11–20 of 156 posts
This article was probably meant as humour, but I can't help but notice that fiction and life are two very different things. Fiction makes sense; life very often does not.
A couple of my favorites from the Pacific Theater: 1) Radar detected the Japanese strike force approaching Pearl Harbor, but the guy in charge said it was a glitch. 2) The Japanese planned to declare war before attacking, but mix-ups in the way coded messages were processed kept the Japanese delegation from delivering the declaration of war until after the attack, and 3) On several occasions Yamamoto made battle plans that stood some chance of success -- only to have Army guys muck around with the details. That had to get pretty frustrating.
You really can't make some of this shit up.
No intellectual curiosity was satisfied by the article.
I dont know the author and why its here on HN, but its easy to make obvious statements that most of TV shows are oversimplified BS. I'd be interested to read his vision of true WWII history though. I think the truth is that its was complex combination of various forces. None of them were evil/good or black/white, simply because it was a story about huge masses of ppl , who are hmmm.. more complex than good elves and…
I think that the author's point was something else. People expect fiction to be consistent, believable and predictable and yet they take their own history for granted. You'll hear people complain that the show X jumped the shark because of the character A or plot device B. Yet a lot of those same people don't question much of what they "know" about World War II. And a lot of those who do question it, just give up and…
WWII fits the stereotypes so well because it originated (a lot of) them. No intellectual curiosity was satisfied by the article.
I dont know the author and why its here on HN, but its easy to make obvious statements that most of TV shows are oversimplified BS. I'd be interested to read his vision of true WWII history though. I think the truth is that its was complex combination of various forces. None of them were evil/good or black/white, simply because it was a story about huge masses of ppl , who are hmmm.. more complex than good elves and…
I think that the author's point was something else. People expect fiction to be consistent, believable and predictable and yet they take their own history for granted. You'll hear people complain that the show X jumped the shark because of the character A or plot device B. Yet a lot of those same people don't question much of what they "know" about World War II. And a lot of those who do question it, just give up and…
At first I thought the author might be poking fun at the war -- then I realized that he was actually poking fun at himself. People have high standards for fiction, yet some of the strangest things are real-life stories from history. A couple of my favorites from the Pacific Theater: 1) Radar detected the Japanese strike force approaching Pearl Harbor, but the guy in charge said it was a glitch. 2) The Japanese planne…
I dont know the author and why its here on HN, but its easy to make obvious statements that most of TV shows are oversimplified BS. I'd be interested to read his vision of true WWII history though. I think the truth is that its was complex combination of various forces. None of them were evil/good or black/white, simply because it was a story about huge masses of ppl , who are hmmm.. more complex than good elves and…
I don't know about your definition of evil - but to me parts of the Nazi and Soviet leaderships were as close to pure evil as has ever existed.
"Evil" is a concept useful for propaganda and little else.
interesting view on the history. Of course, over here in Europe, we go into great detail when looking at WWII in history at school (at least the European part) and to be honest, I have to agree with the poster - all this feels kind of surreal and inaccurate. I guess this is already some consequence of history-rewriting going on in some parts, combined with strange coincidences. But in general, yes, the whole story, e…