On this day in 1944, elements of General Sir Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group of the Allied Expeditionary Forces landed in Normandy, thus beginning Operation Overlord. In honor of the men who fought and died that day, consider watching Band Of Brothers, HBO's miniseries based on Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name about Company E of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The 101st Airborne dropped into Normandy on the night of June 6th ahead of the Allied landings and fought extensively until the German surrender, most notably at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Band Of Brothers is the finest film treatment of World War II that I have ever seen. It is extremely realistic, and it honors the bravery of the men who fought without being sentimental or mythologizing them. The episode dealing with D-Day is #2 ("Day of Days"), but all of them are worth watching. Oddly enough, the book is worse than worthless. It's poorly-written, poorly-researched, and falls into the hero-worship and mythologizing that the miniseries avoids.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
D-Day
On this day in 1944, elements of General Sir Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group of the Allied Expeditionary Forces landed in Normandy, thus beginning Operation Overlord. In honor of the men who fought and died that day, consider watching Band Of Brothers, HBO's miniseries based on Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name about Company E of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The 101st Airborne dropped into Normandy on the night of June 6th ahead of the Allied landings and fought extensively until the German surrender, most notably at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Band Of Brothers is the finest film treatment of World War II that I have ever seen. It is extremely realistic, and it honors the bravery of the men who fought without being sentimental or mythologizing them. The episode dealing with D-Day is #2 ("Day of Days"), but all of them are worth watching. Oddly enough, the book is worse than worthless. It's poorly-written, poorly-researched, and falls into the hero-worship and mythologizing that the miniseries avoids.
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2 comments:
Two quick questions:
1) Do you have an opinion on how successful a 1943 landing would have been? It's a highly politicized question hinging largely around wartime russophilia, but it came up lately on alt.books.george-orwell and I realized I had no idea whether it had even been an option.
2) Have you seen the first 20 minutes of Enemy at the Gates? It seems to me to have been quite as well done as Private Ryan, though it provided a lot more background for Americans unfamiliar with Stalindgrad, the Red Army, or the role of the NKVD.
Never seen Enemy at the Gates. The crappy reviews and the fact that Jude Law is in it convinced me not to. As to the other question, my initial reaction is that a 1943 would have been less likely to be successful than the D-Day landing was, but I will do some quick research this weekend and post something more considered thereafter.
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