Plot Holes in World War II

Cafe Society
21

And don’t get me started about said Lt. Col’s former boss. You know, the guy who, while commanding the most important outpost in the Western Pacific, managed to get caught by surprise even though he had NINE HOURS warning of the Pearl Harbor raid. The guy who managed to lose his entire air force on the ground. Who consistently lied to his superiors about how the fighting was going.

And when he finally gets away, those same superiors award him the nation’s highest medal for valor and appoint him to command the entire SW Pacific war effort.

22

I thought it was rather juvenile that the bad guys had uniforms and weapons designed to be evil looking. I mean, things like that “Luger” pistol? Coal-scuttle helmets? It’s like stuff from a comic book aimed at 6-year olds…

23

I don’t get that the Soviet Union gets bitch slapped by tiny little Finland, and yet somehow heroicially defeats the much larger and better armed Germany. And what is it with Finland anyway? It’s like the writers can’t decide if they’re supposed to be good guys or bad guys. They start out as good guys, but because they against someone who’s against the main bad guys, that makes them bad guys by extension? And on a related note the story just glosses over that the British more or less conquer Iceland and yet we don’t hear a peep about it. Frankly I kept expecting the British to do that to Ireland, especially after rabidly pro-imperial Churchill takes over; but it never happens.

24

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.

25

Sorry to quote myself, but the highlighted part bothers me the most. We’re told that one can’t win a two-front war: that was the main point of episode 28 (Hitler Double Downs) where the German High Command argue about whether to finish the job in the West by invading Britain or to start a two-front war by invading Russia.

Hell, one of the characters even referenced the last time that Germany got into a two-front war: Even though they won one of the fronts, they still lost the war!

So the audience has been primed to believe that a two-front war is unwinnable, and the results of the German experience seems to bear them out, especially during episodes 36 (Trouble in Moscow), 44-49 (the Stalingrad sequence), and thereafter, right?

WRONG! Apparently the US (who I consider to be the true Mary Sue of the series) can do what the Germans cannot and win, not only a two front war, but a two front war fought thousands of miles away from the home country.

Not to mention the fact that they were in a Depression like 3 years prior.

Like I said: not enough :rolleyes: in the world for that one.

26

Not to mention the Stukas! And the V-2–that looked like a kid’s drawing of a rocket ship!

27

You want to talk about lazy writing? You want to talk about deus ex machina? The whole thing gets suddenly cut short by a new mad scientist invention that is orders of magnitude bigger than anything used up to that point. Why even bother with any fighting to begin with? Just pull a crazy ass big bomb out of your butt and obliterate the other side. :rolleyes:

They more or less ended the European part of it with an exciting large scale invasion and takeover, then decided to abruptly end the Pacific part of it with some bad science fiction. :mad:

28

And what’s with that character who fought with a bow, arrows, and broadsword? Seriously? They might as well have had another using a phaser!

29

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? And who can tell the difference between all those places - “Ooh, I remember Iwo Jima! That’s the one with the palm trees, right?” :rolleyes:

To be honest, I was getting kind of tired of the whole thing by then. Might as well bring out some superweapon if all the audience is going to get is lookalike island after lookalike island - just end it and put everybody out of their misery.

30

I don’t agree. They had all those sequences in the New Mexico desert with the physicists leading up to it. Doesn’t really look like something they cut in at the last minute. I guess they figured they’d already done the massive invasion and villain’s last stand thing, and didn’t want to take a second dip out of the same well. Not quite sure why they didn’t just have the two invasions and last stands run in parallel.

31

OTOH, the musical soundtrack was pretty good. I especially liked the big band music they used for some of the scenes involving the Americans.

32

They totally stole that rocket footage from all those 50’s sci-fi b-movies.

33

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.

34

Yeah, but I got tired of all that Wagner…

35

Yeah, I felt much the same way about making one of the leaders a handicapped person and having his wife played by an obvious transvestite.

36

Wait… I thought the Pres’s wife was trans-gendered? Never crossed my mind that was a man in women’s clothing. (Which, I guess, would make the Pres a homosexual?)

To be honest, considering the time period, I just assumed “she” was a really ugly broad with English teeth.

37

Yeah, but you’re not supposed to kill off the band leader.

38

That really was an obvious attempt by the writers to jerk the viewers around emotionally, wasn’t it? Lazy and clumsy writing. I’ve seen better in student films.

39

Only good song is from the Nazis…“Lily Marlene”?

Japanese stage elaborate plan to get American carriers ambushed at Midway and don’t bother with enough planes and submarines to find them? They reduce the size of their own carrier force because of airplane losses at Coral Sea while lazy decadent Americans work 72 hours to make Yorktown battle ready after damage estimated to need 4-5 months? I thought these guys practiced quality control.

Allies go to war to save Poland from murderous dictatorship (Germany) and it ends up being ruled by murderous dictatorship (Soviet Union). Russians then sit on judge panel at Nuremberg and are probably the harshest in condemning German war crimes, including blaming the ones they committed at the Katyn Forest on them.

British reward the man who warned them about Hitler in the 1930s, led them to victory as Prime Minister by kicking him out of office in 1945.

Truman becomes President after the death of the ailing FDR who doesn’t tell him about the Manhattan Project?

Germany ignores lessons of First World War that large surface ships will sit in port or be sunk by superior British Fleet by building Graf Spee, Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and several others that are quickly sunk and do little damage.

Sweden stays neutral, makes pile of money selling iron ore to Germans and spends next 40 years telling the Allies who defeat Hitler that they are corrupt evil men, unlike pure Swedes.

You tell me that this guy Stauffenberg will plant a bomb next to Hitler but it will be moved by an unsuspecting aide who stumbles over it. Placed at the other side of the table, the blast is muted. Force of blast is also reduced because the meeting is not in regular bunker with thick walls to keep blast in. Meanwhile this plot fails because these military people spend time listening to radio for reports on Hitler while philosophy PhD propaganda minister rallies key members to convince them that Hitler is still in charge.

American harvard educated President is surprised when Japan attacks without warning. Come on, the guy’s fourth cousin (and his wife’s uncle) when the Nobel Peace prize 37 years earlier for helping to end war when Japan attacked Russia without a declaration of war. And your fleet is damaged by aerial torpedo attacks because you think you don’t need torpedo nets at Pearl harbor? How did the British aerial torpedo the Italians at Taranto a few months earlier?
Next you will tell me the guy thinks he can charm a cold blooded murderer like Stalin.

Immigrants from Europe play a major role in developing atomic bomb. Press labels the effort as another example of “Yankee Ingenuity”.

40

They had to write him out after the actor quit the series. There was supposed to be a subplot about how the Missouri replacement was the tool of a political machine, but they didn’t follow up on that.

To follow up on my previous post, the whole series seems to be built around a rather disturbing theme: that if someone is eeevul enough, the people fighting against him are justified in doing anything at all. Great moral for the kiddies.