# Plot Holes in World War II **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 22, 2012, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463 "2012-03-22T02:30:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/61 "2012-03-22T20:40:43Z")
> [@Gedd](#): > > They’re saving that for WW3. WWZ, surely? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/62 "2012-03-22T20:47:08Z")
> [@Wargamer](#): > > And that bit with the evil Germans, as the war is winding down, using their limited rail capacity to continue their genocidal work of shipping victims to the concentration camps rather than, you know, railing reinforcements to the front? The whole Holocaust subplot was frankly overdone. Yes, yes, we get that the Nazis are the Bad Guys and you’re playing up their use of previously-established European hatreds to gain power. Right. But, somehow, the previous bunches of Jew-haters were content with the occasional pogrom when things were especially bad, and otherwise left the Jews alone in their ghettos. They never had to mechanize the process and turn it into something from a Nine Inch Nails music video. You know what? I take that back: Reznor has too much self-control to do something like that. It’s pure Marilyn Manson/Rob Zombie nonsense. And then we get Anne Frank. She gets shit on 24/7, she spends her time hiding in an attic, and she still says that she believes people are fundamentally good as she’s being lead off to die? I don’t buy that. No kid would be that Pollyannaish. Totally blows the whole tone of the piece. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/63 "2012-03-22T20:58:45Z")
> [@Wargamer](#): > > And that bit with the evil Germans, as the war is winding down, using their limited rail capacity to continue their genocidal work of shipping victims to the concentration camps rather than, you know, railing reinforcements to the front? That was explained by a subplot that was cut and never shown in the original release. Two characters, played by Will Smith and Jeff Goldbloom in (When Good Plans Go Wrong), hack in the Nazi’s superadvanced computer system that dispatches trains. The purpose was to cause the whole system to break down. But instead it just put the Jews at the front of the shipping que. The producers thought this would bring some gritty realism to the movie, but test audiences didn’t like the good guys causing bad things to happen. But because they had shot the movie out of sequence, they were still commited to showing the Jews getting shipped off for some strange reason. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/64 "2012-03-22T21:08:04Z")
Heh, I also live this thread as I love history and movies. Now if one accepts the view of some modern historians to declare WWI and WWII as being part of the same great war… Look at that big ass intermission! Those theaters (of operation 🙂 ) really want to get their money’s worth at the lobby! And don’t get me started about how stupid was to have Italy to switch sides 4 times during the conflict! ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/65 "2012-03-22T21:27:54Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Well, the Pacific side of the story was a bit draggy after all… how many islands does one have to hop to get to Japan, anyway? Well they did try to juice it up a little bit with that subplot where a ship goes down and the survivors get attacked by sharks. Pretty cliched, though. What’s next? Pirates? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/66 "2012-03-22T21:30:55Z")
Yeah, they stole that shit straight from _Jaws_. ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/67 "2012-03-22T21:37:22Z")
Super-happy they kept the tanks from WW I. Those things are AWESOME. I missed the zeppelins, though. The whole Japanese sub-plot felt like an excuse for the big special effects scene at the end. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/68 "2012-03-22T21:38:19Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Heh, I also live this thread as I love history and movies. > > Now if one accepts the view of some modern historians to declare WWI and WWII as being part of the same great war… > Look at that big ass intermission! Those theaters (of operation 🙂 ) really want to get their money’s worth at the lobby! And don’t get me started about how stupid was to have Italy to switch sides 4 times during the conflict! WWI sucked. As will WWIII. Only the even numbered sequels are any good. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/69 "2012-03-22T21:47:59Z")
> [@phreesh](#): > > Super-happy they kept the tanks from WW I. Those things are AWESOME. > > I missed the zeppelins, though. > > The whole Japanese sub-plot felt like an excuse for the big special effects scene at the end. Yeah, and they screwed the visuals of that up by not having the main hero, Jimmy Doolittle, leap away from the explosion into a ditch just in the nick of time. Well, at least they didn’t have him hiding in a refrigerator. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/70 "2012-03-23T00:23:01Z")
I got wooshed when I first opened this thread. I was sure it was a Holocaust Denier! ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/71 "2012-03-23T01:01:18Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > The whole Holocaust subplot was frankly overdone. Yes, yes, we get that the Nazis are the Bad Guys and you’re playing up their use of previously-established European hatreds to gain power. Right. But, somehow, the previous bunches of Jew-haters were content with the occasional pogrom when things were especially bad, and otherwise left the Jews alone in their ghettos. They never had to mechanize the process and turn it into something from a Nine Inch Nails music video. You know what? I take that back: Reznor has too much self-control to do something like that. It’s pure Marilyn Manson/Rob Zombie nonsense. > > And then we get Anne Frank. She gets shit on 24/7, she spends her time hiding in an attic, and she still says that she believes people are fundamentally good as she’s being lead off to die? I don’t buy that. No kid would be that Pollyannaish. Totally blows the whole tone of the piece. And in the epilogue where the Jews are shown founding their own country and going on to be total badasses\* with a rallying cry of “Never Again” ? That felt really tacked-on, and frankly did nothing to ameliorate the torture porn of the previous 90,000 hours. (\*Not only kicking ass militarily, but hunting down, kidnapping and _executing_ a number of their WWII tormentors? That’s what really snapped my suspension of disbelief, and at the very end of the series, too.) ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/72 "2012-03-23T01:23:43Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > . . .test audiences didn’t like the good guys causing bad things to happen. France shot first! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/73 "2012-03-23T01:46:46Z")
> [@Fear\_the\_Turtle](#): > > LG: OK. We’ll give the bad guys an ‘unsinkable’ battleship, the most powerful in the world . Name it after a former leader that unified the country. Act 1 - ship engages the good guys and sinks a battlecruiser with one shell - no survivors. > > Anonymous exec: C’mon! “Admit it. You just stole that idea from that blimp thing they ran on Discover last season.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/74 "2012-03-23T01:50:09Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > I dunno. I really like the use of the “shaky cam” footage. If I hadn’t know better I would say all that footage was taken during an actual war. I also like how they didn’t bow down to modern sensibilities and shot most of the movie in black and white for artistic effect (and the obvious moral implications of course). Just a bunch of Jim Jarmusch wannabees trying to look “indy”. Save that stuff for Sundance, kid. ---
**Author:** ![President\_Johnny\_Gentle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@President\_Johnny\_Gentle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/President_Johnny_Gentle)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/75 "2012-03-23T03:24:26Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Vice President wasn’t an important role so they apparently didn’t bother casting a regular in it. If you pay attention you can see three different people playing Roosevelt’s Vice President. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It was pretty obvious towards the end that they were setting everything up so that they could do a World War III series with Britain and America fighting Russia. But I guess World War II didn’t do well enough and they never made the sequel. They tried to deal with these in a really lame follow-up miniseries. They start by taking Roosevelt’s VP and make him out to be extremely unpopular. So, of course, when the next election rolls around, the big twist is that the guy wins the election somehow. The writers obviously knew it was a stupid move, since they [hung a huge lampshade](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/28/Deweytruman12.jpg) on it. All through the miniseries, they play up the competition between the US/UK and the Soviet Union. At the end of every episode, the two sides are on the brink of war. Of course, the whole situation gets defused at the start of the next episode. But don’t even get me started on the finale. The end of the series played like a bad parody of Shyamalan. The whole series has this underlying morality play aspect to it: good vs. evil and all that. The US leader (as an easter egg, he shows up on some movie posters in the background of WW2) even declares the Soviets to be an “Evil Empire”. The Soviets are made out to be evil, invincible, and have an unbreakable will. So obviously the Americans are shown to have no chance of beating them. So how to the writers get out of this corner? The Soviets somehow lose a war in this incomprehensible subplot in Afghanistan and then decide they’ve had enough and just give up. The writers actually had the Soviet leader step down and break the USSR up into 15 countries, just to emphasize that were truly no longer a major threat. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/76 "2012-03-23T15:45:57Z")
How about that retarded episode where France has just fallen, there’s like a third of a million Brits stuck in France and the whole German army, navy and air force bearing down on them, and apparently they get their men home in everything from Navy destroyers down to rowing boats, or so it seems, while as far as anyone can tell the Germans are just sitting around drinking plundered French wine and scarfing sauerkraut. I’m guessing they were originally going to write Britain out of the story at the same time as France, then realized they needed something ongoing over the next year or so till they brought in that “Barbarossa” plot twist :rolleyes: and they needed to explain why the British still had an army to send off to Greece, Crete, North Africa and everywhere else where they needed good guys talking without subtitles. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/77 "2012-03-23T16:18:18Z")
My big problem with the series was **the entire Pacific War side story**. What the fuck did it even contribute to the series? I was waiting for that story to connect with the main plot, but it never did; we heard some vague dialogue about how the Nazis and the Japanese were allies but we never saw them BE allies. SHOW, DON’T TELL. We saw the Nazis and the Italians working together, so that made sense. But not once did Germany and Japan actually DO anything as allies, and nothing about the Pacific story arc really had much of an impact on the European arc (and why the fuck were the Soviets not at war with Japan? If it’s a world war, that makes no sense at all; they even said the two sides had fought before and hated each other. What the hell?) And because it was a sub-story they ran out of time and ended it with the Magic Weapon. It was worse than “The Stand.” Really, the Pacific War thing should have been a standalone story - you still have the bullshit ending, but I kind of liked other aspects of the plot, and you could fix the ending. ---
**Author:** ![willthekittensurvive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@willthekittensurvive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/willthekittensurvive)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/78 "2012-03-23T16:35:53Z")
> [@Gedd](#): > > They made Hitler a very unbelievable character IMHO. Really, . the thing that pisses me off is not that they stole the whole act from Charlie Chaplin, but they forgot to make him funny! ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/79 "2012-03-23T16:42:58Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > The whole feminist “Rosie the Riveter” subplot was anachronistic and jarring. Come on, author, this was almost three quarters of a century ago, barely after women had even gotten the vote. Way to project modern values there. And that whole plucky women’s baseball thing? My eyes about rolled out of my head. That was tasteful and believable compared to the blatant fan service that was the Soviet sniper girls and the Night Witches. Wait, I’m sorry, the “Nachthexen”, because they wouldn’t be cool if they didn’t have some sinister-sounding German name. ---
**Author:** ![Imago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@Imago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imago)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/80 "2012-03-23T16:48:59Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > You guys all missed the original series (“The Great War” - later renumbered (Lucas-style) into “WWI”), which had all those slapstick moments - starting with the assassination attempt that succeeds only because the Grand Duke’s motorcade takes a wrong turn and happens to drive right past the guy who had been trying to assassinate him all day long, and gets one last chance The fighter-pilots were also pretty broad comedy - throwing bricks at each other mid-flight, (trying) shooting through the propellers only to shoot the propellers off, or accidentally kill themselves with ricochets, etc. If you watch carefully, you’ll see the villain of the sequel has a bit part as a corporal in the prequel. This. This made my day. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463.md?page=5)