I'm watching now.

We're watching it here, too.

Yeah, that is freaking brilliantly done. Good for Ken Burns (again). I probably won't be able to tune in every night, though, so I'll probably have to rent the DVDs at some point.

That's one series that will definitely never play in the UK.

Why don't you think so, chuckdarwin?

After watching, I can understand (a little more) the mindset that put Americans of Japanese ethnicity in camps. There is no way to justify it, (it must have been a horrible experience) but Americans were SCARED, and the news of the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China and other places had to give pause.

Why don't you think so, chuckdarwin?

Because they have their own version of the events - done by the BBC, of course. Some older folks would even be insulted by the Burns version, not that I've seen it. His work tends to be very insular and his romance with America is the defining aspect of his entire body of work. Of course he isn't going to be critical...

There are still a lot of people (millions?) who will never forgive America for waiting. They were getting bombed by Germany on a daily basis *for a very long time* whilst America did fuck-all to help. When the states finally showed up, people were quite rightly bitter about it.

"Thanks for coming, but where were you last year when my kids got blown to fuck?"

***

What really does my head in is all the Russians that were killed in the war. Millions and millions - an unimaginably big number. Where's the love for those guys?

World War II started in Europe on September 1, 1939. (In Asia, World War II overlapped the Second Sino-Japanese War, which started in July 1937.) Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, two years and three months later. Since Burns' film is about the American experience in World War II, it probably glosses over the first couple of years.

I missed the first hour, so when I tuned in, I was met by scenes of victims of the concentration camps. I found the documentary fascinating, informative, and heartbreaking. I'll probably buy it, someday, because I think it's important for my kids to see this.

I think it would be good to watch this before lodging criticisms about what it might be; not only is it thorough, it's personal, spending more time on the human experience of battle than on strategics and politics. And yes, Burns is a chronicler of the American experience, so there is a highly American-centric view of the war here, even unapologetically so; but that is what he does, and telling American stories is what American history does. I would certainly expect a different perspective from a BBC documentary, a Canadian documentary, an Australian documentary, a Danish documentary...you get the idea. Every nation has the right to tell and re-tell its own story.

But hindsight being 20/20, there were some fairly valid reasons for a weakened US, emerging from a crippling Depression, to postpone entry to the war. For one thing, had the US not done so, it's far from likely we could have managed the feat of materiel production which was actually responsible for winning the war. Going in too early would have depleted the labor and natural resources that allowed the US to battle an Axis that had, quite literally, run out of gas (and steel and coal and workers and food). One thing the documentary mentions is that of the first 16 million draftees, 5 million were rejected for bodily weakness or malnutrition. This was a poor and starving nation. For another, Britain declared war on Germany before being directly attacked, because of an alliance with Poland; it felt the strength and will to begin a fight without requiring American support as a condition, counting on its allies in Western Europe (France, and the Scandinavian countries). It began as a European war, after all.

And despite the awe-inspiring tenacity and valor of the British, a historical phenomenon for which I personally have the greatest admiration, a stance suggesting that the US "stood by and did nothing" isn't historically defensible (and neatly skims over Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and wholesale sellout of Czechoslovakia and Ethiopia, also nations in which people had kids 'blown to fuck' with implicit British approval). The US didn't do nothing, despite being bound by its Neutrality Acts - the US built and sold weapons to France and Germany, with no federal budget to support the venture -- first as direct sale, and later under Lend-Lease -- under Presidential order and in defiance of Congress. This was a significant commitment from an impoverished nation not involved in the fighting. We also maintained a naval presence in the Atlantic to relieve British forces for service elsewhere, despite having a very small active service ourselves (again, teeny federal budget and teeny military).

There is legitimate bitterness from the British over their long lonely standoff during the Battle of Britain, but perhaps the bitterness coming from European refugees denied direct entry into the U.S. is a more serious commentary on American isolationism - they did not pick the fight nor did they ever have the power to end it. I can certainly understand a small part of the isolationist/pacifist mindset that had the majority of Americans swearing off involvement in European conflicts after the bloody, Byzantine, and useless wrangle that was World War I; certainly those who opposed going into Afghanistan and Iraq did so at least in part because of what we witnessed in Viet Nam.

Basically, what I'm saying is that World War II is awfully hard to Monday-morning quarterback. The Allies did the best they could, each facing its own domestic challenge of developing a home front and convincing a weary populace of the necessity of what they knew would be a long, deadly, and costly war. In America it was all the more difficult because there were no borders over which the enemy could march. I would be just as interested in watching a documentary done from the point of view of another nation. There are lessons to be learned from each and every perspective.

What a great response, and I wholeheartedly agree with your points (which are well-made). Thanks for tapping it all out; I find the war very fascinating, especially considering that most of the troubles in the world since then have been a result of what happened afterwards.

The sequence of events leading up to the war were complicated (and there are still absolutely ridiculous conspiracy theories flying around), and the reasons for waiting were, I'm sure, well-articulated. Regardless, it probably just looked like cowardice to the British.

I still think I'd have to buy the DVD if I want to see it. I wonder how well the Burns DVDs do here...