I’m surprised to not see mentioned one of my favorites, William Wellman’s Battleground. It tells the story of the siege of Bastogne and the 101st Airborne. The point of view is from a small group of soldiers who have no idea of the big picture. It focuses more on the psychology of the soldiers than the action. Its remarkable that it was filmed entirely on a soundstage. Band of Brothers came along 50 years later and admittedly did it better but Battleground still holds up. Great cast too.
I recall John Buchan writing – a propos the previous global conflict – words to the effect of “You’ll have a hard time trying outright to trick the Hun; but it’s easy to bluff him.”
I wouldn’t call The Great Raid accurate, nor is it a particularly good movie. However, it’s one of the few films set during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. And it’s the only film about the raid at Cabanatuan.
Can one include TV series?
If so, I’d put in a word for the French series Resistance, which draws on a number of real-life stories, as does the French cinema movie L’Armée des Ombres.
Other TV series in the UK were Secret Army, about the escape lines for downed Allied airmen, Wish Me Luck, about a group of SOE agents in France, and Tenko, about a group of civilian women interned by the Japanese.
I guess what I’m getting at is that the movie sets up this whole scenario where it’s the end of the war, the US is scraping the bottom of the barrel for tank crews (why Logan Lerman gets assigned to that crew), and that tanks are in short supply versus fearsome Nazi tanks. They also sort of imply that morale is low and the troops are worn out. And then, it has a fanatical SS battalion attacking into the combat command’s rear areas and all they have handy to stop it is a mixed bag of 3 Shermans of various models, two of which get wiped out by the aforementioned Tiger.
That 3 on 1 tank fight is fine- the Tiger tanks were considerably more heavily armored and had a more powerful gun than the US tanks, and the big advantage Shermans had were numbers and mobility.
Where they get it wrong is in the environmental aspects- in April 1945, the war was essentially over, and everyone knew it. And the US Army had made good all the Battle of the Bulge losses, losses from the Hurtgen Forest, etc… and were advancing steadily and quickly on all fronts- they’d also worked out the logistical kinks so there were no more frantic rushes and then extended pauses while the logistics caught up, like had happened earlier in the war.
While there weren’t enough infantrymen to go around (ever), there were plenty of tanks and tank crews from what I understand, and even the infantry ranks were mostly being replenished adequately by that point.
That’s kind of my point- they picked the ONE time in the war when the specific scenario of the movie would be implausible. Pretty much any time before Feb-March 1945 would have worked, but choosing the point when the US forces were basically in an extended pursuit weeks before the end of the war has always grated on me.
The Pretty Good Raid?
The Big Red One , with Lee Marvin and Mark Hamile.
I thought the original point of this topic would be to see if we could chronically list the events of World War 2 using movies, for example finding a movie about the Battle of Poland and the ending it with a movie about the surrender of Japan.
Anyone with enough film knowledge able to do this?
I just finished Neptune’s Inferno which is about the naval part of the Guadalcanal campaign. The sinking of Juneau was of course, mentioned. The four younger brothers were below deck when the torpedo hit and never made it off the ship which sank in 20 seconds. George, the eldest, was a Gunners Mate and made it to one of the rafts, although injured. Between survivor’s guilt and a natural instinct to protect his younger siblings he went a little crazy and insisted he look for them. For about half a day the others in the raft repeatedly pulled him back in but he finally eluded them to dive into the sea. He was last seen swimming away and calling out their names. 