Ken Burns' The War - aftermath

[pokerfan]

Comments? Criticisms? Anyone learn anything?

I was enthralled, though I didn't learn anything on big scale. My parents lived through it, not me. But they taught me about me about it and we had tons of books with lots of pictures,

I will sit at rapt attention whenever a vet speaks. So the series held my attention even if it didn't really bring anything new.

"It is good that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it."

[bridgit]

1. my father was among the forces liberating France, and then Germany...

by way of invasion, he experienced the horrors of Bergen-Belsen as a member of the front group that entered the camps...he suffered nightmarish sleeps, and a haunted waking life until the day he died, before being grounded, he was an on-board mechanic stationed within bombers that dropped tons of ordnance upon Germany landing crippled crafts on wings & prayers back into allied occupied France,

the documentary is for me vivid even though i did not live through it; in the remembrances my father conveyed to me

[begin_within]

2. Both of my parents were Marines in WWII.

I thought it was a pretty good overview of the war, but it really just scratched the surface of the vast number of stories that could have been told. As they stated at the beginning of each episode, that war was fought in thousands of places and it's too big of a story to be all told in one accounting. It was too widespread and complex and involved too many people. You could probably do a series of 300 two-hour episodes and still not cover it all. My mother watched some of it with me and she enjoyed watching it. I'm sure my Dad would have watched it all if he were alive today.

[alphafemale]

3. It's amazing the hold "The War" still has on us as a nation.

And we weren't nearly as affected as many other countries.

While it was a "total war" in the US as far as the rationing goes, civilians never had any realistic fear of having their town fire-bombed.