Cameron it´s too political correct

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Karl Heidenreich
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Cameron it´s too political correct

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

James Cameron it´s a first rate filmaker and we owe him his interest in naval history. But, after watching again his documentary, there a lot in it doesn´t feel well.
First. The documentary doesn´t explain very well the naval situation by 1941, specially about the inferiority of the Kriegmarine compared with the RN. That´s important because general public believes that the allies fought against a Juggernaut and, in some cases, it was on the contrary.
Second. Nothing about Rheinubung and everything about Lütjens was distorted and out of context.
Third. There is a statement about German Naval Strategy that says clearly (at least in the Spanish translation) that one of it´s aims was to kill the allied crews as well as sinking ships. This is a false statement because it was never a Kriegmarine policy to deliberate killing of crews.
Fourth. Too much about the nazis, Hitler, Nuremberg rallies and the "Triumph of the Will". And very little about battleships, strategies, officers and what´s relevant in the History.
Fifth. I believe Cameron mislead the interviews of the two ex crewmen to make them both issue political statements. They seem to me as two criminals asking for the mercifull forgiveness of the audience. If we read Mullenheim book or other accounts of other survivors of the Bismarck they don´t waste their time saying "I´m sorry for being aboard the Bismarck". They are proud of their accomplishments and their role in History.
Sixth. In the Spanish translation it is said that in Denmark Straits the "...destroyer Prinz Eugen lead the Bismarck out into the Atlantic... "Destroyer"? And they described the battle as the "...Bismarck and Hood heading to each other as knights of older times..." That doesn´t tell the story right.
It´s a pity that there is not a real potrayal of the Bismarck ordeal in all it´s dimensions.
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Post by ufo »

Learn to live with it. :(

Such documentaries are not meant to be historically correct. They are meant to sell. If you are into the topic it is often better to watch with the tone off, so you do not have to endure the rubbish told.
There is a documentary out on TV and the next day you collect the complaints in the boards: 'It was not Renown, it was a Queen Elisabeth!' 'It was the paint scheme from 41 not the one from 44!' 'It was an other Admiral!' And so on …

You are lucky if they get the Ship right. They make documentaries for sale and to entertain not for scholarship.
You cannot go and make a movie that says: 'They were not all Nazis. Some were actually quite nice.' You have to keep it simple so that it sells. Good guys versus bad guys. If you are forgiving, you portray the bad guys as poor mislead wretched souls but still they have to be properly evil otherwise it does not work well on screen.
War is such a complex scenario. If you add politics it becomes a jungle. People do not want to buy a DVD where after three hours you still quite not know who was right and who was wrong.

The currently accepted public story goes something alike: evil magnificent Bismarck ventures out, meets obsolete Battlecruiser and unfinished Prince and subsequently walks over poor Hood.
Coastal Command finds Nazis. Fleet Air Arm disables Nazis. BBs finish Nazis. Curtain.

Do we not all fall for simplified explanations?

HMS Hood was by WWII standards more of a fast BB than a BC. She was by no means a BC to Fisher’s terms. Sending her against Bismarck was a fair bet. Her death has as much to do with luck as with her armour distribution.

Still – portraying her as a frail old lady protected by the tin cans in her shopping net makes the story more dramatic and the evil ship more of an invincible beast. The old lady was in fact a formidable warship and Bismarck a reasonably good battleship among reasonably good battleships of her time.

And so it goes on.

Bismarck’s sinking is a heap of legends – as if any one of the man who went down with her cared if she fell from torpedoes (UK audience or self flogging German audience (they have a fable for that way of dealing with history)), splinter- and shock damage to her hull (UK audience (paid for be the Society of RN battleship lovers)) or from scuttling charges (different German audience). Down she went.

But every documentary tells the story its target audience would probably like. If the Society of British milk men ever produces a documentary about Bismarck we will learn that she actually ruptured her hull as she ran over a floating milk can dropped by a British destroyer.

You just lean back at these documentaries and enjoy the pictures. Don’t listen! :wink:

Ciao,
Ufo
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Antonio Bonomi
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Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Ciao Ufo and all,

.. I love it ... I just love the way you explained the whole things without any dramatic aspect, .. my personal congratulations ... :clap: :clap:

YES, unfortunately the target audience, the sponsor, .. and many other aspects ..... do determine the way those works are done.

I made some comments in the past about Cameron documentary, so I will not repeat myself, as I am more or less in line with what as been explained above.

So lets not talk about the problems of a not perfectly done documentary, .... but in the opposite I would like to add to UFO compliments only my suggestion for a good one, ..... and the David Mearns one is very good, fair and detailed, .. very well done :clap: :clap: .

I just applaude :clap: :clap: Sir Ludovic Kennedy explanations on it, .. that is the way to explain history for future generations.

Sir Ludovic on that documentary fully recovered some not perfectly explained stuffs on his book, ... :clap: :clap:

On this one you can leave the volume ON and listen carefully, .. and watch all images and 3D reconstructions, .. and maps on graphics, .. because they did not fail any single aspect I was able to check, ... a good job.

But if anybody has the original OLD - BBC documentaries on Bismarck and Tirpitz by Sir Ludovic Kennedy, ... than I would like to have a copy of them, .. as I never had a chance to see them.

Thanks in advance for any help ....

Ciao Antonio :D
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Post by marcelo_malara »

One more comentary for those of us that have to watch that documentaries with translated audio. The people that translate them, have the least idea of what they are talking about, so it is not weird that they speak of the Prinz Eugen as a destroyer. A few examples from other documentaries:

-they translate "fighter" (aircraft) not as "caza" (the proper spanish term for that kind of aircraft) but as "combatientes", which means nothing in aircraft terms, but refers to the more general meaning of fighter (a person who fights)
-dreadnoughts ships are sometimes called "sin miedo" (without fear), ignoring that that type of ship got named after the first launched.
-once I heard of the F8 Crusader as having a gun of 420mm, instead of the 4 20mm cannons actually carried.
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Yep.
A year ago I buyed the video of the movie "Midway" with Charlton Heston. If you put it in Spanish when they really say "carriers", referring to aircraft carriers, they say "cargueros" refering to transport ships. And, yes, for them "fighters" are "combatientes" not aircraft. When watching a chapter of Battlestar Galactica the officer on the scanner cried: "Ordinance incoming!" and it was translated: "¡Vienen órdenes!" I have to stop it to laugh some ten minutes.
If this kind of mistakes happened with things like this I wonder in other areas like scientific or high tec documentaries. Probably from all of what we had heard only a 30 or 40% is quite right being the rest mistakes from the people of the audiovisual businness.
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marcelo_malara
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Post by marcelo_malara »

Karl, I agree with you. I have heard too the term carrier translated as cargo ship, its terrible. That is why I quit buying spanish-translated books, buying instead English-written ones (thank you Amazon for coming to rescue us).
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Post by Matthias »

ufo wrote:You are lucky if they get the Ship right. They make documentaries for sale and to entertain not for scholarship.
You cannot go and make a movie that says: 'They were not all Nazis. Some were actually quite nice.' You have to keep it simple so that it sells. Good guys versus bad guys. If you are forgiving, you portray the bad guys as poor mislead wretched souls but still they have to be properly evil otherwise it does not work well on screen.
War is such a complex scenario. If you add politics it becomes a jungle. People do not want to buy a DVD where after three hours you still quite not know who was right and who was wrong.
Indeed.This is the difficoult of study history: at every second you risk to simplify all to sell, make it acceptable, show your side was the right one and so on.It is really difficoult to mantain a certain detachment from what you are telling, as Antonio did in his article about the Denmark Strait Battle ( :clap: ), remembering you are taking back to life the deeds not of a bunch of fanatic nazis or a crew of brave heroes, but simply the deeds of men.And every man could be cruel, brave, good or bad as any other.Too bad this is not what people want to hear...


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Karl Heidenreich
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Indeed it´s difficult to study the military facts as they were. :negative: Last year I bought a book about Operation Citadel called "The Battle of Kursk" (Glantz and House) in which the authors had access to new evidence and documents. To be more specific they had at their disposal the operational soviet records. :shock:
The results of their analysis was outstanding because a lot of myths created around Citadelle were no more than that: myths. But one of their conclusions is, obvious, totally political incorrect: it wasn´t all Hitler´s fault but of his generals. :shock:
The problem is that, according to modern miltary history, you can´t just say Manstein or Guderian were at fault but Hitler. Glantz and House conclude that Hitler, in a lot of cases (but not all of them), is no more than a scape goat because he was evil :evil:, discredited and, above all, dead so he can´t defend himself. Manstein and Guderian (and a lot others) were alive and willing to explain how a military defeat such as WWII was not their making. :negative:
I put this as an example. In WWII and/or Bismarck´s history this must be as well.
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Post by ostriker »

I agree with karl, there is too much of political correct in the Cameron's documentary. I prefer those we can see in BBC.
I will add that in "expedtion bismarck", we saw some ships who are no english, no german. When we can hear the famous speach of churchill "sink the Bismarck", we can see the Regia marina :stubborn:
But it is an common error for a documentary, another time i saw a video of mers el kebir and the narrator was speaking of Pearl harbor, i turn off the TV :silenced:

The best documentary about the Bismrack is the book written by Mullenheim.
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Ostriker:
I agree with karl, there is too much of political correct in the Cameron's documentary. I prefer those we can see in BBC.
I will add that in "expedtion bismarck", we saw some ships who are no english, no german. When we can hear the famous speach of churchill "sink the Bismarck", we can see the Regia marina
But it is an common error for a documentary, another time i saw a video of mers el kebir and the narrator was speaking of Pearl harbor, i turn off the TV
The problem is the common ignorance regarding important events. And it´s quite astonishing, people see TV series like Hogan´s Heroes and believe that the general depiction of the war shown there is OK (give me a break, people believe tha U-571 was real). That´s why so important that sites like this one must endure, because people can know real History and technical and factual events.

Another thing, ostriker, can you send me your website address again, I lost it with a problem I had in my PC?

I see that your using a Verdun avatar now, 90 years, eh? That was quite a battle, many hundred of thousands young lives wasted there, on both sides, a pitty. Another example of the horrifiyng doctrine that stupid generals like Douglas Haig, the German Crown Prince, Foch and such had and cost so much suffering. WWI was a stain in the honor of every officer corps of all the countries that fought there. I believe that the best you French had was this guy, Gallieni, I believe he knew what he doing... the rest were butchers.
Those fallen French, British and German MUST BE REMEMBERED, they were young, they were millions and they sacrified their lives obeying the most stupid and criminal orders ever issued in any war. God bless them.

Best regards.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
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Post by ostriker »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:
Another thing, ostriker, can you send me your website address again, I lost it with a problem I had in my PC?.
http://www.french-battleships.fr.st

(I made this web page as i like them: no personal opinion, only technical data and history as she was.)

Those fallen French, British and German MUST BE REMEMBERED, they were young, they were millions and they sacrified their lives obeying the most stupid and criminal orders ever issued in any war. God bless them.

Best regards.
Yes they must be remembered, but it is worrying for the future because young generation prefers watching tv show instead of open a history book. I think that in the next years, and in the two side, all of that will be forget, in the name of "European Union" :stubborn:

Regarding to "those criminal", it is very difficult to say. I must admit that (on the french side), the generals have no other solution to send regiment by regiment in the furnace. German Industry, and men reserve, was huge in comparison with the french one, and the french guns were on the somme (Another bloody battle), in the beggining of the fight.

I don't know exactly to think of that. I just see that in 1914, we have men like Petain (in young version :wink: ,Joffre,Clemenceau (the Tiger),Foch, and the german didn't passed. And i also see that in 1940, we had weakling playboys (weygand,Gamelin, the old petain), and you know the history...

One the german side, i don't know to think.

Despite these 800.000 dead (At Verdun) , this war was a mistake.



Best regards


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As you say, English,French,German, must be remembered...
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Karl Heidenreich
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Ostriker,

Sorry to tell you this but the Western Front was managed by officers that still believed in cavalry and infantry charges against machine guns. The British, at the Somme, barely trained their men to run and storm the German trenches but to slowly walk to maintain the formations. That´s why the British were so cautious in the next war, they weren´t keen to send thousands to their graves in a matter of hours.
Verdun, it was a gamble that the German High Command took in order to drain reinforcements from the northen sector of the front and weaken the position of the British Expeditionary Force and to try to kill as many French as possible. At the end both sides drained themselves, the Germans with futile attacks against the solid fortifications at Verdun and the French trying to maintain the supply road open to that scary place. After months the death toll was huge and the generals still talk about attacks and flanks while at dinner with champagne in luxury palaces.
I have to admit that it was Petain finest hour, if it can be called that. We must remember that it was the German side the one that broke the hostilities in that sector and, in some measure, did prevent a general allied offensive in the BEF sector in 1916 because simply the French reinforcements were casualities by that time. Anyhow it was madness, criminal behaivor.
In some measure I believe that Verdun or Ypres were the main reasons of the French defeat in 1940: simply nobody was keen to see so many millions dead in order to maintain the honour of the officer corps. And as you said, the commanders in that action were weaklings... they were defeated before their troops were. The soldiers were brave enough, their leaders were weak. And for that, again, Verdun must be remembered.
Best regards.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
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Post by Bgile »

There were many generals killed on both sides in the Verdun fighting. They didn't always just lead from the rear. The popular conception of sitting back and drinking champagn while the troops die isn't entirely correct.
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Post by ostriker »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:Ostriker,

Sorry to tell you this but the Western Front was managed by officers that still believed in cavalry and infantry charges against machine guns. .
No doubt, but that i wanted to say is that, The Konprinz, Falkenayn had no idea to spend less men as possible. They didn't care to send 1,10,10000 or 100.000 feldrgau to the Death. In the other side, English and French generals had not enough gun to stop these offensive. The only solution was to do the same shit as the Konprinz.
The British, at the Somme, barely trained their men to run and storm the German trenches but to slowly walk to maintain the formations.
Exactly, the loses were 420.000 britsh, 200.000 french, 500.000 germans.
I believe that Verdun or Ypres were the main reasons of the French defeat in 1940: simply nobody was keen to see so many millions dead in order to maintain the honour of the officer corps.
I don't think exactly so. It wasn't the main reason. I think that Verdun was still in the civil mind, but the army was here to fight. In 1940 the generals were TOTALY responsible of the defeat. The soldier did their job, when they can, and we understand it when we look at the german losses in the western front in may/june 1940.

1- The Generals didn't put the "Ligne Maginot" up to the Channel.
2- In a lot of case, they told to their army to surrender without fighting. It is incredible the number of prisonners took by the germans :!:
3- They didn't believed the new war which was coming. The only one who understood it, was a young colonel (De Gaulle, :? :stop: ), who wrote a book. The only man who read it and understood this book was... Guderian!

it reach what you said here:
they were defeated before their troops were. The soldiers were brave enough, their leaders were weak. And for that, again, Verdun must be remembered.
Best Regards :wink:
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Bgile:
There were many generals killed on both sides in the Verdun fighting. They didn't always just lead from the rear. The popular conception of sitting back and drinking champagn while the troops die isn't entirely correct.
You are right, but we must put apart the traditional and professional officer corps (old chaps from the academy) and the reservist officers that were the ones in the fields dying with their men.
The point is that those "profesional" officers were guilty of one of the great massacres of History.

ostriker:
Karl Heidenreich wrote:
Ostriker,

Sorry to tell you this but the Western Front was managed by officers that still believed in cavalry and infantry charges against machine guns. .


No doubt, but that i wanted to say is that, The Konprinz, Falkenayn had no idea to spend less men as possible. They didn't care to send 1,10,10000 or 100.000 feldrgau to the Death. In the other side, English and French generals had not enough gun to stop these offensive. The only solution was to do the same shit as the Konprinz.

Quote:

The British, at the Somme, barely trained their men to run and storm the German trenches but to slowly walk to maintain the formations.


Exactly, the loses were 420.000 britsh, 200.000 french, 500.000 germans.

Quote:
I believe that Verdun or Ypres were the main reasons of the French defeat in 1940: simply nobody was keen to see so many millions dead in order to maintain the honour of the officer corps.



I don't think exactly so. It wasn't the main reason. I think that Verdun was still in the civil mind, but the army was here to fight. In 1940 the generals were TOTALY responsible of the defeat. The soldier did their job, when they can, and we understand it when we look at the german losses in the western front in may/june 1940.

1- The Generals didn't put the "Ligne Maginot" up to the Channel.
2- In a lot of case, they told to their army to surrender without fighting. It is incredible the number of prisonners took by the germans
3- They didn't believed the new war which was coming. The only one who understood it, was a young colonel (De Gaulle, ), who wrote a book. The only man who read it and understood this book was... Guderian!

it reach what you said here:
Quote:
they were defeated before their troops were. The soldiers were brave enough, their leaders were weak. And for that, again, Verdun must be remembered.
Time ago I spent many months trying to understand World War One. In the process of reading many books I found that there were many misconceptions of the war, as ussual, and many fabrications, specially for those who won. If someone is interested there is one book that might help to appreciate the degree of this misconceptions. I warn you, it´s not a political correct book, it´s not a book that British or French would like, but if you had read the other works and want to learn more and analyse that bloody conflict then look for:

" The Myth of the Great War: A New Military History of World War I by John Mosier "

This book will surprise many of you, when you discover that the claimed German casualties were manipulated by allied propaganda agents in order to make-believe politicians and ordinary people how the enemy was loosing the war as early as 1915. The final point is: for every German killed in the Western Front the Allies had three corpses in their side of their trenches. If you add up all the casualties the Allies claimed to had inflict to the Germans you´ll discover that the German Army would had run out of men by 1916. And you´ll find a lot of other myths, being one the Battle of the Marne. There is a quotation there of Field Marshal Gallieni, the man who defended Paris in the German 1914 offensive and who is considered the French Victor of the Marne: "Was there a Battle of the Marne?"

Everybody who like Military History must read that book. The idea is not to be pro German, or pro French, or pro British but, as we do in this forum, try to look for the truth behind the fabrications and propaganda.

Well, I believe that´s it, best regards friends.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
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