Plot Holes in World War II

[DearestDane]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

And don't get me started about how stupid was to have Italy to switch sides 4 times during the conflict!

They tried to attract those millions of soccer fans who are convinced that Italians are a bunch of cheats.

[saoirse]

Originally Posted by Malacandra

Yeah, they dragged them into the Pacific story too. It's not enough that we've seen them in France, in Norway, at Dunkirk, in the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Blitz, their own night bombing campaign (and a right old tear-jerker that was - seems like every single mission they were coming back with one plane in ten shot down, and that was the routine ones), Greece, Crete and North Africa - now we've got to see them all over again in Singapore, Burma, and a bunch of other places, not forgetting the Japanese prison camps like Changi and the slave labour on the railway. Someone clearly liked writing for stiff-upper-lip types with this weird master/servant dynamic between the officers and other ranks. Fairly solid rumour has it they nearly got written into the Winter War too. I mean...

I suspect that Burma subplot was some sort of veiled political commentary. I mean that Aung San character, the Japanese quisling who switches sides right before the end of the war? That name doesn't sound familiar?

[RealityChuck]

Originally Posted by Nava

James Stewart is a colonel in the series; general in later sequels although he didn't get much screen time in these.

I'm also reminded of the stunt casting of Ted Williams as a fighter pilot. It seems like a cynical ploy to bring in Red Sox fans. Evidently, though, it worked, since they did the exact same thing in the Korea sequel and even paired him with the eventual star of The Space Program.

There were also some annoying pandering in the "Home Front" sequences. A one-armed baseball player? That breaks any suspension of disbelief.

[kunilou]

Originally Posted by RealityChuck

A one-armed baseball player? That breaks any suspension of disbelief.

Not entirely unbelievable. In real life there's Jim Abbott. Not only did he only have one hand, BUT he came to the major leagues never having pitched in the minors AND he threw a no-hitter.

The one-arm baseball player character isn't nearly as improbable as the baseball player-spy character. Or, for that matter, the actress and composer who turn out to be inventors or the eccentric millionaire who builds the world's larget airplane out of plywood.

One sports-related flaw I didn't like, though. Remember how they decided to premier the Day of Infamy story right in the middle of a football game? Football wasn't nearly as big a sport back then as baseball. I would have launched it a few weeks earlier, and used the World Series as the platform. That would also have made the Bob Feller cameo more meaningful.

[LAV25]

Or how about how they tried to press the reset button on the whole French colonies thing? That played so poorly with test audiences in Asia that they had to launch several more spinoff series just to write their way out!

[Polycarp]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

For your first point, though, one of the most pathetic examples was Chiang Kai-shek, whom they wrote out of the main series but gave him his own show as sort of a consolation prize, titled Ihla Formosa (My Beautiful Island) . Sad, as he kept on plotting his comeback and never got it through his head he was no longer a big star. The latter show never amounted to much during his run, but there was a revival of interest and some fresh storylines once Chiang's character was finally killed off.

Just to nominate this as a major contender for Dopername/content juxtapositrion of the decade!

[Koxinga]

Thanks! Two acknowledgments in one thread, I'm honored!

[Attack from the 3rd dimension]

On the other hand, look at the stuff they considered putting into the series but cut or de-empahsized as being too preposterous. If they had included giant aircraft carriers built of ice and sawdust battling it out in the arctic with cruise missiles and jet aircraft while Hitler thrust the Spear of Destiny at the sky, it would have been just too over the top.

Overall it was a pretty good show, really

[Malacandra]

They slipped the odd one in, though. This giant rocket-propelled wheel-bomb made a brief appearance in an episode or two, but it really belonged in a TV comedy.

[straight man]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

What if the story of WWII had been placed in the hands of a competent writer?
....What would it look like?

[b]Ernest Hemingway

<snipped>

With apologies to Fingolfin.

Competent writer, my ass. They let him help write the Italian part of World War One, and look at what a plotless, depressing, pointless snafu that became. I will never figure out how they managed to convince the producers to greenlight a sequel!

[Boyo Jim]

I see WWII as more of an epic bloody Marx Brothers film, with the Keystone Cops thrown in.

[Gedd]

Originally Posted by straight man

Competent writer, my ass. They let him help write the Italian part of World War One, and look at what a plotless, depressing, pointless snafu that became. I will never figure out how they managed to convince the producers to greenlight a sequel!

I think I just realized why there is such a wide spectrum in the quality of the various plots, stories, and writing styles. There were a huge number of writers! (I should have known). They must have employed a large number of authors and let them each have a small part to write. They got a large amount of material, and then could pick and choose the parts they wanted.

It's obvious in hindsight. Some stories are comedies (see the previously mentioned Polish bear); some are dramas, some suspense, some action, etc. There are hundreds of characters, settings, and plots; most of which don't connect. They simply say it's a "global" (more so than WWI) conflict to explain it away.

Brilliant!

[Elendil's Heir]

Well, I liked the series, all in all. It was actually pretty compelling at times. But there really are just waaaay too many cliches, coincidences and hackneyed bits.

So America goes from the Maine to the Lusitania to the Arizona? Enough with the dramatic ship losses pissing the public off enough to bring the U.S. into a war, OK?

So the Hitler dude has one of the best paratrooper forces in the world and he blows it all in capturing a single island? Please.

The Japanese and Germans were just too unbelievably evil. Beheading prisoners, working them to death, and encouraging civilians on Pacific islands to jump to their own deaths rather than be captured? Or building concentration camps and killing Jews on an industrial scale even though it hurt your war effort? Please. And why wouldn't the Allies have bombed the rail lines leading to the concentration camps? C'mon, it'd be win-win!

Then the top German scientists go off to work for the Americans at the end. The top rocket guy, who probably knew about Nazi slave labor, even builds the spacecraft for the handsome PT-boat naval hero's Moon program 20 years later! Yeah, sure.

And that wheelchair President guy is elected FOUR times?!?!?!? Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

Germany and Japan go from planned-economy military dictatorships who are the Americans' mortal enemies, to healthy market-economy democracies and trusted allies in, what, less than a decade? Yeesh. Some disbelief just can't be suspended, guys.

Originally Posted by RealityChuck

And, of course, the leader of the blond Aryan race had dark hair. Why would anyone follow him if he didn't match the image?

Heh. One of my buddies joked, "For all that Nazi genetics crap, it seems to me most of the German actors are as blond as Hitler, as tall as Goebbels, and as thin as Goering!"

Originally Posted by silenus

Did they actually think people would buy boarding parties in the 20th Century? The very idea that a modern naval commander would order "Away all boarders!" is insane. USS Pillsbury? Nice product placement, guys. Real subtle.

And then to have the leader of the Pillsbury boarding party die of a heart attack before he could get his Medal of Honor? And for the captured sub to end up in CHICAGO, of all places? Sheesh. Gimme a break.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_David
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-505

Originally Posted by Levolor the Blind

...Anyway, I remember reading some spin-off novels back in the seventies (the titles escape me). One was about an invisible American destroyer and the other about Germans going to the moon. Sci-fi, obviously, and very cheesey. Were these ever canon?....

Oh, man, there's been a lot of fanfic about this, if you look hard enough at garage sales and used-book stores. Writers seem especially drawn to the bad guys, for some reason, but none of it's canon, of course. Still, some of my favorites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatherland_(novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-GB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_the_needle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eagle_Has_Landed

Originally Posted by Malden Capell

I thought it was pretty tiresome during the London Blitz episode that the Germans miraculously never hit St. Paul's Cathedral, a big effing target in the middle of London and apparently a symbol of eventual victory for the Brits, despite dozens of opportunities. Surely they'd be able to zero in eventually?

Such a trope.

I know! And to have the King and the Queen refuse to leave the bombing zone? C'mon, man, you gotta protect your head of state! No way would the Brits let them stay in danger like that, esp. with two cute little princesses in the picture.

[GIGObuster]

Ok now I found evidence that George Lucas can time travel.

Remember how he put Boba Fett in Episode IV when he was not originally there?

I watched the fine BBC documentary on the making of WWI and darn it if they did not add the best villains of WWII in the prequel.

In the episode dealing with the battle of Verdun the Germans began to use tactics that finally worked against the trenches, special advance troops were trained to use new portable mortars, flame throwers, to zig zag among the trenches and not just go over the top and walk in line, the name the Germans gave to those specially trained soldiers that almost took Verdun like in a blitz?

Stormtroopers ..

Really George, who are you kidding?

[Boyo Jim]

And just like Woody Allen in Zellig, they inserted the actor who played Hitler into some of the old WWI trench scenes, and in the sequel Street Fighters of Weimar.