The War

Ken Burns' 15 hour PBS miniseries, THE WAR, is stupendous by even his high standards. It gives us a fresh and powerful and poignant portrait of World War Two. We have both the home front and combat in both the Pacific and Europe, battle by battle, mostly from President Roosevelt declaring war in 1941 to V-J Day in 1945. And the home front is viewed through four towns across America: Sacramento, California; the tiny farming town of Luverne, Minnesota; Mobile, Alabama; and Waterbury, Connecticut. As always with Burns (and co-director and co-producer Lynn Novick), we have oral reminiscences, then graphic combat footage to show what is being talked about. In the process, several ordinary people in those four towns emerge as superstar commentators. And the war's horror really comes alive. Libraries are more likely than Blockbuster to stock THE WAR. If you want to buy a copy, Amazon.com is way, way cheaper than PBS directly. The DVD has seven episodes on six disks. Each episode is about two hours in length, with advisories on the front for strong violence. Episode one shows how the attack on Pearl Harbor changed life in the four profiled towns across America for both wives and soldiers. Burns and Novick offer audio commentary, if you have the time to view episode one twice. We go all the way up to December 1942. Episode two gives us 1943 in 24/7 factories across America, battles in north Africa, suicide bombing raids in Europe, and bloody battles in the Pacific. On the same disk, episode three takes place from November 1943 - May 1944. We get Allied forces in Italy and heavy American losses in Tarawa in the Pacific. Meanwhile, on the home front, factories are booming with productivity, leading to ugly racism. On one of these episodes we also see Japanese-Americans rounded up and sent to internment camps, and blacks in their own proud front-line combat unit. D-Day in June 1944 is at the center of episode four, with commentary by Burns and Novick, which I did not play because I wanted to hear the oral witnesses instead. Maybe on a second viewing next year. Episode five is wryly subtitled "FUBAR", which stands for "f----- up beyond all recognition", which tells it like it is in Fall 1944. We are in Holland and Germany, directly fighting the Nazis on their own turf. We also fight one of the most brutal and unnecessary battles in the Pacific. Episode six is set in early 1945. Americans finally get across the Rhine in Germany, after heavy losses in the Ardannes forest, while the Russians are only 50 miles from Berlin in the opposite direction. In the Pacific, we score big with the capture of Iwo Jima and bombing raids on Japan. Finally, episode seven of THE WAR has V-E Day, the battle of Okinawa and the atom bomb droppings on Japan, V-J Day, and a whole world trying to learn to live without war. It is a sobering and poignant finale to a magnificent war miniseries when you have the time for it. Ken Burns and his staff picked the exact right four towns and found the exact right commentators to make the home front and these battles unforgettable. Read more

This is a very excellent illustration of how to tell a story, it is perhaps a documentary as well and provided this viewer with a unmistakable interest that I have watched the entire series twice and more.I sometimes fall asleep when I want to watch an episode nearing a latter part of the day, but that has not deterred my efforts to listen and watch many times over.This is very excellent story telling. The difficulty in placing this event is that much like the war much should be said, so much that it posed a problem, how much is necessary? Necessary for what? This is that compelling a story, a story that becomes something very personal, the war gets your attention, stories that need to be respected and conveyed to others.The telling of those days became so gruesome that memories returned to me as "With the Old Breed" by EB Sledge.I did not know just how other worldly those days were until I heard in EB Sledge own words.The stories were of an underworld, a darkened day that was truly very nearly the end of life.This is truly the "War".An account that testifies to time-everlasting how terrible that event, how terrible that resolve, whereby some nearly 60 million people world wide would lose their lives.The telling of this story is very much worth the time and effort to know. It is personal, it is a magnificent story, it is both glory bound and of such an unmistakable defeat, that where glory lives death was never far away.The film was from real footage, the sound was good to listen to, the effects were so real that when I first listened to Franklin Delano Roosevelt time, so it seemed stood still.I tear up when FDR in the episode entitled "Pride of Our Nation" prays for our cause, for our boys as this occurred on the evening of the day of the Allied invasion of France. I'am reminded of something that Ernie Pyle wrote when he witnessed the very one-sided account that occurred in North Africa.It is unmistakably excellent writing that suggests we Americans had a very high opinion of ourselves but got our heads handed to us at the expense of Erwin Rommel and the Africa Corp It was Erwin Rommel that wanted to teach the Americans a lesson so thorough as to instill an inferioty complex of no mean order, in part that is what happened. He went on to say that the worst was yet to come.That truly was as it would be an account that set the record straight.The American Army became a great fighting force, however, the debacle at Kasserine Pass, Tunisia was a learning experience, a valuable experience but a learning experience none the less.We had to fight for it and fight for it, we did.This showing is such an excellent approach to this big bad event that it rates well within the ranks of other of its kind. "The World At War" is a comparable comparison, yes the two are different but neither lacks pathos, neither lacks truthfulness with "The War" surprising just how personal the war became. Read more