Slitherine

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American soldiers blast their flamethrowers into caves, the oily fire whipping around like something out of a dragon’s mouth. We’re shown the bombing of Tokyo from a mile over the city, the bombs exploding like clusters of orange dots on the map-like green landscape below. On Okinawa, grenades burst into mounds of curling black smoke, and we see a Japanese woman on the Mariana Islands jump off a cliff rather than allow herself to be taken alive. As for the city of Hiroshima, filmed seven months after the atomic bomb was dropped there, it’s a flattened, debris-strewn hellscape of desolation that looks like it could have been filmed yesterday.

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Directed by Erik Nelson, the film was drawn from 700 reels of archival color footage, never before seen by the public, that have been sitting in a vault in the National Archives and have been digitally restored to 4K. Why is this material being released now? Just a guess, but my sense is that the graphic power of the footage is something the U.S. government was only too happy to keep a lid on. The standard black-and-white images that bored me as a child were a way of keeping the WWII narrative restricted to something stuffy and official.

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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

What the article describes I have seen in countless other history films using real war footage. It may be new to the author of the article but for most of the old-timers on this forum it is not new nor a revelation. But if a few of the younger generations get an education from it - good. No one should be under any illusions about how brutal war is, and what it does to the mental and emotional health of the participants who survived it.

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ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Give it to Mikey. He hates everything.

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They had all of that on the Thames TV series The World at War in about 1970. Narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. Didn't they show that on American TV?

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never before seen by the public,

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Why is this material being released now?

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Just a guess, but my sense is that the graphic power of the footage is something the U.S. government was only too happy to keep a lid on.

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ORIGINAL: Dante Fierro

Here is the Trailer for the documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER-UrUC7pxw

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I've seen at least 90% of those scenes. The one that always hits home is the one of the trembling little boy. He looks a bit like my one grandson.

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ORIGINAL: Dante Fierro

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I've seen at least 90% of those scenes. The one that always hits home is the one of the trembling little boy. He looks a bit like my one grandson.

Yes, that was a powerful few seconds. One of the bitter tragedies of WWII is how civilian populations were targeted. Was it really that necessary??
Couldn't the Allies have just stuck with military targets?

I also liked the opening of the trailer, the color, and speed of the frames and I believe added sound effects, really puts you right there.

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Was it really that necessary?? Couldn't the Allies have just stuck with military targets?

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The Axis specifically targeted the civilian population

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ORIGINAL: PaxMondo


The answer to that is the allies did try to avoid, in most cases, civilian target. There are exceptions, but those are exceptions.
The axis tended to intentionally shield military targets with civilian knowing that it would give the allies pause in target selection ... and it frequently did.

night bombing in this era inherently had poor targeting, and both sides did a lot. Even if you mean to hit a military target, your bomb spread would be 1 km or larger at night ... that meant bombs NOT on target ...

I don't recall the allies declaring a unilateral civilian attack (certainly it happened: Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, ...) but in each of those significant military targets were also included.

The Axis specifically targeted the civilian population of London in the BoB, I'm not aware of an allied equivalent. I could also use Stanlnigrad and Moscow amoung other examples.

So, to ask if the allies could have done less civilian targetting; certainly. But, while there was some clear retaliation, it is also apparent that surprising tolerance and control was largely exercised ...

PS: You also have to put yourself into the time and place ... which is very far removed from the "peaceful" lifestyle that most westerners now enjoy. Meaning, very few living in the west now have actually lived through a war and as such passing judgement on those that did is hardly accurate or fair.

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So did Harris. And call it what you will so did the U.S., especially when it came to Japan. The technology of the time just didn't support any other way, as just about all combatants found out.

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ORIGINAL: Dante Fierro



Yes, this is also my take on the subject. The US and I believe Britain's air marshal was particularly Pro targeting German cities. There was a debate on how effective this would end up being, but it was done anyway. Part of the reasoning at the time (I believe) is that it would 'demoralize' the Germans from fighting further ...

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ORIGINAL: Platoonist

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ORIGINAL: Dante Fierro



Yes, this is also my take on the subject. The US and I believe Britain's air marshal was particularly Pro targeting German cities. There was a debate on how effective this would end up being, but it was done anyway. Part of the reasoning at the time (I believe) is that it would 'demoralize' the Germans from fighting further ...

After the London Blitz moral qualms were largely abandoned in favor of an "if that's how they want to play the game ..." attitude. Sir Arthur Harris of Bomber Command voiced the opinion that the Axis, having sown the wind, were entitled to reap the whirlwind. Roosevelt also voiced this sentiment, stating that he wanted the Axis bombed "heavily and relentlessly ... they have asked for it and they are going to get it"

The military effectiveness of strategic bombing in Europe will always be as controversial as its morality. German production actually increased during the peak of the strategic bombing campaign, though most of the increased production was in occupied countries out of range of Allied bombers. The morale of the German people never cracked under bombardment, contrary to the expectations of Allied air commanders. Bomber casualties were heavy. This was particularly true among American bomber crews, since the U.S. Army Air Force overestimated the survivability of their strategic bombers on daylight raids.

Ironically, the decision to risk heavy casualties in daylight bombing was based on a belief in precision bombing, which would specifically target factories and communications rather than civilians. So in trying to formulate a bombing strategy to avoid civilian causalities, the US bombers and crews actually got more heavily shot up for their pains.

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ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

But the Luftwaffe really got shot up later in the US bombing campaign. Some of the problems with the daylight raids was the lack of coordination which resulted in a strung out bomber formation.

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After the London Blitz moral qualms were largely abandoned in favor of an "if that's how they want to play the game ..." attitude. Sir Arthur Harris of Bomber Command voiced the opinion that the Axis, having sown the wind, were entitled to reap the whirlwind. Roosevelt also voiced this sentiment, stating that he wanted the Axis bombed "heavily and relentlessly ... they have asked for it and they are going to get it"

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ORIGINAL: Platoonist

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ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

But the Luftwaffe really got shot up later in the US bombing campaign. Some of the problems with the daylight raids was the lack of coordination which resulted in a strung out bomber formation.

It took some time to accept the dictum laid down decades earlier by Mitchell, that air superiority was an essential condition for a strategic bombing campaign. Doolittle seems to have been one of the earliest of American bomber commanders to accept this fact.

So, what really cinched the bombing victory was the P-51. Once long-range fighters began escorting American bombers, casualties soared among the defending German fighter pilots. Even Goering admitted it was over. The Mustang was a major contributing factor to the collapse of the Luftwaffe in the West and the success of the Anglo-American invasion of France. When the Allies could finally focus their strategic bombing on synthetic fuel plants and other petroleum facilities, early in 1945, the Germans quickly ran out of fuel. This was a major contributing factor to the collapse of the Wehrmacht. However, the Russian capture of the oilfields in Romania and Hungary probably didn't hurt either.

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ORIGINAL: Dante Fierro

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So did Harris. And call it what you will so did the U.S., especially when it came to Japan. The technology of the time just didn't support any other way, as just about all combatants found out.

Yes, this is also my take on the subject. The US and I believe Britain's air marshal was particularly Pro targeting German cities. There was a debate on how effective this would end up being, but it was done anyway. Part of the reasoning at the time (I believe) is that it would 'demoralize' the Germans from fighting further ...

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ORIGINAL: Alamander

The concept of "total war," of which strategic bombing was an extension, was mostly invented by the U.S. during the Civil War and first implemented by Grant and by Sherman in his march to the coast. As for "the blitz" being the excuse for strategic bombing and the first bombing of German cities being an accident, this is largely post-war allied propaganda. The plan, from the beginning, was for a strategic bombing campaign targeting all enemy industrial and population centers. That is the campaign for which the 4-Es were designed.

The book to read on the subject is Russell Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy. He traces most of the strategy and tactics used by the U.S. (and by extension England), including "total war, victory by attrition, leap-frogging, and so forth, back through U.S. military planning to the Revolution. It is a must-read for anyone intersted in military history and is on the short-list of nearly every military history PhD student.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe


Look at Epamindondas in 369 bc.

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ORIGINAL: rustysi

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They had all of that on the Thames TV series The World at War in about 1970. Narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. Didn't they show that on American TV?

Yes. I have it on DVD, but unfortunately a couple of the disks went bad.

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never before seen by the public,

There were thousands of reels of film that were just shoved somewhere that were 'never seen by the public'.

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Why is this material being released now?

Most of it was just never viewed by anyone. Not much was intentionally kept from being seen, at least after the war.

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Just a guess, but my sense is that the graphic power of the footage is something the U.S. government was only too happy to keep a lid on.

Sometimes, as in the case of film from Tarawa. Deemed to disturbing when it happened. Later released to help buoy yet another war bond drive.

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If I recall, there was an accidental? bombing of Berlin - and then Hitler decided to retaliate by bombing London - and then it escalated from there ...

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IIRC is was the other way around. Not that it wasn't going to happen anyway.