The History Buff's Guide to World War II (48 page)

In 1944, while working for the U.S. State Department, Gordon Wright led a supply convoy from Lisbon in an attempt to reinforce the American Embassy in Paris. Wright made it, even though fighting was still going on and his superior believed he had no chance of succeeding.

FILMS

Nearly as soon as it erupted, the Second World War appeared on the big screen. Studios released a burst of patriotic pictures, and some managed to make a film a week, motivating and entertaining their respective countrymen. Among hundreds of flag-waving morale boosters were
Victory in the West
(Germany, 1941),
Eagle Squadron
(U.S., 1942), and
We Dive at Dawn
(UK, 1943). Story lines varied, but the overriding theme was predominantly “good versus evil.”
⁵

After the war, moviemaking struggled. Companies in Asia and Europe suffered from want of equipment and money. Usually the only lighting and backdrops available were daylight and ruined landscapes. Thus productions from 1945 to 1948 were commonly called “Rubble Films.” The United States also bade farewell to its golden age of the silver screen. From 1945 onward, ticket sales plummeted, largely due to the advent of television. For people who still went to the movies, their preferences spoke volumes. After years of self-sacrifice, Americans developed a taste for Westerns, with stories of rugged individualism and the great wide open plains.
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World War II movies slowly regained popularity in the 1960s, but almost exclusively within victorious countries. Most productions were action flicks, with pyrotechnics and heroics galore, typified by
The Longest Day
(U.S./UK, 1962),
The Dirty Dozen
(U.S., 1967), and
Kelly's Heroes
(U.S., 1970).

Adventure turned to anguish during the extenuated struggles of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the nuclear arms race. Films began to characterize warfare as paradox, a fight between duty and disillusionment, as shown in
Hope and Glory
(UK, 1987),
Prisoners of the Sun
(Australia, 1991), and
The Thin Red Line
(U.S., 1998).

Overall, the fight between the Axis and the Allies has seen literally thousands of renditions, many of which have achieved critical and commercial success. To date, nine films about the war have captured the Oscar for best motion picture. Following are the best of the ages (available to Western audiences), based on quality of writing, directing, acting, cinematography, and historical accuracy.
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1.
DAS BOOT
(1981)

A war reporter in the Third Reich, Lothar-Günther Buchheim survived numerous U-boat missions. Decades later he eventually brought himself to write a distressing, honest depiction of U-boat service and the German war experience as a whole. Deeply moved by Buchheim’s 1973 novel, director Wolfgang Peterson translated the print into pictures. The result was one of the most raw, cognizant, and genuine war films of all time.
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The story follows the exploits of U-96, a fictional amalgam subjected to factual miseries, patrolling the hostile waters of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean. In shots of tight and dismal quarters, moldy food, and crowded and unwashed men, one can almost feel the weight of the sea upon the hull. The sub itself is eerily real, made for the movie by a German company that actually produced U-boats during the war.
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Scenes of engagement are especially astute: the cold sequence of a torpedo launch, the echoing groan of a sinking ship, the sight of drowning survivors. In depicting mortality of German crews, the film is brutally truthful. Of the thirty-eight thousand officers and men who served on U-boats during the war, fewer than eight thousand survived.

After the collapse of the Third Reich, German cinema wallowed for decades in bewilderment. Films either treated the war as some out-of-body nightmare or avoided the subject altogether.
Das Boot
reestablished the reality that everyday Germans were active participants, serving, fighting, and suffering horribly with their chosen vessel of war.
¹⁰

Due to mounting production costs, the project was nearly offered to a pair of American studios, both of which intended on making
Das Boot
into an action-adventure picture, starring either Paul Newman or Robert Redford.

2.
SCHINDLER’S LIST
(1993)

Critics often hesitate to administer praise upon a Spielberg film, as the director has a penchant for tugging heartstrings and granting tidy endings. The conclusion of
Schindler's List
does little to break the filmmaker's habit, exhibiting a row of Schindlerjuden honoring the Jerusalem grave of their paradoxical savior.
¹¹

Throughout, Spielberg does much to cleanse the factual Oskar Schindler (played by Liam Neeson), the Catholic businessman who spared more than twelve hundred Jews by employing them in his own factories. Instead of a changed man, the historical Schindler remained adulterous, alcoholic, and opportunistic for the rest of his days, even selling the gold ring he received from grateful survivors. Schindler's departing speech in the film, where he lamented his failure to save more people, is a fabrication.
¹²

In spite of presenting a simplified Schindler (dispensed with greater accuracy in Thomas Keneally's historical novel), Spielberg unleashes the finest and most legitimate work of his career. Shot in high-contrast black and white, strengthening shadows while bleeding faces pale, the film does nothing to hide or glamorize issues of violence. Most directors present the Holocaust as an event of untouchable extremes, of automatic behavior from convenient stereotypes. Spielberg humanizes all involved, showing persecutors and the persecuted as equally capable of fear, cowardice, strength, guilt, and gratitude. The result is history made utterly tangible.

The governments of Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Malaysia banned
Schindler's List
for its allegedly pro-Jewish stance. Brigham Young University censored the movie for its sexual content.
¹³

3.
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
(1946)

Strangers during the war, three discharged veterans meet while returning to their quiet Midwest hometown. As reinstated civilians, they encounter a public largely indifferent to their harrowing service oversees. In turn, the men find solace in each other.

To a postwar European or Asian audience, the scenario would appear ideal, coming home to a family, a home, a city physically untouched by combat. Yet the film must be taken in context. Made less than a year after the fighting ceased, the work addresses issues too unpleasant for popular consumption but all too real for many American veterans: unemployment, alienation, mental trauma, alcoholism, and adultery. Indeed, there were merely a half-dozen American films about veterans before
Best Years
and more than three hundred after.
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The outstanding performance belongs to Harold Russell, playing the part of Homer, a sailor who lost his hands in battle. Having no acting experience other than the military training film in which he was discovered, Russell brilliantly underplays the role, revealing the doubt, sadness, and perseverance of a wounded man rummaging through a broken life, debating whether there is anything to salvage. His presence is all the more moving in that Russell was a veteran and a double amputee.

Adding significantly are the female characters. While most World War II films have little or no female presence (save for the obligatory love interest), the wives and daughters in
Best Years
are an exception. On the surface they appear tucked away, brought out for brief moments of reactionary dialogue. Under closer inspection, they are the strongest characters, supporting, challenging, and defining their severely tested relationships, exemplified by Homer's reticent fiancée Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), who looks upon his handless arms and treats them not as deformations but as proof of fragile beauty and unbreakable courage.

Harold Russell won two Oscars for his performance—one for best supporting actor and an honorary award for inspiring his fellow veterans—yet he never acted in a major motion picture again.

4.
PATTON
(1970)

A screen biography of the controversial and flamboyant American general had been in the works since 1951. Yet producer Frank McCarthy failed to garner support from either the Defense Department or the Patton family, as both groups anticipated a wholly negative treatment of the bellicose commander.
¹⁵

Not until the mid-1960s did McCarthy receive tacit approval, and production was on. Unfortunately, so was the Vietnam conflict and a growing public aversion to all things military.

Armed with a gifted writing team (including Francis Ford Coppola), a healthy budget, and a top-flight cast and crew, plus three thousand extras from the Spanish army equipped with World War II surplus tanks and artillery, McCarthy achieved the near impossible.
Patton
opened in 1970 to rave reviews and mass approval. Hawkish viewers (including President Richard Nixon) praised its depiction of courage and patriotism in trying times. Doves proclaimed the film an excellent portrayal of military hubris.
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There are discrepancies and omissions. Spanning Patton's service from North Africa in February 1943 to France in October 1945, the work makes no mention of his blatant anti-Semitic rants, the slapping of a second soldier, or an affair with his niece by marriage. And the British contribution to victory in Africa is nearly ignored. Concerning artistic expression, the real Patton was a much smaller man than Scott, sporting a high-pitched voice that screeched even higher in his many moments of agitation. Far less excusable was the treatment of animals on the set, where several were poisoned or shot for visual effect.
¹⁷

Frank McCarthy, creator and producer of
Patton
, had served in World War II as the secretary of U.S. chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall.

5.
A BRIDGE TOO FAR
(1977)

Based on Cornelius Ryan's informative though heavily anecdotal book of the same name,
A Bridge Too Far
portrays O
PERATION
M
ARKET
-G
ARDEN
, the September 1944 Allied attempt to capture vital bridges deep inside Nazi-occupied Holland.