History Buffs: Saving Private Ryan

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hello and welcome history buffs my name is Nick Hodges and I'm here to bring you my first historical film review set during the Second World War and what better one to start with then Saving Private Ryan out of all the possible films have yet to review this one has been my most requested and I completely understand why it is also one of my favorite World War two movies and it was about timer took a crack at it anyway so for those of you who don't know this is a film set during the Allied invasion of Normandy towards the end of the Second World War and it's a story about a squad of Rangers sent on a dangerous mission to rescue a soldier deep behind enemy lines so over the course of this review I'm going to be discussing the background behind d-day and of course the real historical inspirations behind Saving Private Ryan June 5th 1944 much of Europe's under Nazi occupation for four and a half years the continents been devastated by severe conflict and many have seen their country swallowed whole by Hitler's Third Reich but the cogs in the German war machine are beginning to crack to the east the invasion of Russia's were met with disaster and the German armies on a complete retreat for the Soviets chasing them the Allies have kicked the Germans and the Italians out of North Africa and have defeated them as Sicily but the fighting grows fierce as they make their way through Italy with the rugged terrain naturally favoring the Axis powers a second front was needed to take the fight back to Germany and in order to do that the Allies must invade the mainland standing in their way is Hitler's Atlantic Wall a series of fortified concrete bunkers with artillery machine-gun positions defending nearly 2,000 miles of coastline stretching all the way from Norway to Spain Nazi propaganda declared it to be impregnable it was up to Eisenhower the Allied commander to put that statement to the test Hitler's ill-fated decision to abandon his original plans of invading Great Britain had come back to haunt him as the island now hosted an army of 300,000 Allied troops ready to flood in across the channel and a moment's notice by this point the Germans have figured that northern France would be the most likely point of invasion but exactly where was the subject of much debate Hitler himself was convinced or more appropriately convinced himself that would happen at the port de calais the shortest crossing point between England and France which was why he focused his efforts into making it the most offended and the Allies took great effort not to dissuade him otherwise and they actually used some pretty ingenious methods for example in the Southeast of England they set up an entire fake army encampment from the air the Germans would think they were seeing entire tank divisions when in reality they were inflatable balloons pretty cool right in fact pretty much everything in the encampment was fake they even had radio operators whose job it was to all day long give fake orders to fake battalions to move to fake locations and this absolutely worked the Germans were completely suckered in by this deception however the one thing the allies couldn't control was who amongst the German military leadership was given the task of overseeing the Atlantic Wall and unfortunately it was one of the most capable commanders when Rommel before he arrived the coastal defenses were in pretty poor condition and his experience of fighting the Allies in North Africa gave him valuable insight of what was to come and he made an effort to visit much of the fortifications in person ordering thousands of Mines hedgehogs tank and boat obstacles to be placed on the beaches in case of an airborne drop Rommel flutters many of the fields behind the coastline creating natural swamps which was extremely dangerous as any paratrooper who landed in these fields would drown fortunately in spite of Rommels best efforts the Atlantic Wall was far from being complete with the Germans having been deceived that the invasion happened at Calais Eisenhower turned his attention to Normandy where the real invasion would take place it was then that five beaches were chosen the Americans would take the ones codenamed Utah and Omaha whilst the British and the Canadians would take gold sword and Juno in the hours leading up to the attack on the beaches a massive airborne dropper take place the paratroopers objective were to delay any German counter-attack before a beachhead was established and so after months of planning and numerous deadlines changed due to bad weather the date was finally set for the 6th of June 1944 and the liberation of Europe would begin soldiers sailors and airmen of the Allied expeditionary force you are about to embark upon the Great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months the eyes of the world are upon you the hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere March with you in company with our brave allies and brothers-in-arms on other fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for ourselves in a free world your task will not be an easy one your enemy is well trained well equipped and battle-hardened he will fight savagely but this is the year 1944 much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41 the United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats in open battle man-to-man our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground our homefront have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men the tide has turned the free men of the world are marching together to victory I have full confidence in your courage devotion to duty and skill in battle we will accept nothing less than full victory good luck and let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking pretty soon after the movie begins we are taken to the landings of Omaha Beach now this has to be one of the most incredible and horrifying opening sequences ever put on film and the majority of what you see really did take place but it's little details that truly speaks volumes about saving private Ryan's great care for authenticity like how we see many of the soldiers vomiting as they head to the shore to the casual viewer who doesn't know much about history it might appear that simply due to nerves and whilst yes that is one reason but the main one is due to seasickness many of the soldiers had been fed a heavy meal before they set off and he can describe the thinking behind it similar to how a con man is served his last supper before his execution combined that with the turbulent sea rocking the landing craft up and down rather violently and you have a lot of sick gi's now there's one quick little inaccuracy I have to point out and to be perfectly honest I was debating about whether was even worth mentioning but if I didn't I'm sure we'd have been brought up in the comment section anyway okay that guy right there should not be American and the reason why is because all of the landing crafts that dropped off the second and fifth Ranger battalions were crewed by British servicemen driving British landing crafts called LCAs why am i mentioning this because there are some people who use this scene as an example of how the movie insinuates that only americans fought to the Normandy invasion as we never see any Brits or Canadians or any other allies fighting alongside them personally I think these comments are unnecessary because I don't see any point in getting worked up over a few seconds worth of footage so anyway as the landing craft approaches the beaches the movies back on track with being accurate again the soldiers on board are absolutely terrified as they can hear incoming mortar fire as it gets closer and closer to the shore all of them getting ready for what they were trained to do for the ramp to lower and to storm onto the beach to take out the bunkers with only a few seconds to spare the soldiers had no choice but to jump over the side into ten feet of water to escape the hail of machine gunfire but as soon as they slip beneath the surf another problem came up their heavy equipment now completely drenched weighed them down like an anchor with many of the soldiers feeling seasick some had no energy left to swim to the surface and drowned this is exactly how the First Minister the beach landings at Omaha went down and yet within that same sequence another inaccuracy pops up it's when we see soldiers being shot and killed under water which is impossible considering how deep they are and the reason why is because it goes against Newton's first law of motion an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force you see the moment a bullet hits water all momentum is lost and they just sink harmlessly in real life the water was actually protecting these soldiers from enemy fire so this is just Hollywood's breaking the laws of physics for dramatic effect and it's not the only time Saving Private Ryan does this like in the belltower scene the character Jackson pulls off an impossible shot when he manages to shoot the German sniper through the scope into his eye and the reason why it's impossible is due to the distance the problem here is that at 450 yards gravity will work against the bullet causing it to drop meaning that the sniper has to compensate for this by firing above the target so when the bullet finally reaches its destination it'll be from a downward angle and thus will be unable to pass cleanly through the scope but anyway I've waffled on too long about this so let's get back to Omaha so when Captain Miller is finally able to swim ashore that is when we see this movie truly excel despite all of the technical nitpicking I just went over despite all of the inaccuracies this film has Saving Private Ryan visually recreates the horror of war we see limbs being blown off we see a man holding onto his exposed entrails calling for his mother this is not a romanticized depiction of war but the ugly truth this is about as close as we're ever gonna get understanding what these poor men went through and never for a second do any of us look down on the soldiers that are too terrified to move amazingly despite their natural instinct to find cover and get us low to the ground as possible with great courage these men picked themselves up and made their way right up to the seawall however they were unable to continue any further as their path was blocked by rows and rows of barbed wire with incoming mortar and machine gun fire pinning them down and the tide steadily creeping in behind them a solution was desperately needed to get past this obstacle in preparation for this the army had provided Bangalore torpedoes which were tubes packed with explosive charges once the men had slipped them beneath the barbed wire they lit the fuses and waited for the path to be cleared with the obstruction ahead obliterated the soldiers were finally able to charge up the hill now by this point the battle had actually been raging for about a few hours and the Germans were running low in ammunition and when word started reaching the Navy that some of the men had successfully broken through the German lines the order was given to provide artillery support after an intense bombardment the enemy's will to fight was broken allowing the Americans to take the beaches and the Battle of Omaha was over now before I wrap up this part of the review I would like to point out one scene that really deserves a mention okay there are two reasons why this scene is brilliant one it shows that the Allies committed atrocities the same way the Germans did to show the war not in the clear cut of black and white button ugly shades of grey which is extremely accurate and secondly what's even more impressive is that those two German soldiers are not German this is what they were actually saying since these soldiers are speaking Czech and claimed to be Czech they're most likely they were conscripted into the German army when Czechoslovakia was conquered by Germany in 1939 they would have been part of the austere part aliens which were military units that conscripted citizens from Eastern European countries as well as from the Soviet Union and many were forcibly drafted from POWs it's a tiny detail but it's brimming with history and I absolutely love it to me this is real filmmaking here I mean only that but humble filmmaking because Steven Spielberg doesn't feel the need to provide subtitles it's not really required for the scene to have an impact but when I found out about it it just made me appreciate this film a whole lot more so the first 20 or so minutes of Saving Private Ryan is for the most part pretty accurate whilst yes I could have gone over a few more technical details like the fact that we don't exactly get much of an idea of the actual scope of the battle and how long was fought for band etc but the movie's authenticity pays off by showing us what it was actually like for the soldier on the ground which is an incredible achievement worthy of a historical film so all of that stuff is accurate but from this point forward it's pretty much all fictional there was no captain Miller there was no Private Ryan or any mission to rescue him for behind enemy lines the final battle the film didn't happen either because the Tanner rimmel never existed this is just a few of the examples I could give now although none of the plot is true there are elements of truth to it if that makes sense for example the reason why Private Ryan has recalled from active duty because his three brothers were killed in combat is based on a real American military policy on November 13 1942 an event occurred that shocked America in the South Pacific a fierce naval battle took place during the Guadalcanal campaign one of the ships involved in the fighting was the USS Juneau and serving on board were the five Sullivan brothers they all enlisted together and wish to serve together on the same ship but tragically the Juneau is attacked by a Japanese submarine and was hit by two torpedoes when the ship sank well over 600 sailors were killed including all five of the Sullivan brothers when the news hit America there was a public uproar and to assure families that such an event would never happen again the military put into effect a policy known as the sole survivor rule the idea behind it would be to split our brother serving together so they cannot all be lost in a single battle and if by circumstance all of the brothers died except for one then that sole surviving brother would be sent home and in Saving Private Ryan that's exactly what happens Private Ryan loses all of his brothers and the military has to act on this policy but the problem presented in the film is that they don't know where Ryan is contact with a fourth son James no sir he was dropped about 15 miles inland in a new ville but that's still deep behind your now Mack there is no way you can know where in the hell he was dropped general first reports how do I speak what shape said 101st is scattered all to hell and gone there's miss drops all over Normandy now assuming Private Ryan even survived the jump he could be anywhere in fact he's probably ki-yay and frankly sir we go sending some sort of rescue mission flat heading throughout swarms of German reinforcements all along our axis of advance they're gonna be ki a2 and this is the big question asked by the movie however noble the mission is one man's life worth risking the lives of others I mean where's the sense of risking the lives of the eight of us to save one guy there is no sense I'm sorry to say this but I highly doubt that such a mission like the 1% in the movie would ever be authorized I mean due to the manpower and the resources needed for what is essentially a tactically insignificant mission one particular that's a pretty good point these Rangers aren't given any real Intel about what to find Ryan the broster sort of points in Neuville and says go there and see what you find I mean what would have happened if they hadn't bumped into that one guy in Neuville would they just be wandering around the countryside for the rest of the war until they found him we should bust up in a couple of different groups huh you wander the woods like Hansel and Gretel calling his name he's bound to hear us sooner or later Ryan hey Joe there's a UH Mandelson pal around with a Ryan from C Company bring them up here with it I love the fact that actually works but anyway get my point I personally don't believe a mission like this would ever be greenlit or that the general chief of staff the United States Army would take time to look into it personally I mean especially since he was extremely busy overseeing the invasion of Europe and I feel I can make that assumption based on the true story that Saving Private Ryan was inspired by and how that was handled although there was never a private James Ryan there was a sergeant Fritz Niland just like in the movie Fritz Niland also had three brothers two of them were killed in the Normandy landings and the third brother Edward Nylund was shot down over Burma nearly a month before and just like Private Ryan Sargent Island was also a paratrooper in the hundred first airborne in the early morning hours of d-day Fritz and the rest of his unit were aboard a plane of a Normandy when they started getting hit by German anti-aircraft fire in the chaos they had to jump out early and miss their drop zone on the ground Fritz and a few other paratroopers he was with tried to find a way to the coast whilst avoiding German patrols after a few days of fighting Fritz finally found his unit only to be horrified with the discovery that his two brothers had died and that he was to be sent home immediately now in the movie when Private Ryan has told this he refuses to leave it doesn't make any sense er why why me why do I deserve to go why not any of these guys they all fought just as hard as me is that what they're supposed to tell your mother when they send her another folded American flag tell her when you found me I was here and I was with the only brothers that I have left and there's no way I was gonna desert them this is actually quite accurate to how Fritz Niland responded he made it quite clear that he had no wish to be given special treatment and wanted to continue fighting to be with his brothers in arms unlike Matt Damon though Fritz had no chance of convincing the army otherwise because he can't just pick and choose the audience here given he was told that he had to go home and that was that after months of uncertainty the Nylund family was once again reunited with Fritz but amazingly that was not the end of the story it turns out that the eldest son Edward Nylund had survived the crash in Burma and had been a prisoner of the Japanese for some time towards the end of the war the Japanese deserted the camp and Edward took the opportunity to escape and was picked up by Allied forces who sent him back to America and the Nylund family had now two surviving sons returned to them when they thought that they had originally lost three as a movie Saving Private Ryan is not without its historical inaccuracies in fact it's guilty of having many but to avoid going into too much detail I decided to focus on the ones I found to be the most interesting and the most relevant I really do love this film and I considered to be one of the greatest world war 2 movies ever made and the reason for this is that it makes up for its inaccuracies with its authenticity Steven Spielberg's objective was to provide us with a narrative of war itself rather than a detailed account on any one event or persons to give us an idea of what horrors our grandfather's generation faced to remind us of the personal sacrifices they made to secure our freedom our way of life that we enjoy today is all made possible because of what these brave men did and this could just be my personal interpretation but one of the last scenes in the film states this in a very subtle way what captain Miller says to Private Ryan could just as easily have been meant for us Ernest well that about wraps it up my name is Nick Hodges and thanks for watching history buffs now just to let you guys know this will be my last review for the summer of 2016 I'm going to be taking a much-needed holiday for a few months just to recharge my batteries because I've been working pretty much non-stop for an entire year I'm sure you guys understand that even youtubers need to break sometimes but it's only gonna be for a few months and then everything's back to normal until then I like to wish you all a wonderful summer and I'll see you again soon

Info

Channel: History Buffs

Views: 5,707,265

Rating: 4.8680787 out of 5

Keywords: History Buffs, Saving Private Ryan, Niland Brothers, Sullivan Brothers, Historically accurate, Historically inaccurate, inaccuracies, The real story, The true story, Omaha, D-Day, Operation Overlord, Operation Fortitude, Fritz Niland, Edward Niland, WW2, The Second World War

Id: h1aGH6NbbyE

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 23min 31sec (1411 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 10 2016

Reddit Comments

The Thin Red Line (which was released the same year) had multiple moments like this as well. The Japanese soldiers aren't subtitled.

Towards the end of the movie Private Witt is shot by a Japanese soldier who says: "Surrender, It's you who killed my friends, but I have no desire to kill you. You are surrounded, please surrender".

or: "I don't want to kill you. You have been surrounded by Japanese soldiers. You should give in. You, you killed my fellow soldier, didn't you. I don't want to kill you."

👍︎︎ 6537 👤︎︎ u/Dylan0812 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies

A Korean soldier was captured on D-Day fighting for the Germans. Previously he had fought for the Japan and the Soviet Union.

In Manchuria he had been conscripted into the Japanese army, became captured in a border skirmish and when the Soviet Union were short on men during the German invasion, they made him volunteer for their army in exchange for releasing him from his labour camp. Later he was captured by the Germans in another battle and made to volunteer for them.

A lot of soldiers fighting in WW2 were pawns with little choice who to fight against.

👍︎︎ 1751 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies

Holy shit, that's brutal. Agree with the video, that's some incredibly impressive attention to detail in the film-making. Only downside is that so few who have watched the movie would understand what happened.

👍︎︎ 2492 👤︎︎ u/overgme 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies

Edit: added some background to the situation

Friend of mine, who really disliked SPR, used the Czech scene as an example of "lazy film making" on Spielberg's part.

He tells me something along the lines of "the guys surrendering, they weren't even speaking German, they were obviously speaking Czech, that's terrible planning from Spielberg." I didn't know it was Czech before he told me, and realizing this made the scene go from grim to tragic.

I groan when I think how the deeper meaning of that scene, which should have had more significance to my friend, went completely over his head.

👍︎︎ 7864 👤︎︎ u/hurkinhork 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies

LPT:

If you are somehow embroiled in a war between two opposing sides and do not speak either language, learn how to say, "I am not (nationality of the either opposing force)" in each of the opposing force's language.

👍︎︎ 514 👤︎︎ u/balrogwarrior 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies

I can't watch the video. What does it say about why they were there? Were they prisoners or something?

👍︎︎ 367 👤︎︎ u/sxysteve 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies

In case someone is interested, I made a video showing how the real Omaha Beach looked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp875ATM0ZE

👍︎︎ 142 👤︎︎ u/Ts4EVER 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies

Here in Oklahoma, in a small town called Tonkawa (I don't live there, but went to rehab there), is a large facility with tall guard towers and remnants of huge, concrete walls, that used to be a POW camp for German soldiers. The treatment facility backed right up to the property. We got to tour it, and allegedly, the prisoners were treated very well, and morale there was very high. So much so, there is a small population of people in town, who are descendants of those prisoners, who elected to stay and emigrate here afterwards.

👍︎︎ 98 👤︎︎ u/martymcfly0782 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies

There is a similar moment in 'Band of Brothers'. They said they are no Germans they were polish. The us soldier answered: I am now 6 months in Germany and haven't met a German yet.

👍︎︎ 42 👤︎︎ u/Kanista17 📅︎︎ Feb 15 2017 🗫︎ replies