms of several bombers dropping tens of bombs with late 30’s early 40’s technology, then anything within 3 miles of the actual target is at risk. The tactics of the day were limited to the technologies of the day. Technology is constantly improving wartime tactics with better hardware and information. This will continue and less people will die as a result. But hey, it’s war not footsies.
and how do we know Mookie isn’t Louis Farrakhan?
Has anyone read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s new book? She thinks that if Eleanor Roosevelt could have flown, it would have affected the outcome of World War II.
PBS-Pure Bull $&!#
Let’s not forget that Hitler had taken most of Europe and North Africa. Japan has ruthlessly murdered its way through China and the South Pacific. Hell, the Japanese were killing around 100,000 people a month, and had developed and used chemical and biological weapons (some of which were tested on US POW’s).
There was a real urgency. Russia sat at our back door via Alaska. The Japanese had taken over an Aleutian ISland or two. And there was a race to see which country developed the atomic bomb first.
Hitler had jet aircraft during the latter phases of the war. And he was not far at all from splitting the atom. Had Hitler had perhaps just a few more months, Germany may have had the first atomic bomb. And Hitler would not have hesitated to use it and share it with Japan.
When Germany fell, the race was on between the US and Russia to locate and spirit away all of Hitler’s atomic scientists.
So, PBS can lament the fact that war is hell, but they should think how different the world would be if the US had conducted the war with less vigor. Certainly, media outlets like PBS would never have existed.
I grew up in a typical little factory town in upstate New York. The factories were built the same way - interspersed with residential areas. If we had been bombed, of course a lot of houses would have been hit and civilians would have been killed. Were they military targets? Let’s see - military weapons, vehicles, clothing, plus the Erie Canal, the NYCRR, a couple of major highways - in fact very similar to Dresden, except much smaller towns.
I wonder if Mr. Ferguson would be alive today had we not prevailed in that conflict. One thing is sure. He would not be writting a book criticizing the victors. If we applied Darwinian theory here. All of Ferguson’s family, all his offspring and anything or anyone related to him should be liquidated. It would be good for the specie.
That’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back!
Did this ass hole or anyone in his family ever fight for this country in the past?
Seems like the idiot is an Arm-chair Warrior.
I watched the first hour and saw nothing controversial in it. Both sides in the First World War demonized each other. The civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution killed eight million Russians. Lenin created a terror state even before Stalin came to power. The Turks not only exterminated 1 1/2 million Armenians, they expelled 2 million Greeks, who in turn expelled 1.3 million Turks in the early 1920’s. The expansion of the Japanese Empire in the 1930’s was accompanied by racial hatred of their Asian neighbors that was worse than any comparable Western racism. Finally, Ferguson observed that appeasement by the West did not beget war so much as the other way around, that the aggressions of the totalitarian powers and imperial Japan intimidated the West until it was forced to fight. Does anyone take issue with this?
nbarry,
I agree with you, and I think that history will repeat itself. By that I mean that, at some point, there will be a critical-mass of grass-roots American frustration, indignation, and anger that will result in an explosion of fury that will dwarf what we did in WWII. The world had better beware. Keep poking the tiger with a stick and he’ll rip your arm off.
Paul Fussell, an infantry officer who fought in Europe in WWII, noted in his essay “Thank God For The Atom Bomb” that all the critics of the atom bombings had one thing in common: they had never been tasked with landing on the beach in Japan during the coming invasion, as he had been.
Bearing this in mind, it’s worth noting that Niall Ferguson is 44 years old, which means that he was born about 1964, which places him at a very safe remove from any personal danger of fighting the Japanese, which allows him to view them more kindly and to allow for more generous tactics against them. After all, advocating an easier war on the Japanese doesn’t cost him a single drop of blood or even spill his drink.
nbarry #83 said:
Demonized? I get your meaning yet perhaps we should do a bit of further research before going that far.
I read the above comments as well. WWII included America in a total war. Allies were against the axis enemies, with both sides at risk of subjugation and genocide; vying for 2nd place was not an option. We made a necessary deal with the devil (the Soviets) yet it was not sport, it was life or death.
Adam Buckman has seen the whole thing and his writing indicates Niall Ferguson will state racism motivated America into WWII and during it. To be fair, while yellow journalism was prevalent in America in the early 20th century, it had ebbed considerably until Japan’s expansionism grew.
Yet only fools, deniers, liars, and the under-informed now say America should have negotiated with Japan after Pearl Harbor because it was a single incident and our behaviors we a root cause. Sound familiar? I doubt that anyone intelligent enough operate a computer or browse history books in the library cannot readily learn that Japan launched to attack positions in the weeks prior to December 7, 1941, and that attacked all across the western Pacific within days. (I need not remind those here that Germany and Italy declared war on us on December 8.)
Using only hindsight, without the benefit of knowing that Japan immediately went to total war or living through it, many now say that we should not have incarcerated 100,000 Japanese-Americans. They claim only racism motivated us and that we did not incarcerate Germans and Italian. To some extent, they are correct for Japanese-Americans were not the ones we fought on the battlefields. Yet did we fight a race war? Many thousands of documented war crimes were committed by Japan’s forces. The real history is we matched our enemies in intensity on the battlefield and usually treated their POWs far better than they treated ours. While we protected civilian populations within captured territory the best we could, our enemies often slaughtered or enslaved them.
Yes, our troops dehumanized our enemies while the life or death battles raged and our weapons and warriors killed them until their troops and nations surrendered. It was either them or us; such is total war.
Niall Ferguson will likely prove to be but another fool who believes we should have accepted hundreds of thousands or even millions more dead and wounded to win WWII in a fair fight. Moreover, we will find out if he lectures us about our current fight, against today’s enemies, and that prompted this PBS “special.”
Will he imply we are again leaning towards the uncivil, becoming just like the allegedly bloody racists of six decades ago? If so, then I will offer to him that perhaps we will avert another total war. Yet, should we fail, the price we will pay for our current civility is too horrible for the even the combat veterans of WWII to imagine.
Excuse the typos in #86 above, please.
This South-East Asian Chinese says: PBS can go back to building that Death Railway, meanwhile I’ll be thanking the brave G.I.’s who freed us from Bushido enslavement in World War II and protected us from Communist consumption throughout the Vietnam War.
My father commanded a self-propelled artillery gun during WWII. He participated in the invasion of North Africa, Kassarine Pass (both battles), Sicily, Anzio, France, and participated in the liberation of 3 Concentration Camps in southern Germany.
During he Anzio siege breakout my father artillery gun was hit by an 88mm Anti-Tank gun. It was turned over and my fathers back was broken. My father and his loader were the only survivors and taken prisoner.
My father was taken to an Italian village and tortured for two days. The second night in the village it was attacked and my father was rescued by members of the 442nd Rgmt. Cbt. Tm.. Upon interrogation of a German Officer they learned my father was going to be killed the next morning because he couldn’t be transported and he wouldn’t divulge information. His loader, only being a PVT. was shipped to a Pow camp immediately after capture.
My father was told he was being sent back home because of his injury. He refused and, after three months in an Army hospital in North Africa, returned to his unit.
During the liberation of the Concentration camps my father unit came upon one that had about 50 American servicemen and one of them was my fathers loader. The loader requested to immediately return to duty with the unit but was denied and sent back to the states.
After victory in Europe my fathers unit was sent to a port and staged to be shipped to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan. They were on the ships on their way to the Pacific when they learned of the Japanese surrender.
The U.S. Military had 16 million men in uniform like my father and the loader. These were truly great men. They were as great as the men that fought the Revolution and the Civil War.
I watched this program with my 14 yr. old grandson and made sure he understood the lies and history revisionism this program is doing. We plan to watch the other programs so he can learn how serious these people are about destroying this country and to make it look bad to the rest of the world.
I refuse to give money to PBS during their ‘Beg-a-Thons’ or any other time. Also, I’m sick and tired of my tax dollars being used to sponsor this America hating network.
Tonight I sent emails to my 2 Senators and my Representative. I have asked them to start action to stop the waste of our tax dollars supporting this network.
I can only hope an pray that Michelle, Rush, Sean, Mark, Laura, and all the other great conservatives, in this country, pressure the Congress until they stop the funding of this network.
The advantage Patton had was he had seen the tactic the Soviets had used to trick the Germans concerning the size of their Army.
A Soviet platoon had two commanders, each one taking 6 month terms field training the troops while the other handled administrative matters. When mobilized, each commander took half the platoon, while reservists move up to fill out the platoon. You’ve doubled your army in a matter of days.
Because the Soviets had done this against Germany, Patton knew the tactic and could prepare the counter offensive against it. While no one wants war, in hindsight, maybe we should have let Patton loose.
It’s always so easy to sit at a desk, cup of coffee in hand, snack nearby, and write, what you think, history was. One of the most common mistakes I see, in reading, is that the authors base their opinions, not on the morals/values of the period, but on the morals/values of the present time. What they fail to comprehend is that, in 50 years so, we too will be judged based on future morals/values. 20/20 hindsight is always perfect. Total war is terrible, brutal, filled with hate and emotion, and, yes, atrocities were done on both sides. One familar story is that some GI units refused to take Japanese prisoners, after seeing their own tortured and killed. Overton’s “God Isn’t Here”, is about as close to explaining combat as I’ve seen. I’m sure there are others. Biasing history, by using some facts, and deliberately leaving out others, is a worthless exercise. Yet, it’s done all the time. PBS is notorious for biasing history. Some of the History Channel’s shows leave a bad taste, too. Some of our own history books are so full of bias and garbage, it’s difficult to find the real truth. School textbooks are terrible. There is no glory in war; only death and destruction.
While Paglia is more perceptive than most Leftists, I think she confuses the symptoms for the disease. I wrote the following for an article for my hometown newspaper’s website (http://www.jacksonville.com/community/cc/bryant/stories/061406/06090671004.shtml)
The rebellion of Rock and Roll simply gave the movement started by the Frankfort School a soundtrack. Nothing more.
Mookie
I apologize for the ‘he’ refernce, I stand corrected. The Buchanan-Farrakhan reference was an analogy, as in Buchanan does not reflect the typical conservative view much the same as Farrakhan doesn’t reflect the typical liberal view, hope that clears that up for you.
No thanks. I have no desire to see leftist nuts denigrate the Greatest Generation and the sacrifices they made for us. Culls…all of those libtards!
What was all that crap Obama was uttering in his speech about honoring our patriots and not questioning the Democrats’ patriotism? Maybe, “This is not the PBS that I knew”?
I actually had a Western Civilization professor tell me years ago that “History is not an exact science.” He admitted that people take liberties with how they interpret what happended.
I have grown quite fond of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History to overcome some of the revisionist practices on our liberal college campuses and public schools.
Thankyou,Papa Bryant! You have done a great service here. I’d encountered the Names of Gramsci and the Frankfurt School but but had never received the history or the context. You managed to convey a great deal in a few, concise, and well constructed paragraphs. I shall save this to my desk top, print it out and spread it to my contacts. This explains allot and fills a huge gap in my knowledge.
I should tell you though, that the link you provided produces a google error page.
Again Thanks and to MM as well and all!
happendedhappenedSorry. Typing too fast again