I was recently musing about war movies and noticed most of them exemplify the “winner writes history” trope. For example, almost all American made movies portray Vietnam as a futile mistake, WW2 as “the last good war”, etc. What movies (or books) flip this trope? Are there any Japanese flicks that portray WW2 as the right thing to do for Japan, or American flicks that portray Vietnam as a noble struggle that got betrayed by the people back home? (Let’s exclude anything during or right after a war, because that’s a lot less likely to criticize the war effort by nature.)
Ernst Junger seems to have enjoyed World War 1 if his memoir Storm of Steel is anything to go by.
This despite being wounded 14 times!
How about the Flashman series?
And, of course, there’s Oh! What a Lovely War and the last series of Blackadder.
I’d say the last series of Blackadder perfectly reflects the now accepted wisdom that World Wat One was a futile waste of young lives actually.
Sven Hassel’s (sometimes hideously / nauseatingly graphic, especially re the Russian front) World War II novels? Telling of the doings of a German army penal batallion: thus in Nazi terms, the dregs of society, themselves a breath away from consignment to a death-camp, and seen as next-to-worthless and completely expendable. A most eclectic assortment of characters: petty criminals, extreme “slackers”, folk of doubtful loyalty to the regime, sexual deviants, the highly eccentric, and those mentally ill but not sufficiently so as to warrant liquidation; and Hassel the (semi-autobiographic) first-person narrator, is a Dane – a drifter and drop-out, fighting for Germany from force of circumstance, not from any conviction.
The novels depict this bunch of low-lifes, in the army of the evil side in the global conflict, as recognisable humans with their good / bad / indifferent aspects, not as demons incarnate – the reader often finds them personally likeable. Plus, their pariah status contributes to their quite often being less than totally behind the Nazi war effort and some of the things which it required. Generally, these novels tell against any simplistic total “white / black, saints-against-fiends” take on World War II.
But was it the accepted wisdom during and shortly after WW1?
Of course not, but it was the accepted wisdom when they made the series.
Catch-22 is maybe an obvious example for World War Two. Although it sort of has the same thing as MASH where it’s more “about” the time when it was made than about the war in which it’s set.
The Revolutionary War part of William Thackeray’s “The Virginians” is mostly from a British loyalist’s point of view.
The video game Assassin’s Creed 3 had the hero assassinating evil Revolutionary War heroes.
Oh! What a Lovely War also reflected accepted wisdom about WWi at the time is was made (with a nod to Vietnam). The same for King of Hearts.
I’d say that The Green Berets contradicted common belief about Vietnam even when it was made.* Public opinion at the time was generally against the war, or at least a belief that it was a tough but difficult fight. Wayne wanted to make it a patriotic WWII adventure. It’s certainly against accepted wisdom now, but even when it came out, it was criticized for misportraying things.
*It was a common belief at the time that the sun set in the west, for instaance 
Well…
This sounds more like to me, say someone with an abusive childhood saying well it made me who I am today or something like that. But if you asked them should all children be abused, they would say no.
Junger was not going against the grain, though. The British looked back and said “what a huge waste of lives!” Germans said “what a huge (noble) sacrifice!” A subtle but significant difference.
To the OP: Americans looked back at WWI as a newly-emerged world power where a bunch of clean, healthy young boys showed those Heinies what free nations can do (Just as the British had felt in 1914, but luckily we were only in the shit for a few months). Ernest Hemmingway’s Soldier’s Home told the story of a veteran who comes home too late for the parades, and feels dead inside because he can’t see any point in it nor any future for himself.
America didn’t think WWII was an adventure this time, just a dirty job that had to be done. James Jones took a look from ground level at all the pig-headed mistakes, great and small, and concluded that just because it had to be done, it didn’t have to be done as stupidly that.
Good question InstallLSC.
This clip sums up just how easily you could invert the usual tropes by just introducing a bit of self-reflection in your characters.
Heller started working on the book in 1953 and it was published in 1961. How was it more about that time than about WWII? He saw it the same way as Vonnegut did in Slaughterhouse-5, a totally unheroic slaughter.
While not exactly what you are looking for, Letters from Iwo Jima, which tells the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese side.
The Outlaw Josie Wales portrays the Union Army as the bad guys in the Civil War, and the hero is an unrepentant Rebel who won’t stop fighting.
Now, at the time they were made, Fort Apache and*** Little Big Man ***went against the conventional wisdom by portraying the American Indians as the good guys and the US Cavalry as the bad guys. Of course, today the conventional wisdom is that the Indians were noble, peace-loving creatures… so a movie or book that made the Indians look bad would be going against the conventional wisdom.
Everybody thinks of Spartacus as leading a slave rebellion, but the way Colleen McCullough tells the story, it was much more of a Samnite nationalist rebellion; and no one involved seems to have a bad word for the institution of slavery as such, they’d just rather be masters than slaves.
There was and still is a gigantic movement to literally whitewash the South in the Civil War, and the movement started the day after Appomattox. Movies and books portraying the South as heroes fighting to save their homeland from bloody invaders is more common than the reverse. Seriously.
Oh, I’m well aware that there are loads of Southern apologists- but how many movies can you think of from the last 50 years that showed that point of view?