The War
I just finished watching The War, a seven part World War II documentary by Ken Burns. It originally aired on PBS in 2007. I watched the entire series, all 14 hours worth, over the course of two days. I have a couple comments on the series, which is why I’m going to the trouble to “review” it here.
I’ll start by saying that I enjoyed the series, and thought it was well done. I learned a lot, and there were many touching, poignant moments. But there are a couple things about it that troubled me.
First, and most important to me, is that it was a very negative series. Specifically, it seemed to dwell on every poor military decision, social issue, and horror of war (all as presented from the US side) that it possibly could. In comparison very little negative was presented about the Axis powers, particularly things like the bombing campaign the Nazis waged against the British citizens, the Holocaust, the atrocities the Japanese committed against the Chinese, etc. The series would point out US losses of a specific campaign, but not quote the enemy losses, which were of similar number. The series simply concentrated on the false starts, the failures, the tribulations of the US military, and added as a footnote that in each case victory eventually went to the Allies. Great detail was presented about the firebombing of Dresden and Japanese cities, but not the numbers of civilians that died as a result of the Axis powers. Foremost, the series spent a great deal of time covering the segregation of African Americans in the US military. In fact, if I were asked “what was the dominant theme of the series” then I would have to answer it was the segregation of African American and Japanese American troops during the war. That topic was discussed in detail in several episodes, and was mentioned time and time again throughout. I understand that was the state of society in the US at the point in time, and thus of course it was reflected in the military as well, but WW2 was a milestone and a turning point regarding segregation in general. By the end of the war African Americans were involved in direct combat alongside white troops, and the Japanese Americans had proven their valor, loyalty and allegiance to the United States time and time again, and had the most decorated regiment in the entire US military. Yet all in all the US was demonized in each of these areas – clearly the balance was toward the negative in all cases.
The second issue that bothered me, and perhaps it was more evident because I watched the series almost straight through, was that some specific footage was reused to represent entirely different things. This led me to question how much of the various footage throughout the entire series was actually from the battles or even the whole theater of war that was being discussed. As an example, the footage of two young girls sitting on a bench in a tent was used for refugees in Italy early on, and then again much later for the Philippines. Clearly the footage was misrepresented in one case or the other (or possibly both). Another example of obviously technically incorrect footage was a scene showing large German artillery firing, followed by the explosions supposedly resulting from said artillery. In one case, immediately after the firing of artillery, footage was shown of an obvious demolition of a water tower, with soldiers standing and watching the explosion. Again, this served to make me wonder how much of the series was simply a hodgepodge of WW2 footage pieced together that appeared to show the topics as narrated. That discredited what I was seeing from being authoritative and accurate to almost a sort of fiction.
All in all I enjoyed the series, but now I feel like I need to watch an actual historic documentary that portrays a balanced, neutral, objective perspective of the war and its various facets. This series left me with the impression of a subtle anti-American agenda, and now I feel my overall impression of the war is slightly skewed as a result.