- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
Netflix review: Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial
In a nutshell, this is probably going to end up as the definitive documentary on the subject. Probably the most interesting, thorough, and accurate documentaries I've ever seen. This is must-see TV for any WWII enthusiast….or just anyone with an interest in history. No spin, no agenda, no conspiracy theories. The material draws heavily from the experience of William Shirer, who was an American journalist in Germany at the time who eventually wrote the WWII "bible" The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
People often wonder how someone like Hitler could ever come to power….well, this explains how it all went down. And it kind of makes sense. They didn't know what was to come until it was too late. One day they are having the Olympics in Berlin, complete with full Nazi ceremony, the world celebrating Hitler as a savior and international superstar…..the next day they're invading Poland and enslaving people by the thousands.
Comments
I just watched Boys in the Boat about the JV team made up of open tryouts during the Great Depression. A very uplifting movie during the same time frame. I recommend it if you want an Old Fashioned Good Ending based on a true story of overcoming insurmountable odds.
They say you become and old man when you start watching WWII documentaries. I guess Ive been an old guy for a long time lol.
History minor in College most of this I was aware of. However I had not heard much regarding the story of Mr Shirer. He had front row seat to it all.
They really did a great job cleaning up old videos from the period. Cleaning up the audio of the Nuremberg trials.
My minor was History as well. Plus, Marines are obsessed with military history, particularly the Civil War and WWII.
My favorite commercials are those Progressive Insurance "turning into your parents". I love this one…."who else reads books about submarines?" Getting old indeed.
I've never read "Rise and Fall…" because it's over 1,200 pages! This series is basically the movie version.
I'll have to watch this next time I'm at an Airbnb w/Netflix.
Submarines have been an interest of mine for a long time. I read Terrible Hours to my boys in school and they got hooked too. We tried to arrange a visit to what's left of the Squalus but couldn't get that to work. We did visite the Nautilus and saw Electric Boat Company on the ferry up to New London.
Thx for posting; I'll give it a watch. TR&F/3rdR was the best book on Hitler's rise to power I've ever read. The Nazis were among the craftiest liars in history, and humans are pretty good at lying.
And that is the crux of the story. They were master manipulators and propagandists. Nobody knew they were completely FOS until it was too late. People around the world really did believe Hitler was the good guy until he invaded Poland. Germany's reconstruction under Nazi-ism, at least at face value, was quite remarkable. The 1936 Olympics really put Germany back in the good graces of the international community.
We need to keep in mind that Kings, Emperors, and Dictators in western nations were not unusual in the early 20th century, so Hitler positioning himself as a virtual dictator was not seen as a red flag. That was kind of normal, and a lot of people preferred that to democracy.
Episode 5 is tough to get through. This is when we see true evil. Up until 1941 the war was pretty conventional. Then Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, started with 3,000,000 Germans literally ransacking and killing everything that moved. This was by design. The atrocities were not just a couple of rogue junior officers burning a village. The plan from the beginning was to kill anyone they considered the enemy….man, woman, and child. In Kyiv, Ukraine they rounded up over 30,000 civilians and executed them by firing squad. This part of the episode will make you cry, one witness describing how she survived by pretending to be dead in a huge pile of corpses. The difficulties of executing that many people with guns was so taxing on the German army that it led to senior leadership devising more efficient ways to handle the mass extinction…. concentration camps.
Per your suggestion, I started watching it last night. I like history stuff, especially WWII (since it was my dad's war) and I found this episode quite good. Will get to # 2 tonight. Appreciate the tip!!
Hitler was wrong about most everything. For example he thought the US would not be an effective fighting force. Why? Because it was full of blacks, jews and poles. Surely they cant fight well. He was really wrong about that one.
He also thought eventually the West (UK, France. USA,) would just want peace and leave him to fighting the Russians. That any alliance between the West and the Soviets would fail. Wrong again.
Why did he fight to the last man when all hope was lost? Because in his mind if Germany lost they were not the superior race and deserved to be wiped out completely. This was the sick way he saw the world.
Was a blessing I guess that he was so incompetent. Otherwise the War might have lasted until 1947 or so with even more dead.
with their early work on guided missiles, jet aircraft and atomic energy, it might have turned out quite differently if it lasted a bit longer.
Can you imagine if Germany had developed atomic weapons first? Hitler absolutely would have wiped out London, Paris, Amsterdam, Leningrad, and Moscow.
Crazy that at the trials they all went down fighting. None of them expressed regret or shame. No remorse or admissions of wrong-doing. Like they all would do it again if they could.
Hitler was waiting for the Wonder Weapon too.
I get your point but I dont think it would have mattered. The Germans were running on fumes at this point. Literally calling up old men and boys to fight.
The Allies were getting to Berlin eventually. Just a matter of how long was it going to take.
Hitler sped this up as well with his insane counter attack the Battle of the Bulge. After that defeat it was just who is going to get there first.
Ultimately Hitler waited as long as he could. Killing himself with the Russians 150 or so yards away. He didnt want to end up like Mussolini strung up by his feet at a gas station.
they should do one for Japan
Yes. It would help people understand why the two bombs were preferable to a full-scale mainland invasion. I think people would be shocked to discover how vile and despicable the Empire of Japan was back then.
Would like this as well. The War in the Pacific is always framed as Pearl Harbor then the US response to that culminating in BOOM and again BOOM.
Tora! Tora! Tora! is one movie that explores things from their perspective. But we dont always get that. And it doesnt go into things like Unit 731 or all the atrocities in mainland Asia.
The overarching theme is this. When one race feels superior to another. Whether that is Japan, or Germany or countless other places. They will commit awful acts against the "inferior" race.
I watched Episode 1 yesterday when running on the treadmill… really good so far. Thanks for the recommendation!
I've finished # 2 so far. I can see how it can happen, even here, if conditions were right. Not saying they are - Hitler had a depression to help him make things look bad. So far, nothing quite that bad has happened again. Excellent series, thus far.
The US has never experienced anything even remotely close to what Germany went through post-WWI. Absolutely staggering poverty, pestilence, and total social-economic ruin. No sympathy because they caused it all. But it is easy to see how someone like Hitler could come to power. By the time everyone realized he was a psychopath it was too late. Most Germans didn't even know about the concentration camps till after the war.
Really, I think your average German on the street or foot soldier at the end of the war just saw him as a strong leader trying desperately to salvage the Motherland. Only his inner-circle knew he was a maniac (as were most of them….so they probably didn't recognize his evil). The fact that all of the defendants pleaded not-guilt at the teial and went down defiantly shows how committed they were at the time, and still were till the time of their death.
I started watching it last night and it's good… even for a Netflix documentary.