# Placing Private Ryan (In therapy)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-private-ryan-in-therapy/749659>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [March 20, 2016, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-private-ryan-in-therapy/749659 "2016-03-20T16:56:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-private-ryan-in-therapy/749659/21 "2016-03-22T15:15:28Z")

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> [@Zakalwe](#):
>
> This neglects the propaganda side of the war. Posit a world where the Sullivan Brothers have _already_ happened and there’s been an implicit promise that it won’t happen again - and then there’s a danger that it will. Anything that saps the will of the American people to fight to the bitter end (even in the smallest way) CANNOT be tolerated. What is the life of even a hundred soldiers in the face of a decline in the purchase of war bonds? Brutal math, but inevitable given the nature of modern warfare.

Even at that, I don’t know that they’d mount a rescue mission like that. They didn’t for Fritz Niland (the real-life inspiration for Ryan)- they just unceremoniously shipped him home from the 101st Airborne in Normandy after two of his four brothers were killed in Normandy on June 6th and 7th, 1944, and the fourth brother was presumed dead in Burma after his plane was shot down (he was a POW in reality).

From what I gather, that was more for his family’s sake, under the theory that they could spare one random infantryman and his family more sorrow and heartbreak without much trouble by simply shipping him to a non-combat assignment in the US. The idea that all 4 brothers were killed would have been more likely to engender a sort of grim resolve in the American people of that era, rather than make them less likely to fight.

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**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-private-ryan-in-therapy/749659/22 "2016-03-22T16:36:28Z")

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This has got me reading about raids…i doubt we will see a movie about Task Force Baum. Maybe it could have been made in the early 60’s. I mean…The Great Escape isn’t exactly a feel-good film.

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**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-private-ryan-in-therapy/749659/23 "2016-03-22T21:11:21Z")

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> [@Dale\_Sams](#):
>
> This has got me reading about raids…i doubt we will see a movie about Task Force Baum. Maybe it could have been made in the early 60’s. I mean…The Great Escape isn’t exactly a feel-good film.

Probably anytime before “Patton” came out in 1970 would have worked. Since then, anything about his greatest fuck-up will seem like pissy revisionism, unless they make him look sympathetic somehow.

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