I was wondering...

Do any of you really pay attention to when people talk about WW2 and the struggles of the Allied soldiers, that it focuses on the Americans? This made me quite peeved regarding that America wasnt even involved until later on. When you look on rememberance ceremonies and memorial honors that they are always remembering the Americans and almost never anything else? Such as to say you never hear much about the Common-Wealth countries having memorials being made in their honor. An example would be D-Day, do you ever hear anything Gold, Sword or Juno? I have to say that there is never talk of Gold or Sword and the fact that Juno accomplished their objective but were still pushed asside in the face of talk of American beaches.Another example would be the Schelt battle, it has givin credit to America. Now dont get me wrong I have nothing against American people (except the rudeness on X-Box live) but I bet even some Americans would agree that to much focus is turned on "Their" fight. A large example would be video games such as the allies always fly an American flag.[/rant]

 

Gee are you talking about Memorial Day yesterday? Which just happens to be an American holiday started in 1868? I for one, if you haven't noticed ,have posted about alot of the other countries. Especially the smaller ones that people tend to ignore. Both Axis and Allied. "Such as to say you never hear much about the Common-Wealth countries having memorials being made in their honor." And whose fault do you think this is? The US didn't even have a National WWII memorial until just recently. Now you may also ask yourself why is most the History discussed here more Eurocentric? The Allies fought in the Pacific too. But the majority of the threads,posts and discussions are European in content. And It depends on the Target Audience for all the video games out there. The companies determine the content not the public. Not all the games are designed in the US.

 

Maybe because most of the media comes from the US? It is bound to focus on our soldiers. Why wouldnt it?

We wouldnt complain about it if Canada started producing movies about their soldiers in the war. I for one would be first in line to see it. Why do you expect the US to make movies about british or commonwealth soldiers? American media naturally makes movies about American soldiers.

I was actually in England at the time that Saving Private Ryan came out. I was a little confused at how angry people were that it showed "yanks saving the world by themselves again, as usual..oh the arrogance.." But it was an American movie about an American unit in and American battle. it would have been historically inaccurate to show Canadians strolling along the beach wouldnt it? As far as the American beaches on D-Day getting the most attention, it would be more accurate to say that Omaha Beach gets the most attention. Utah beach is not written about much for the same reasons the British beaches arent. It was a relatively free-and- easy operation. The Canadian beach landing started out roughly but was able to quickly get cleared up. Omaha Beach gets the attention because it was so bloody and prolonged. The invasion of Eniwetok in the pacific also doesnt get any attention. Why? Because theres not much to say about it compared to places like Iwo Jima and Tarawa.

Really I feel that people feel we are more arrogant about these things than we are. Most Americans know darn well that we had allies that were heavily engaged.

 

People on X box can be rude, but thats not just because they are Americans, we have some social issues here.

I do see where you are coming from, but most of the things in English out there come from America... we like to do things about us. If Canadians want to make their own video games and movies and stuff feel free, I wont get offended. But dont expect me to make stories and games with other nations in the spotlight, it is not going to happen.

 

When in America, you're going to hear a lot about Americans. Americans made up a large part of the forces that liberated Europe and Africa. The British were involved in the war very early on, for instance, and were defeated/at a standstill. They weren't the 'main show' after Normandy so much, so i believe that is why.

Having traveled across Europe, every little French and Italian town i passed through had a memorial to those who fell in WWI and and WWII. There really isn't much to celebrate...France was Conquered and out of the entire war, and Italy was two-faced, not exactly something to be proud of, not to mention (in Italy) the general disdain for the War by the masses. But they still have their memorials in every little village dedicated to the locals who died during both wars. Theres a plaque in Anzio too marking the date of the landings there. And of course all the War Cemeteries in Europe.

The USA, apart from the Revolution/Civil Wars hasn't had conflict on its soil, thus no such memorials apart from in places like DC.

 

hmm. I disagree and would ask for some hard facts and examples on this one. I would depend on where you are at. Of course, each country's entertainment industry with focus on their own contribution to the war. When I was stationed in the UK, I saw shows which only showed the British soldiers at war. I'm sure that Russia has movies that only shows Red Army soldiers. I doubt that they would make a movie about the battle of Midway. Now, Germany and Italy are making movies about the war. Italy's 'El Alamein' was terrific. As for the video games, are you really expecting accuracy from an industry solely based on entertainment measured by how many games they can sell? I just don't see what you see. Everybody did their part whether it was from the beginning or at the end. Don't blame us for having great industrial might along with being many times larger population wise. It was indeed an allied effort. I think that a thread like this based on opinion is in poor taste much like my country is better than yours. If you want to compares apples to apples then do some research and let us know who would have won the war all by themselves. Nuff said from me. Tschuss.

 

Wow, thankfully we don't have that many Italian members or we'd have a flame war over this!

PzJgr, great post!

 

Excellently and very tastefully said. I don't think it could have been better explained.

Ike, your post as well, was most excellently said.

Cheers to you guys.

 

Hmmm. I can't say I've got hard evidence to back this up, but I'd guess that an average American with little to know WW2 knowledge would assert that America was the nation that won the war for the Allies after exposure to media such as Saving Private Ryan and Medal Of Honor.

 

Media and Hollywood. And I agree that media made for America will focus on America, and Britain on Britain, etc. I think the sensitivity comes from when movies make no mention to speak of others involvement ie. The Longest Day (which I love) mentions various groups such as the Free French Forces (which was good) but ignores Juno Beach. At least Ken Burn's "The War" did include Juno Beach - but the average population including young Canadians wouldn't have recognized it on the map as it was marked with the Red Ensign (historically accurate but virtually unknown to those born after the mid-1960s). Perhaps the greatest irritation comes from Hollywood rewrites that actually change history regarding who did what. So the sensitivity that say I might have, would be directed towards the entertainment industry for inaccuracy based on the bias of this is what sells versus also including the truth. I would be equally sensitive if a Canadian film were made that ignored that America was involved unless the only time period it covered was prior to Pearl Harbour and even then it would miss the big picture by not acknowledging the Lend-Lease program.

We've had several threads where we talked about education, and really that is where the breakdown occurs. We know that television in general has dumbed down reaching down to the lowest denominator rather than having people rise to know and understand; why should we expect film or video games to be any different?

And of course in today's world - in particular - the financial bottom line dominates all media; targeting a market of 304 million with strong buying power would have greater priority than a population of 33 million.

The original question strikes home to me as I recall a man who worked with Veterans in Canada telling me how frustrated he got in what developed into a brick wall discussion with a young friend of his son's who insisted World War II didn't start until Dec 8 1941 and that Canada wasn't involved............he about 8 or 9 so had not yet been exposed to the history of the Second World War in school aside from Rememberance Day (and obviously had poor teachers for that), but he had seen television and movies and that was the message he got from them. The internet has the potential to help with that kind of ignorance...but it still requires the will to learn.

 

Seen from former Soviet eyes what do you think the version is like? Obviously that the Red Soldier and the Soviet Peoples bore the brunt while the West just tweedled it's fingers

The fact that this is historical truth has no bearing on this post. I'll get me coat.

 

Excellent point and totally agree.

 

Now that's not necessarily true.

I seem to remember a wartime Hollywood movie with Henry Fonda where he played a Canadian in a British infantry unit in North Africa; it was called The Immortal Sergeant http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036037/. They could do it then, why not now?
Then there's Cross of Iron, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, The Young Lions, The Eagle has landed etc....adding fuel to the view that Hollywood wants to glamourise the war effort of everyone but her allies.

It's known that British personnel-albeit very few-were on Omaha; beachmasters etc etc. People over were were annoyed by Spielberg's crass remark that 'there were no Brits on Omaha'-conveniently forgetting too that the majority of the invasion fleet were British-manned ships.
The subject matter also annoyed a lot of people here; British papers carried stories on many examples of two and three brothers from the same family being killed in action, so the storyline was seen as being typical yanks.
I can think of a few British films about the war in the Far East, but none on Kohima Imphal. I also know that a hell of a lot of British people who lived through the war will still not watch Objective Burma because of the perception that it shows Americans winning the war single-handed.

I agree, but in a recent British media poll "What causes anti-Americanism?", Hollywood was unanimously blamed for the phenomenon. And rightly so IMHO.

 

I tend to agree with the original post, everything does seem to centred around the Americans in the war, most people have heard of the battle for Normandy, but not the Battle of France, or even the BoB (which if not one by the RAF, D-day possibly might never had happened). Even North Africa, people tend to lean towards the torch landings over the entire campaign between the British, Italian and German forces.

Why do people tend to think more about D-day and after? Is it to do with the fact, that that is the time the allies started winning?

Being in Australia, we are quite influenced by the American way of life, especially from Hollywood (seeing the close ties between the countries) and seeing that Hollywood is virtually in a league of its own with no real rivals, it has the abilty and money to spread the american way of life.

Now many Americans I feel will disagree, but America does have a tendancy to spread there way of life around a little to freely, such as showing only the Americans in ww1 and ww2.

I do agree that the American forces from both world wars were great soldiers and should get all the congratualtions that any other soldier gets.

MAybe it is because in both wars, the Americans swang the battle back in favour of the allied armies, such as their entry in ww1 and (to focus on) ww2. Without them the D-day landings may never have been so successful, just look at the Dieppe Raid. The American Torch landings helped in North Africa, the recapturing of Italy.
In D-day they broke the Germans, while the British got stuck at Caen (of course at no fault of their own).

So with that, I think that the Americans swang the battle back to the allies and were virtually in every engagement in the war after their entry, and without them ww2 could have gone on much longer, and maybe they could make a movie about the British at caen or the sword, gold and juno beachs. But we must remember that most movies are about the allies winning and how many did the allies win before D-day?,

To quote Churchill;

"Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat."
Winston Churchill

 

Maybe we need a good soviet movie about the fall of Berlin, or the battleo f kurst or something like that.

Maybe there are so few, due to the fact that they were soviets and in essence, communists, who most of the capitalist world would rather forget about I'd say, which is of course regretable, due to the fact that without them, the war could have gone on much longer.

 

I'd like to see a non-political Russian war movie too, but I doubt I'll live long enough.

 

As we've acknowleged on this thread, Hollywood movies were American-centric. This also makes it difficult to get real information if you try to get outside these narrow subjects.

But the fact of the matter is, Hollywood is a business and businesses do what they do to make a buck. They perceived that there was no money to be made on other countries participation.

Just my opinion

 

Fair point David, but they seem to have no problems portraying the other side. There was controversy over The Desert Fox because it was made so soon after the war, and also another one made in the late '50s set on the Eastern Front where the German hero is killed in action at the end (forget the name-think it was the screenplay of a book; Spring/April Blossoms possibly? I know it was in colour.)

 

Let me clarify my earlier post. I didn't mean to imply it was ok. Just that it was a fact of life. I've almost given up watching Hollywood "historical" movies because of the horrible lack of accuracy.