Ken Burns' WWII vs. WWII

Ken Burns has earned his reputation as a great documentary filmmaker of American history. His works not only educate, but retrieve the past in a sensual and a spritual dimension as well. Burns' ability to animate photographs, and move us with haunting soundtracks and the recitation of personal letters---most famously the juxtaposition of Ashokan Farewell and the almost unbearable  letter Sullivan Ballou sent his soon to be widowed wife during the Civil War---testify to his extraordinary gifts.

Now he is presenting us with another documentary of war. But this time it is not simply on American soil, but the Second World War. Judging from the opening episode, he has lost none of his skill, finding compelling photographs and testimonials from those on the the front and the homefront. But it may be that Burns' romance with American history---and Americans---won't serve him as ably in this project, for to capture WWII is to come to grips with some very unromantic realities:

a) The U.S.  entered the war two years after Britain declared war on Germany after the latter invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Isolationist sentiment was very strong until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. While enlistments dramatically increased for two months after the attack, they then fell back. Moreover, the marriage rate rose dramatically in 1942 and the birth rate in 1943 rose to the highlest level in twenty years. Being married and having children didn't insure  avoiding the draft, but meant one would be called after those who were single.

b) As Max Hastings, in his exhaustive account of the last year of the European war, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945  shows, by the time American troops fought in Europe, after D-Day in June 1944, Germany had effectively lost the war. Their defeat was largely the result of the herculean effort by the Soviet Union, led by a man arguably as evil as Hitler, which accounted for 88 percent of all German casualties. America played a major role in supplying their allies with food and weapons when they were desperately needed, but we did not provide the manpower that was necessary to break the back of the German army.

Allowing the Soviets to bear the brunt of the ground war was a deliberate, if understandable, decision to save American lives once it seemed clear Hitler's days were numbered. Neverthless, that decision---to avoid rapid advance and aggressively engaging the Germans---prolonged the war by many months.

The total number of American war deaths, civilian and military, in all theatres were at most 400,000, slightly less than British casualties. By contrast, the Soviet Union  lost almost 25,000,000, one third of whom were soldiers. Statistics don't tell the whole story, but they are a story worth telling to place the American role in Europe in context.

c) The performance of the American infantrymen in Europe was inferior to that of the German and Soviet armies. As Major General James Gavin observed in his diary in February 1945 "With better troops, I see no reason why we could not run all over them. The public will never know nor appreciate this. Our American army individually means well and tries hard, but it is not the army one reads about in the press. It is untrained and completely inefficient...certainly our infantry lacks courage and elan."

The relatively minor role of the US infantrymen in the defeat of the Nazis in Europe and the poor performance of our troops has been documented by virtually all serious military historians, that is, those who see the historian's role as describing and understanding reality as opposed to altering it to support what one wishes to believe.

This is not to diminish the suffering of American (and all other)soldiers on the front lines in any war or the extreme bravery of many of them. But, at a time when Americans are at war once again, clear-headedness better serves the nation and the world. For there is nothing romantic about war and there is no need to refer to largely invented patriotic and martial traditions in order to justify present sacrifices, especially in unnecessary conflicts.  WWII was a necessary one, but they are few and far between and being better suited to make love not war is not the worst thing one can say about a nation.

It is also important to understand that the explanation for the superiority of Germany and the Soviet Union as military machines can be explained in part by ideology when Germans were on the offensive and fear when they were pushed back into defending their own homeland at the war's end, as well as worries about punishment for desertion. On the Soviet side, it was a combination of patriotism, revenge and fear of the draconian punishment visited upon those who displayed, or even appeared to display, cowardice in the face of the enemy. American soldiers rarely had  ideological motives for engaging the enemy, were not avenging, at least in Europe, an assault on their nation, and had relatively little fear of being shot for cowardice or desertion.

d) American soldiers did not behave markedly better than those of other nations in the treatment of military prisoners. Captured soldiers were often executed. In the war against Japan, barbarity  was freely exhibited by both sides. For Americans, the Asian theatre was the one which generated more passion: revenge for Pearl Harbor as well as the mistreatment of American prisoners and war dead. Race differences exacerbated feelings of mutual hostility and American soldiers mutilated Japanese bodies and tortured and killed prisoners just as they were victimized by the Japanese. Skulls of Japanese war dead were often sent as souveneirs to wives and girlfriends.

The novelist, Philip Caputo, was told by a Marine seargeant in Vietnam, where Caputo served as a lieutenant, "Before you leave here, sir, you're going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen year old American boy."  Those average boys'  forbears fought the Japanese. Their progeny are in Iraq and elsewhere.

As E.B. Sledge observes in With the Old Breed, his riveting memoir of a marine in one of many battles in the Pacific war, "Peleliu....made savages of us all. We existed in an environment totally incomprehensible to men behind the lines---service troops and civilians.

e) While America did not single-handedly defeat the Nazis, there is no question we were decisive in the war against Japan. Yet, even here, recent scholarship has undermined what had been a nearly universal belief: the dropping of Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan to surrender.

In 2005 historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, published Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan . Hasegawa, unlike other scholars is fluent in Japanese, Russian and English and was able to examine documents in all three languages to uncover the perspectives of the US, Japanese and Russians during the end game in the Pacific. Apparently, while the dropping of the bombs might have been necessary in moving Japan to contemplate surrender, it was not sufficient. What proved decisive was the Soviet Union's thrust into Manchuria to fulfill its pledge at Potsdam to enter the war against Japan.

The Japanese government feared that the Soviets would seek the return of territories lost in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 if they had the time to play an important role in the current campaign. The spectre of such a development tipped the scales in favor of surrender to the Americans.

Burns' documentary will surely deliver an indelible cinematic experience, both educational and aesthetic. I hope he also covers in depth some of the well-documented issues raised above. If not, the effort will fall short of what could be a watershed in the maturation of our society: taking the blinders off when viewing WWII. If that can be accomplished it will be far easier to develop an appropriate level of humility in dealing with our role in the world today and in the future.

Comments

[Todd]

With all do respect, shouldn't this kind of criticism wait until the breadth of information this documentary stands to deliver is fully delivered? You have waited since April to post an entry. What is another week? LOL

[Milton Mankoff]

I thought about waiting, but I didn't for several reasons.
First, if people read this they can be sensitized to these issues during the process of watching when it would have a greater impact on their evaluation. Second, once the show is over viewers will move on and be less inclined to
seek perspectives on the work.

I realize there is a chance Burns may cover the matters I raise. I hope he does, but I got the impression from the NY Times review on
September 21 that his focus is elsewhere.

[Jaclyn Kingdon]

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