FILMMAKER REACTS to Band of Brothers Episode 9: Why We Fight
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- čas přidán 26. 08. 2024
- Hope you enjoy my first reaction to Band of Brothers. :D
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Original Show on HBO Max: Band of Brothers (2001)
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Go a little easier on the German people...the vast majority of them did not really know about the camps. There were detention and labor camps in Germany, but the extermination camps were located to the east, and the Nazis took care to conceal many of their activities. It is certain that some portion of German civilians suspected what was happening, and some surely made an effort not to know any more to avoid the morality of it, but most Germans really did not know any more than what the Third Reich told them. 🖖✌
I'm sure it's already been recommended but there is a great documentary on you tube called We stand alone together. It tells the whole story and is where the interviews at the beginning and end of each show come from, it really hits hard hearing the men that were actually there tell the story. Anyway here's a link if you are interested
czcams.com/video/z6j_nop4wh0/video.html
Masters of the Air is filming now from the same people that made this and The Pacific as a new mini series
I truly hope that everyone who watches Band of Brothers realizes that historical accuracy has been sacrificed for dramatic effects. For instance, the concentration camp depicted in Band of Brothers is supposed to be Kaufering IV which was actually liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945 with the 101st arriving the following day. Virtually all the prisoners had either been killed or forced marched out of the camp by the Germans in the direction of Dachau. Only a handful of prisoners, those who had been able to hide, were found alive when the camp was liberated, along with about 500 bodies. Colonel Edward Seiller of the 12th Armored Division took control of the camp on April 27 and he was the one who ordered about 250 civilians from the town of Landsberg to bury the dead.
Please react to thin red line 1998.
Many of the emaciated prisoners were played by cancer patients who volunteered to be in it. Unfortunately, some of them passed before the episode premiered.
Wow I always wondered.
Damn.
Scary thing is even though they are skinny because of the cancer treatments and affects, the people liberated where even more staved and malnourished
One of the best touches in this episode is at the very end when the violin case shuts and looks like a coffin.
oh true
That's the thing. We didn't join the war because of this. The news of the camps leaked during the war. This was just one of the many truly horrifying events that took place in WW2.
True. Sad truth is wars are almost never about protecting people from genocide. They're almost always started over economics and territory.
@@tSp289 Aslo ideology and ego. However while wealth, empire, territory, domination, and racial superiority were the driving force of both Germany, and Japan, the allied nations saw them for what they were. There is a noble motivation at work. Despite the flaws of America, and Britain.
It's a yes, but no, and a little of sort of knew. Intel reports came in during and before the war. THe genocide did not actually start until 1940/41. However ghettos, taking of property, oppression, and other acts against Jewish, and others, were known to some degree. Even reports of the horror made it out from escaping Jews. The true extent of what was happening was not known until the slave, and death camps were found. Then fully investigated. Mean while Japan was doing equally evil things with their conquests.
it's a reason we fight though, it's part of the reason the Nazis had to fall, its an example of how hideous they were
Even once the leaks happened most didn't believe it because of WW1 propaganda that the US and UK used. During WW1 both governments released a ton of misinformation about the Ottomans and Germans. After the war it came out that it was all lies.
"What is it Frank?"
"I don't know sir, I don't know...."
And they wouldn't know until well after the war.
Military intelligence of USA & Great Britain knew about that long before 1945.
Dachu, the very first concentration camp, was started in 1933. Just saying.
@Pereira yeah these aren't Intelligence Operatives they're front line soldiers. There's a reason why the soldiers only really knew about the oppression in occupied countries and cities and not the systematic "final solution" to the "Jewish question"
@@musicofnote1 correct but the Allies weren't sure of its existence. During the war it wouldn't have been much more than a rumor to the Frontline soldier in Europe.
@@christopherorozco1021 Exactly, rumors or assumed propaganda/exaggeration. Think about what we know about China or North Korea right now. We know the current regime's human rights abuses are numerous but nobody knows just how bad things are over there are right now except for the people living it. American GIs then were just as informed. They either got wind of a jumble of facts and rumors about how awful the Nazis were or they just had no fucking clue. Then they find this. I can't imagine the shock and resolve you'd come out from this with.
Wayyy back in the early 1990s I got my to spend the day at my mother's work. I was sweeping floors at the jewelry dept. The man I worked for that day was named Michael Vogel (born Miso Vogel).
Vogel was one of a number of people who happened to survive Auschwitz. His arm brand was numbered 65316, meaning 65315 people were brought into the camp before him. One day I (was around 11 at the time) asked him why he didn't have the tattoo removed. He said "Some things you don't want to forget, junior. Not that we could." He was such a great person.
bless you for passing that on
Oh and Vogel means bird in german
Most jarring moment watching this: crying like hell, and then getting an unskippable ad for Pokemon Snap.
how are you crying from a reaction?
Berry yogurt
Well, at least it wasn't the guy in need of a beard trim talking about bigger balls and/or toxic poop.
@@martinlatour9311 I like to support the channels I follow. jfc is it 2021?
If you go back and look, Picante calls O'Keefe by the name O'Brien through the whole episode, except at the camp. The actors were offered the chance to preview the camp for rehearsal but they all chose to go into it cold so that their reactions would be as honest as possible.
Perconte
The both scenes in which Nixon meets that German lady are, in my opinion, genius - How the filmmakers of the series manage to transmit so much without any line of dialogue, just Stares, make my head explode even today
It's is great visual story telling. His life is crumbling at home. Then out of anger looking for boos he enters a German home. The man of the house is an officer, he has a good home. His wife is loyal hoping for his return, and then he sees the dog. ALso note the officer in the picture, is the officer giving the speech to his men, in the last episode.
@@dirus3142 The black ribbon on his picture means he died.
@@dirus3142 the lady in the house looks down on Nix. Nix in that moment is ashamed. At the camp roles are reversed.
@@gregall2178 Yes, and from what I heard, he probably died fighting on the Eastern front, for the decorations, but I have no way of confirming that information
@@dirus3142 Exactly man, and a shout out to the performances, that would make the whole scene fall apart if they weren't so good
And about the photo's official, I believe they are two different people, as Greg All pointed out, there is a black ribbon in the portrait
You got to really appreciate how supportive Winters is... not just as a leader but as a friend to Nix.
The poor guy got divorced during War, lost his dog, his possessions and family. And he has survivor's guilt from losing some other kids he led on another drop. Plus, never actually firing his weapon at all in combat.
Winters was really one of the best guys to be his best friend through all of this. And your heart just really goes out to Nix.
You’re supposed to forget while you’re watching the previous episodes. The first time I saw this episode I realized I forgot we hadn’t seen the true evil of the Nazis. After the war ended many Germans claimed not have known what was happening. But in the towns near the camps they knew. The officers lived in town. The guards came into town. The emotional depth of your reaction is just another reason your reaction video are so good. You love filmmaking and you love story. Thanks for appreciating this series.
They forced the "Untermenschen" to build, to lay roads, to work in shops, in factories. Hitler had repeatedly mentioned the "final solution" in his political rantings, they knew.
If I can use an interesting Guardian article from 2001 -
"The reports, in newspapers and magazines all over the country were phases in a public process of "desensitisation" which worked all too well, culminating in the killing of 6m Jews, says Robert Gellately. His book, Backing Hitler, is based on the first systematic analysis by a historian of surviving German newspaper and magazine archives since 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor. The survey took hundreds of hours and yielded dozens of folders of photocopies, many of them from the 24 main newspapers and magazines of the period.
Its results, Professor Gellately says, destroy the claim - generally made by Germans after Berlin fell in 1945 and accepted by most historians - that they did not know about camp atrocities. He concludes by indicating that the only thing many Germans may not have known about was the use of industrial-scale gas chambers because, unusually, no media reports were allowed of this "final solution". However, by the end of the war camps were all over the country and many Germans worked in them."
They knew and we will NEVER forget.
@@stewrmo All good points - but don't make the mistake of assuming that you would have heroically fought to save the Jews if you were a German at that time. To take on that fight would take a level of courage that only a tiny percentage of humans possess. The true tragedy of stories like this is that they display what we humans can be, given the wrong set of circumstances.
@@brianthom6798 Very true buddy, the reality is that I, as a disabled person, would have been in the camp. I am not blaming current Germans btw, they have nothing to do with the atrocities but I have heard over and over that the Germans never knew. That is simply untrue and the evil shown should never be forgotten.
@@stewrmo We know some Germans did know and tried to fight, even if it was just through pamphlets condemning Hitler and the Nazi Party like the White Rose did (7 members were guillotined, others were arrested and sentenced to long term imprisonment). I know there were people who believed that the camps were the right way to go, and we know there still are Neo-Nazis who believe that. I suppose that there were many who knew but were too frightened to say anything because they knew they'd end up being shot or sent to the camps themselves.
@@stewrmo Again, all fair points. My point is that the lesson learned from this should not be that Germans are (or were) assholes, but rather that this is what people are like.
Eisenhower: We are told the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, we know what he is fighting against
The moment Liebgott breaks just always gets me.
Must have been shocking for the real guy to realise "I'd be one of these corpses if my family hadn't moved".
The fact that there are people lying on the ground who died days or hours before liberation is just... tragic doesn't cover it.
Same here! And that hug between Malarky and the prisoner!
@@tSp289
_Must have been shocking for the real guy to realise "I'd be one of these corpses if my family hadn't moved"._
Sorry, but this scene, like so much else in Band of Brothers, is an embellishment (it didn't actually happen) . In reality, there were actually only a handful of survivors found alive when Kaufering IV, the camp depicted in Band of Brothers, was liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945 with the 101st arriving the following day. Colonel Edward Seiller of the 12th Armored Division had taken control of the camp on April 27 and he was the one who ordered civilians from the town of Landsberg to bury the dead.
Actually even the commanders of the allied forces didn't know that existed. They were fighting the war because of other things but ended up discovering that this was enough reason, once they discovered it.
Debatable, there reports from concentration camps in American news papers as far back as 1943. Of course most people refused to believe them and gloss over them. But the facts where out there, probably clearer then China and the Uyghurs today.
@@mormacil businesses today are actively ignoring that as they desperately want China’s money
@@ComradeCommissarYuri this. Disney thanked a camp and the CCP in the credits for Mulan ffs...because they filmed on location in same region as a camp. Classy Disney. They are not the exception though. This turning a blind eye is prevelant. Just another example of exactly what you're talking about.
@@mormacil Tom Hardy is even shown reading a newspaper with one of those reports. "It says the germans are bad. Very bad". Others make fun of him with sarcasm...Yet they have no idea what they are about to see.
No, the US brass knew in 1942 and the public knew starting in 1943.
The war wasn’t actually about the Holocaust. Most of the allied countries didn’t even know it was happening until this point in the war. It’s crazy to think
The Allied governments had some idea what was going on, but never told the public because it sounded so outlandish that the Germans would pour so many resources into industrial slaughter of people.
Nixon shouting about his dog... reminds me of an event in my life; No where near as tragic, Yet i cant seem to get over it... as much as i want to. Imagine going through war... thanks for the great content
A British Comedian named Micheal Bentine helped free Bergan-Belson , and and he said it was, in his opinion, the ultimate blasphemy against man and god.
"Strip me from my reality so that I can save theirs."
Well said James. That's a beautiful sentiment that I think we can all get behind.
beautiful
Btw highly recommend the other 2 war series from HBO, The Pacific and Generation Kill (criminally underrated)
Both are great.
Personally don't think generation kill would make for a good reaction video. It's good but the type of story it tells is how leadership can make or break a team, *including* all the boring parts that go into that story. in BoB every episode is shot to keep the viewer engaged; in generation kill they don't care about keeping the viewer engaged because the point is to authentically show the effects of leadership rather than only honoring the heroism.
@@JPeachyDev
Good point.
Generation kill would make a good subject for an Iraq veteran reaction.
@@JPeachyDev for most channels I would agree but i think it could work for this channel because he could compare and contrast the different ways of film making. I'm sure the commenters can clear up any confusing things.
@@JPeachyDev To be fair, this isn't your regular kind of person to react to it. James would be fine with that kind of thing, he's watched things most people would consider incredibly boring and came out incredibly engaged.
The camp Easy company found was a Sick camp. It was for the people in other concentration/ forced labor camps too sick to even work.
The camp was about 10 miles away from the town in reality. So entirely possible the townspeople wouldn't know. I think the lady's husband was in the Luftwaffe, so air force.
The concentration camps were something that was not known until the invasions of the allies, even some Germans did not have the knowledge of the concentration camps.
First new article discussion mass executions of Jews in nazi camps go back to June 1, 1942, a full two years before even Operation Market Garden. There is of course a difference between a stories and interviews compared to seeing it for yourself but the high command knew, extensively.
@@mormacil That the Nazi high command knew about the camps, that I already knew, what I said and the German people and soldiers. I didn’t know about these articles and discussions in 42, it’s good to know I’ll do a little research about it. The point I made was to indicate also to be very careful and not to judge people without understanding, and put yourself in their shoes analyzing them why they are that way, this is very dangerous because this is what the Nazis did to the Jews, and just puts them as a great evil without any kind of compassion.
@@fea365y @Fëanor Switzerland did a series of articles on it in '44 with eye witness accounts. They published it in German.
The idea from people in Germany but also among the population of the allies is a white washing of history. They choose not to believe the reports but the facts were out there. In fact about 6 months before Hitler killed himself the US government published extensive articles on the extermination of the Jews to drum up public support for the war effort.
@@mormacil Nope.
Soldiers on the ground maybe didn't know, but all the allied leaders knew. There were journal papers, articles, witnesses that escaped, intelligence reports...etc.
I cry every time I watch this episode, truly heartbreaking.
I've never clicked this fast, such a heavy and important episode
Super important. These are the things we must never forget and unfortunately as time moves on people will forget but we must make sure something like this NEVER happens again.
Couldn't agree more
This episode is one of the best tv episodes ever produced, imo.
This episode showcases the end of the war, and how EASY company is loosing motivation for fighting. This is also why the title of the episode is: "Why we fight." This episode truly showed what they were fighting for
When you asked I wonder what that was about in the woman's home, it was the wife of a German officer. The picture fell and broke making him think of a broken marriage. Then he saw the dog there, which made him think about his dog.
John Orloff is the script writer of episodes 2 and 9 of HBO's 'Band Of Brothers'.
Mr. Orloff has stated on various websites some insights about the scripts of episode 9 and 2: (Note: I paraphrase and add some info in brackets[ ]. My apologies to Mr. Orloff if I misrepresent the meaning of any of his statements due to my paraphrasing or additions.)
Statements by John Orloff::
The date [shown at the start of episode 9 --April 11th--] is a production error... in the script it is dated as May 1.
"The book-ends were there for a few reasons... One, to show the industry of the German people in rebuilding (as opposed to the French or Italians). 2. the weariness of the Easy Guys... 3. because I thought it would be dramatically interesting, and lends to a very strong finale of the episode-- the last line is a negative "But he didn't"... The whole episode is a negative and leading to the fact THEY HAD TO COME TO GERMANY.. But MOSTLY-- Beethoven. The Germans gave us Beethoven AND the holocaust. How can that be???
The Beethoven piece -- even which piece [The music played by the four musicians in the bombed-out town square was from one of Beethoven’s last quartets (Opus 131 to be exact), generally considered to be among the best and greatest not only of Beethoven’s oeuvre but of all musical compositions ever written.] -- was in the script before Michael Kamen came into the film. In my original script, that music was also played during the Concentration Camp scene, then dissolving into the final scene... [The deeper meaning of choosing this piece of music was to ask the question: how can a culture that produced Beethoven and his magnificent music (among the glories of human achievement) also produce such heinous crimes, the depths of human depravity?]
The talking heads pre show didn't mention the camps BECAUSE NONE OF THE VETS WOULD TALK TO ME ABOUT IT. At all. Ever. If I asked them to tell me-- the same guys who could tell me about their best friend being killed in front of them-- they couldn't tell me about the camp. They literally said to me, "I can't talk about that". 55 years later, it was still too horrible to discuss...
In the book, this stuff [about the concentration camp] is one paragraph. I imagine for the same reason-- Ambrose told me it was his favorite episode, and I'm guessing its because I found things he didn't.. In fact, the episode is the least taken from the book...
Winters WOULD talk to me, and a story he told me about himself was the core of the episode-- namely walking into the widow's house. I asked Winters if he would mind if I changed that event to Nixon, since I wanted this to be an episode about Nixon's disillusionment turning into understanding of the necessity of the war. [Nixons 'trivial' problems were juxtaposed to the BIG picture of the horrors committed by the Nazi regime.]
These guys are asking themselves in various ways why they left their families for the last 2 years... And they find out. It's not referring to why FDR fought, or Churchill... They realize their sacrifices were necessary...
The Webster issue is a complicated one... -- he knows what's being said [by the baker]... There was some scenes cut from the episode that better explained why he was reacting that way.... They cut about 10 minutes from the first cut...
In my opinion the Baker DID know what was a mile or so away... In fact, part of the episode is talking about the Germans as a whole. What did they think happened to the Jews? They went to the Caribbean? Hitler makes it quite clear in Mein Kampf what he intended-- and he did win an election.... Also, the SS was a HUGE part of society... As was the SA earlier... Many-- MANY-- Germans knew what was going on...
I had to do my own research. Which brings up a wider issue-- ALL the [script] writers did original research. We went way beyond the book-- I interviewed every single living person who was at Brecourt Manor-- and had a very different version of events than Ambrose wrote...
This was our [the script writers] experience of making the series. ie, talking to men whose memories dim with each passing day...
For example--I interviewed Malarkey, Compton, Lipton, Guarnere, Winters about Brecourt Manor, and not one remembered it the same... Episode 2 is my best guess from all I heard... But none of them remembered it exactly as shown.
The show is NOT a documentary, but the best guess of what we think happened based on hundreds of hours of original interviewing... plus research, etc...
[Episode] Nine was more difficult... because so little was spoken by the vets... But most of what you saw happened... Nixon's divorce, Speirs stealing, Nixon jumping in the plane that went down, fraternization, the widow (though she wasn't at the camp, that was my addition), the cleaning up, etc... The camp was part of a large COMPLEX of multiple camps clustered near Landsberg. Easy did in fact liberate that PART.
Episode 9 has several themes, one of which is the DEGREES of evil. Stealing is bad. So is breaking into the German widow's house, or when Easy rousts out German civilians to sleep in their houses... But then... there is EVIL...
Great stuff man, I highly reccomend you react to The Pianist, one of the most heart-wrenching movies on the holocaust and one of the best, the cinematography and Adrien Brody are absolutely outstanding
Absolutely. Brilliant film about unfathomable horror.
Two scenes from that in absolute contrast will forever be burnt into my brain.
The first is the moment where they throw the man in the wheelchair out of the window, the second is how Szpilman tells the entire story of what he has gone through by just playing Chopin's 1st Ballade to the german officer, and the man understands.
Very underrated film. Absolutely loved it.
One thing I think people forget is that even if civilians knew what was going they had no power to act because that would've their death sentence too. The Gestapo would've gotten them. People reported their own families for having books or speaking ill of the Fuhrer. I just needed to point this out like I love War movies but we rarely see war movies from German people's perspective.
That beginning where the veteran talked about how the Germans were doing their job and they were doing theirs and that they could of been good friends under different circumstances meant so much for me to hear for the first time. Today, our soldiers would never have respect for "our enemies" who are just doing what they're doing. There is a famous WWII story where an American pilot shot down a German plane and he survived, and decades later, that German pilot went to America and found that American pilot and they became best friends until they both died of old age. So touching!!
Tom Hanks is the soldier executing the Nazi soldiers on the side of the road
This episode always gets me. I might only be 33 years old but this series is now shockingly 20 years old now, iv lost count of how many times iv seen this since it first came out and will continue to watch it and without fail be in tears multiple times throughout. An amazing series that everyone should see
My Uncle Tommy was one of those guys who never had an unkind word for anyone. Always smiled, always glad to meet you. And for a man born poor in 1919 in the deep south, he also had a remarkable lack of prejudice for anyone or anything.
That said, one of the things I will always remember is how badly he absolutely hated Germany, the German people, and anything else German. And I mean he hated with a fiery passion all things German. I never knew why. Didn't find out until after he passed away in 2001.
My Uncle Tommy -- he's actually my *father* uncle, but we never bothered with that "great-uncle" stuff -- served in the 4th Armored Divison, and participated in the liberation of the Ohrdruf Camp. Ohrdruf was a sub-came for Buchenwalf. My Aunt Donna, Tommy's wife, told me that he never talked about what he saw in that camp, but she knew it was horrible because he had nightmares about it until the day he died. it was his experiences as a liberator of the camp that drove his hatred of all things German.
I don't know a lot about Ohrdruf -- I've seen pictures, and they were bad enough -- but I do know that General Patton described it as ""one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen."
We knew it was coming, such a sobering episode
It really is the perfect title of this episode, pure genius.
Always smile when Luz asks Bull to smack Frank on the head for him. Perconte grew up in the same area and we went to the same high school (I think within the year I was born, the male and female Catholic school merged. The female high school originally got folded into the new college's complex a mile down the road about 15 years before. Then they moved to a new campus and the male school moved out of their aging building and merged with the female high school there to create Joliet Catholic Academy, retaining the male Hilltoppers and female Angels sports monikers). My dad and Frank both went to the old "Hilltop" downtown, I went to the new digs about 2 miles in the other direction). I only met him once. Spoke at my grade school probably about the time they were making the show now that I think of it. Just talked about the experience in general and give a general life speech to probably 1st-4th graders. Shook his hand afterword. Wish I was just a year or two older and really got into this era of history and could ask some real questions.
I didn't know either grandfather well. One I had nearly all contact with as such a small child I couldn't remember much anyways. Just the general impression of the man during retirement. He died when I was probably 7 or 8. Served in the 4th Armored in WW2. As far as I know they saw no major combat. After a accelerated training they mostly just raced up as tank reinforcements to clean up battles and keep things moving forward while the war was ending as they were moving from the secured Normandy port up through and up The Rhine (only one battle near the end where they were the main/offensive force). He came from a oddball rural and hillbilly family and was crazy to start with (crazy in a sane way, like sliding up to your daughters principle's lawn and pulling a shotgun on him telling him never to lay a hand on her again kind of crazy) so he wasn't scared, did construction and odd jobs/ran his small farm for about 50-60 years.
Other one saw heavy combat, although every indication is that he lived through life without any negative impact whatsoever. Quite the opposite, probably the best thing anyone in the entire bloodline had ever done to that point. Escaped Poland while the getting was good in a Polish Mountain division. Got evac-ed to North Africa when Greece was falling, fought in Africa, then fought up to Italy before volunteering for American assignments and Monte Casino, his great crown jewel of service. We had a family reunion there in 2000, that was one of our stops. I never spoke to him ever really, let alone about something like this, but he kept a journal that he typed out and printed for all his kids and cousins and whoever that he amalgamated with his life to that point. He died when I was probably 11 or 12. Stayed for a bit, went to medical school at the oldest medical school in the world (Cologne?), came to Chicago at Loyola and met my Nana who was just out of high school and starting her nursing residency. Ran his own practice for a bit (accruing several legendary stories I still hear about from former patients), then retired out to California for almost 30 years when all but the youngest kid were grown and well out of the house.
I love this cyclic structure. From a beautiful German civilian string quartet playing Beethoven (a legendary German composer) in a war devastated street. Then to the horror of the Holocaust, a crime perpetrated by the Nazi's with some degree of participation or wilful ignorance by the majority of the German people (although notable resistance did occur, if rarely). Then back to the string quartet ending their exquisite piece and closing their cases while Nixon states that Hitler, the driving force behind the previous shocking atrocity is dead by suicide. It demands thought on how a nation civilised and artistic enough to produce Beethoven can also be as savage and uncivilised enough to instigate the Holocaust.
The Americans came across what were known as satellite camps to the bigger ones. The camp in this episode was probably a satellite camp to Dachau or Buchenwald, which were in Germany. The Russians found the bigger, more notorious ones like Auschwitz and Treblinka as they pushed through Poland.
This episode was well placed in the show. Most of the allied troops really didn't know about camps until they got into Germany. There were rumors but they didn't compare to the reality of it all. Or so I have been told.
The level of immersion I will agree is impressive. But one of the things that make that so possible is the cast bought into the entire production. They lived it in their hearts. Some of them got to meet survivors of easy company and talk with them about their experience. The cast realized they were portraying real people and I honestly believe they made a tremendous effort to represent them accurately. There are some characters in this miniseries that are composite characters that's just the nature of making something this immense fit on a TV screen or the big screen in the theater. I can't think of a member of the cast that I felt didn't do a good job and betraying their characters. Hats off to them all
The infantry battalion in Colorado, liberated Dachau. A number of German prisoners were executed by the liberated Jews and some US troops. Courts martial were recommended to Patton, but he declined to prosecute.
14:35 I think that the longer you are in one particular place. You actually forget how foul the stench is. So most likely, the town or the guards overseeing the camp just got used to the smell. So that's probably why a person like the baker would try to claim they had no idea what they were talking about. Or you know, they just lied and lived in denial.
This is the only episode that is heavily fictionalized.
Because Easy Company did NOT liberate a Concentration Camp. That was a different company. But they put it into the show to make a point about well.. "Why we fight"... ;)
Right now, in China, VERY similar things are happening.
And for the most part, the world is ignoring it...
What should we do then, Invade China?
Humans have a gift for ignoring what they can not see or experience. The Uighurs are being "reeducated" (tortured + killed) in China and all we care about about are our precious iPhones.
@@SeansMusicVault To be fair I think we also care about not getting into an apocalyptic war with a country that has an unknown number of nukes and an army of millions, and a potential reserve army of tens or hundreds of millions. The way Uighurs are being treated is absolutely unacceptable, but realistically there's not a lot we can do about it since the West sold off nearly its entire industrial base to the lowest bidder.
@@rubenlopez3364 invading China would be a catastrophically BAD idea
@@tSp289 I can agree with that, although the next war is probably going to be one based on infrastructure attacks and attrition rather than soldiers on the ground. Do I think American can stand up to such a war? Absolutely not. Our complacency has become our fatal cancer and our ability to "dig in" and pull together as a nation is dead. But we DO make awesome hamburgers, movies + porn.
One important point. It was only the officers who could send boxes home. This led to many enlisted thinking their officers were treated unfairly. The silverware is an example of this.
I read somewhere that the woman Speirs was sending his loot to, who he either married to or in a relationship with back in England ended up leaving him for someome else and taking all the loot herself.
You’re one of the first reactors I’ve watched who caught that the woman definitely knew. Someone had to warn the soldiers to leave the camp, after all.
Everyone passes over the French getting their revenge on those Germans after Webster roasts the German army.
Actually, Webster wrote about the execution of those German boys. He said they were boys who were not old enough to shave.
When I was in rthe eighth grade back in the late 60s, our history teacher brought in a friend of his to guest speak to us. He was an older man, and a survivor of the Holocaust (he was younger than iam now). He spoke of his experiences in the camp, and then took questions. Some asked, "Why? Why did they do it?" I expected him to say; They were evil. or Nazis, or full of hate. Instead, he simply said, "Because they could."
It was horrible that they couldn’t just throw all the food and water they had at those people. The food would have been such a shock to their systems they would have died from it. A lot of people don’t realize that.
Been battling Crohn's disease for 20 years. Every time a flare-up happens they put me on NPO (no food/fluids by mouth) for days, sometimes it was a week or longer. Each time they'd lift the restriction gradually, little by little, and observe my reaction to it. I'd be eating ice chips for a day or two while dreaming about cheeseburgers, then drinking small cups of water. Then juice, then broth, then soup and hot chocolate, then jello and sherbet, then soft diet, then regular diet. Whole process could take days or even weeks even with steroids and anti-nausea medication. Recovering from starvation and malnourishment is no joke even when you aren't being worked to exhaustion, abused, and left exposed to the elements like those prisoners.
@@sike2399 I also have Crohn’s disease. I was diagnosed in 2006, along with Ankylosing Spondylitis. I’ve had one flare up of Crohn’s that put me in the hospital during the summer of 2018. My Crohn’s isn’t as terrible as some people have it. My Ankylosing Spondylitis is worse. I’m in my late thirties and my neck is already fused, my spine is hunched forward, I’ve had to walk with a cane since I was 30, and I had a hip replacement in 2019, and will most likely have to have the other one replaced in a few years.
Sorry you have to deal with that. Sounds like you have it pretty bad.
This episode was so rough, sending a big virtual hug .
God I am in bits watching this. Mans inhumanity to man is horrendous, the fact that so many people were perfectly fine with the murder of millions of people makes my heart hurt. What a great episode in amazingly shot series. Thanks for reacting to this.
The vast majority of our troops volunteered to fight and those that couldn't or were declared 4F, unfit due to some ailment or issue, some of them committed suicide because they couldn't go.
A heavy recommendation is "Conspiracy", which documents the real life events (from discovered documents which survived the war) of the one-day cabinet meeting where high ranking German Officials debated "The Final Solution". The power of the film is in its candid representation of a relaxed bureaucracy treating the potential murder of millions of people as an administrative problem. A very tense dialogue-driven drama.
Staring Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth.... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(2001_film)
That feeling of being like one of the Easy Company, going through the War with them, it's so familiar, I'm glad you mentioned it.
I don't tend to watch reactions videos, but I'm always curious to see the reactions to those horrible scenes in this episode, I had the same reaction watching the show 20 years ago - curious about what they saw on the patrol, and then the shock, how well and on point those scenes were made, and I appreciate your honest reaction, it is very difficult to watch indeed.
Thanks for sharing.
oh fml it was 20 years ago! I'm sooooo oooooold 🤣
Common misconception that the war was fought over the camps, when in reality the war was fought because of Pearl Harbor. Wasn’t until years later intel about the camps came out - there’s still debate whether FDR and high command knew about the camps some time before the ground forces discovered them in the western front
It's kind of like with the American Civil War I think. The North didn't fight to put an end to slavery, it fought to preserve the Union, but the South did very much fight for slavery. In the case of WW2, the Allies didn't fight to put an end to the Holocaust (or to the many other Nazi crimes), they fought for geopolitical reasons, but the Nazis did very much fight to be able to commit those crimes.
No, the _American_involvement_ directly in the war came about because of Pearl Harbor. The war, however, began when Germany, having annexed Austria and the Sudatenland (then invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia) as well as cowing other neighbors and obtaining a hollow non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, finally invaded Poland triggering defense pacts that had been in place with England, France, etc. The war then ran for TWO YEARS, with Japan also killing and raping all over China, SE Asia and the south Pacific, and the Italians causing their share of death and destruction, before the US declared war on Japan following their attack on Pearl Harbor. Even then, it is unknown how long it would have taken the US to declare war on Germany had Germany not STUPIDLY declared war on the USA only four days after Pearl Harbor.
Yes, the war did not begin because of the camps, and the US did not enter the war because of the Holocaust, and it was very late in the war before Soviet reports and other intelligence began to be taken seriously, but it was definitely clear to Roosevelt and others that the entirety of the Axis powers was a threat that would not let the US remain neutral forever. My understanding is that Roosevelt went along with established US policy at the time to remain neutral (barely...), but definitely saw the ultimate necessity of the US's involvement in Europe as a priority prior to the US entering the war, and without the Holocaust needing to prompt it.
FDR knew and didn't care starting in 1942. FDR was an antisemite who felt that any concentration of Jews was a problem. His administration ensured that Jewish refugees weren't settled in the US and tried to talk Cuba and the Philippines out of taking in Jews.
@@ronmaximilian6953 - Lmfao keep telling yourself that. No one had any real idea the full extent of the camps until the Russians moved into Poland- and the death camps weren’t established until ‘44 so idk what you’re talking about
@@alexjeffries5276 You're changing the terms of argument. You first indicated that Americans didn't know about the Holocaust and camps. We did in 1942 thanks to reconnaissance and the Polish resistance. We didn't know about the full extent of it until decades later because the Nazis try to hide what they did and they Soviets purposely misreported quite a bit.
The single most incredible, moving and harrowing episode of television I think I've ever seen.
Peerless.
Truly your best reaction to any of the episodes yet, because we can SEE the shock value actually hit you!
Love your channel man! I really hope you do The Pacific and Generation Kill next!!
Imagine seeing all the horrors of War, then being speechless seeing this. "Why We Fight" is a nod to the legendary series made by Frank Capra, it was made while the War was still happening and the outcome was unknown....The German Woman wearing the stark red coat is interesting to me, maybe as a connection to the little Jewish girl who dies in Schindler's List. I don't think there are coincidences in Spielberg's work.
Watch Schindler's List...
That's what is so tough for the replacement. Moans he wants to see action. Sees nazi soldiers being executed and is shocked but rest of them shrug. Once you see him again at the camp he is changed. Likely feeling guilty over earlier comments and this is one of his first experiences of war. Something that even the battle hardened among them struggled to cope with and process.
A little tragic fact...
The prisoners they found with numbers branded on their arms was definitely a reference to Auschwitz, those prisoners had probably been sent from there. The camp they refer to as the biggest one that the Soviet army discovered.
Auschwitz was the only camp to number the prisoners.
The director of this episode was either a survivor of the camps or the son of one.
Great review, I also was caught off guard when the camp was discovered. They did such a good job of focusing on the war and made the camp suprise you.
My friend's father fought in the British army in WW2, they knew nothing about the camps until the closing weeks of the war. He said, they knew the Nazis were bad all through the war, they just didn't know how bad. He always believed that most, if not all , Germans knew about the camps. They just never admitted it, not even to themselves sometimes.
As a filmmaker or as a historian, watch “Shoah”. Made in the early 1980’s, it is a documentary on how they visited towns within miles of the concentration camps. German citizens still did not believe that the camps were real.
One thing I always wonder when I watch Webster with the baker, he asks the baker if he never noticed the smell... We're not told about any smell before this moment, meaning in Band of Brothers the Americans in the town themselves didnt notice a smell before, only after. Now this may be because they didnt wanna hint too much at the concentration camp before the reveal, or that they simply didnt think it worthy of adding a scene adressing the smell. But it does make me wonder if they really could smell it in the town or not
1945: " I didn't know what was happening! ". 1937: " Hurry up Hans, we'll be late for the Party rally! "
i could never begin to accurately imagine the horrors of what the real Easy Company and other soldiers had to witness when they liberated the camps.
Sorry, but what you see in Band of Brothers is not factually and historically accurate. Kaufering IV, the camp shown in Band of Brothers, was actually liberated by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945 while the the 101st didn't arrive until April 28. The 101st was only designated a liberating unit because it arrived within 48 hours. The 101st did not participate in the liberation of any other camp.
In reality, most of the soldiers in WWII volunteered. Many young american men committed suicide because they COULDN'T serve.
Very few were drafted.
Nope, that's another nonsensical Ambrosian fabrication. There were a lot of volunteers for sure, but the majority were drafted, as expected. We're still talking about 40 % or so, but "very few" doesn't quite work out either.
Well actually I believe that tens of thousands of deaths WERE actually in vein. And those were the German kids that died fighting for their country deluded that they were doing an honorable duty. But this was not the first time this happened in history. And sadly not the last one....
My English teacher had played a clip of this episode in class when they were walking into the camp. I wonder if I was the only one who knew this actually happened to these soldiers and these people
mee too kinda, my English teacher in grade 7 (early 90s), showed my class a video of the concentration camps. It was more raw than this episode, devastating. We get so caught up in modern day non-sense that it is essential this is remembered.
I use it in my classes after we read the drama version Diary of a Young Girl based on Diary of Anne Frank
Fun fact:
Eisenhower created our highway system because of how convenient the autobahn was in Germany.
The more you know.. 🤓😉
They actually weren’t at war because of this (the Holocaust). The vast majority of the rest of the world had little-to-no idea about the severity of Hitler’s atrocity-filled campaign against the Jews, gypsies, etc. Soldiers stumbling upon the camps was the world’s first real insight into what was happening there.
The world started to know in 1942. US authorities hid it until 1943
@@ronmaximilian6953 I am not aware of that, but don’t feel like looking into it, so you could well be correct. That said, my overarching point remains valid.
You have to do the pacific next man!!! Same creators and an epic series also, where its a lot newer the filming techniques used are incredible and the storyline is based on real soldiers the whole way through 🤞
I'd like him to watch Flags of our Fathers/Iwo Jima first, I think it's a smidge more classic for the Pacific Front.
@@Trowa71 I will have to watch those as I haven't even heard of those, we never learnt much about the pacific theatre here in the UK I only know parts of what went on and most of that after watching The Pacific and doing research afterwards
@@GPA_Karting They're incredible sister movies representing both sides of the conflict. The second one's full title is Letters From Iwo Jima.
Nobody learns about the Pacific Theatre aside from how it ended.
@@Trowa71 Start of with double feature with Pearl Harbor & Tora! Tora! Tora!
The had cancer patients play the camp victims. And the reason there were no before or after videos by the easy veteran's was because easy company never liberated a camp. But both Tom hanks and Steven Spielberg thought it was necessary to understand the scope. Also like in Saving Private Ryan, most of the cast didn't see or know about this set until they were being filmed seeing it. So the reactions are (mostly) genuine. And the line almost all youtubers cut, "The woman's camp is at the next railroad stop" it would have been women and children.
plenty of people volunteered to fight, quite a few Americans came over and joined the British before America joined the war. in my home town we had a Polish spitfire squadron made up of men that had to fight their way out of occupied Europe to continue the fight. quite of few of those stayed afterwards. i met one as a 13 year old on the bus home from school he was a bit drunk sat down next to me and told me how he killed his first Nazi with a shovel i shook that man's hand
We were NOT a at war because of it, we had only heard rumors. The shock was complete.
Not just German civilians and kids, forced conscription from every German conquered country. I once worked for an old man in Michigan USA, a Lithuanian who was forced into fighting in 1936. He was conscripted by the Germans to the western front, his 5 brothers were sent to Siberia to fight the Red Army, he never saw/heard about them again.
Iconic visuals to end, on the violin/fiddle (common marker of Jewish culture) being closed into the black case (symbolising a coffin) at the end.
Takes a very strong mind to include shots like that in your show.
General Eisenhower told the mayor and townspeople, "You make me feel ashamed that my last name is Eisenhower." Then ordered them to go and bury all bodies.
The camp depicted in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV not Ohrdruf. The person who ordered civilians from the town of Landsberg to bury the dead at kaufering IV was Colonel Edward Seiller of the 12th Armored Division, who had taken control of the camp when the 12th Armored Division liberated Kaufering IV on April 27, 1945. When the 101st arrived on April 28, they assisted colonel Seiller in security and cleanup operations.
As a Jew, living in Israel, _I_ forgot about the Holocaust and concentration camps in the run-up to this episode. That's how superbly-done Band of Brothers is.
"This dude is really going to some great length to get some alcohol" Yes indeed, Nixon was clearly what we would recognize today as an alcoholic but war and the toll it has on your mental is just making it worse for poor Nix.
So understatement of the year sadly
He was an alcoholic dealing with PTSD. There is a reason why the generation that fought World War 2 and Korea invented the three-martini lunch. There were a lot of functional alcoholics, who used alcohol to quiet the minds.
You know what I would like to be made into a film?!!
The battle of Castle Itter where soldiers from the American army team up with Soldiers from the German Wehrmacht join forces to defend and rescue high up political prisoners from Castle Itter from roving fanatical SS “werewolves” groups
:o
Oh man thank you for that. What an incredible event.
May I suggest watching the film Happy Christmas, based on real events so strange the film actually had to downplay them.
czcams.com/video/KRrr-CDXijs/video.html
omg French presidentPaul Reynaud was among the prisoners at Itter and I happen to have known his grandson!!!
omg French presidentPaul Reynaud was among the prisoners at Itter and I happen to have known his grandson!!!
Re: your comment on the scene where Webster said out loud how the baker had to have known: the 75th Infantry Division liberated a concentration camp where the camp WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TOWN SQUARE. Yet ALL the Germans INSISTED that they didn't know a thing about it. How do I know? My Dad was part of that division. Just for your information, James. Thanks for watching this episode. It's arguably the most important episode of the series and the title of this episode -- Why We Fight -- is a nod to a series of films that the Army did in WWII to explain to their men why they fought against tyranny.
It gets lost in the ending of this episode, for good reasons. But Nixon and Winter's conversation shouldn't be forgotten. Nix completely bypassing Winter's telling him he's getting demoted because he only cares about the soldiers he lost.
They did a great job sticking to the actual history on this series. The entire series was composed of books and reports written by the soldiers themselves along with letters and interviews with the surviving members of world war II.
In the concentration camp scene.
The production and director kept the actors away from it so when they filmed it they could get real responses.
Theres alot of stories where soldiers would "misplace" their weapons in which the prisoners would then turn on the guards and even some soldiers lost it a shot the guards of the camps themselves because they were so sickened by it which i completely get.
The Soldiers did not know about the camps. The leaders did, and they did willfully not give that information out to calm the troops.
At the end the violinist places his instrument in a “coffin style” case
If one looks at it that way then there is indeed another layer to this.
As a reaction to the atrocities of Nazis, an entire school artists in Germany and central Europe decided that it became impossible to create music that was beautiful and please the audience. And that art had to upset people and shake them out of their complacency.
So they buried and laid to rest the traditions that Beethoven stood for. That is why Stockhausen's music sounds the way it sounds.
Also those that opposed were put into camps also .. I seen a camp near Berlin which was used 5 years before the war began as was used to house Germans who opposed Hitler & after people were too afraid & bought into the regime
turning a blind eye, happens everywhere. what if it's your own government or police force shooting people in the back. people who stand up normally end up in same boat or ridiculed. ignorance is bliss. such a powerful episode.
Nothing but gut punches. This episode is well made and well done.
To touch briefly on the history of both Allied and German knowledge of the camps: the higher ups on the Allied side SUSPECTED that something very bad was going on for most of the war, but didn't grasp the full extent of it until they began liberating the camps. The average soldier on the ground certainly didn't know until very, very late in the war. The propaganda was mostly about German aggression, militarism and totalitarianism rather than being predominantly about their treatment of Jewish people. Once the Allies had evidence of the atrocities of the camps it very quickly became required reading/watching for virtually everyone involved in the war effort.
I think that the context is important: Nazi antipathy to Jewish folks was very well known at that point, and while their particular brand of antisemitism was especially vociferous, distrust of Jewish people was endemic in a lot of countries in Europe for CENTURIES with bloody pogroms happening with regularity in a lot of regions as far back as the Middle Ages and earlier. Antisemitism wasn't really "out of vogue" as a mainstream belief until AFTER the Holocaust became public knowledge and the full extent and horror of the Nazis' industrialized murder machine became evident.
As far as whether the average German person or soldier knew about the camps: Absolutely, yes. We have written records in the form of civilian diaries and correspondence as well as military and government documents that discuss public participation and reactions to the killing of Jews, Roma, etc. It was, at the very least, an open secret that most everyone knew about but was afraid to discuss.
The Wehrmacht (German military) in particular was an active participant in the Holocaust, with normal soldiers often executing masses of Jewish people, Poles, etc.
The public has only really come to recognize the full extent of the culpability of the German people and regular military in the last 20-25 years, mostly as a result of the end of the Cold War (for all sorts of messy geopolitical reasons that I won't get into) and the decades long efforts of many scholars (a lot of them German) to bring light to the issue.
The myth of the clean Wehrmacht/German people still has a lot of adherents, especially in certain racist circles and on the internet (which is why I wrote this out - it ALWAYS comes up in the comments when people react to this episode) but has been largely debunked.
I'm pretty sure the word Liebgott didn't know was "undesirables" Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Communists, Mentally ill you name it. I may be in a minority but I in a way sympathize with the German cook. If he had known there's nothing he could do. If he brought it up in any negative way you can bet his friends or neighbors would report him to the Gestapo and either kill him or send him to one of those camps. Many Germans despised the camps but in the face of the SS and Gestapo who were fanatically loyal to Hitler there's nothing they really could've done.
Also! The Allies had no idea about the actual concentration camps and their horrendous task. The Allies went to war against the German invasion of Poland
just a little technicality. Easy Company (or the whole of 506 for that matter) didn't liberate a concentration camp. they were stationed at one for a while after at it had been liberated by some other part of the Allied army
@@eq1373 well, then we are just getting into semantics about who liberated the camp. point is they were not the first there, and didn't didn't discover it.
The Soviets found most of the extermination camps.
They were mostly situated in the eastern side of Germany and Poland.
Camps of political prisoners and others deemed undesirable were located all over.
The allies had to cease in west Germany to allow the soviets to take Berlin.
Always a classic point, that it was Actually the Soviets who "won" the War in Europe, rather than the Western Allies. No doubt both fronts were vital in wearing the Germans down, but most of the fighting and German loses were on the Eastern front.
@@JackChurchill101
Geographical placement of the extermination camps was the reason the soviets found them.
Logistics "won" the war. However the ability and will of the soviets to absorb losses, certainly was significant.
Yes. I can’t imagine how allied troops of Jewish heritage must have felt after witnessing this Atrocity.
A lot of SS were simply summarily shot
The title of this episode "Why We Fight" is in part obviously a reference to the concentration camp found by Easy Company, and more generally to the Holocaust and the mass murder factory that Germany transformed itself into under Hitler and the Nazis. Perhaps somewhat less obviously, the title is also a tip of the hat cinematic homage to the seven film World War II documentary series of the same name produced by Frank Capra, and directed by Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak which was made during the war between 1942 and 1945.
James, I recommend an old movie: :Judgement at Nuremberg ". In it a scene between a chief judge during the trials discusses who knew about the holocaust with a generals wife who claims she didn't know. Hes sarcastic response: "As far as I can tell no one I this whole country knew."
Bread is about the worst thing you can give a starving person, because starvation shrinks their stomachs and then the bread expands in their stomachs and can rupture them.