Military Historian Rates Classic World War Two Films

now that is an effective operation at this point they decided to put on the German uniforms which I love partly cuz the Germans look so stupid in their in their undies it's a great movie but it's fiction you make a second world war movie the Germans got to be in tanks that's the rule I'm Dan snow I love history and I love movies so I'm going to review some of the alltime World War II Classics guns of naar [Music] own so this is the scene in which our daring bunch of Commandos are disguised as Greek fishermen and they're on their way to the oh yes they get they get found by a German Patrol vessel not much the Cs Marine still floating at this point of the war 1943 only a few little Patrol vessels in the Mediterranean most of it had been sunk by this stage disguise was Not Unusual for Commandos the the early SAS raids in North Africa famously they would they would wear German uniforms and disguises are yourselves we are coming aboard the job of a Commando was to blend in use unorthodox tactics use disguise false Flags pretend they can't speak German in this example the doy campaign in Greece is a really interesting one it's forgotten about I've met quite a few veterans who took part in the Special Forces operation in the Greek Islands and Churchill in particular was fascinated by the aanc the Greek Islands partly because uh of His World War One proclivities his idea about um reinforcing Russia through through galipoli through the the bosporus the Americans are having none of it in fact the Americans refused to support the do deanes [Music] campaign and this is a very fictionalized Skirmish I mean this this didn't happen I think it would have been pretty tough for an outnumbered small group of Commandos with light armed take on a a German Naval vessel even a small one like [Music] this used to grenades there classic Commando weapon big bang for your buck down the ventilation Into the Heart of the German vessel and you look at these special effects this this won the Oscar award for special effects now that is an effective operation a skirmish like that would not have ended that quickly or in that manner and this is a reflection I think of how in the 60s and 7s second world war movies were becoming slightly more glamorized slightly more Fantastical these were like goodlooking groups of swashbuckling Commandos uh performing superhuman tasks and changing the outcome of the war and that's why you get a different flavor of War movie in this period I also like the way these Commandos are shown as I don't know they're pretty handsome Gregory PX looking guy but they're not if it was a modern movie they would all just be super buff super ripped and it's more realistic I mean they actually look like some of the people you see in photographs the common unle telephone you shortly to congratulate you missile thank you here we see an SS halstrom furer an officer ABS out of Central Casting he's like he's got the lightning bolts he's got the skull the death head on his cap he's got blonde hair and blue eyes he's such a perfect Nazi that he actually plays a NY in the Great Escape as well a liar and he's interrogating the Commandos what is true here technically that's against the rules of Wars against G convention you're not allowed to physically um you're not allowed to beat um prisoners but the Germans hated Commandos and in October 1942 the Germans had Hitler had signed the so-called Commando order any Commandos were to be killed they not to be treated like enemy combatants the did these men they stole my Bo they they forced me to join them your Excellency bring his in forward your Excellency I I am their prisoner holding out against interrogation for the first minutes and hours after they were captured was so important in the days that follow doesn't really matter because any useful tactical intelligence is out of date by that point but if the Germans want to know what they're doing there have they planted explosives they need to find out within seconds and minutes of the capture of the Commandos call the sent in I think this is reasonably unrealistic that you would manage to disarm and escape from a group of of trained German soldiers but it's not possible I guess not very hygienic I must say shocking taste in andas too well at this point they decided to put on the German uniforms which I love partly because the Germans look so stupid in their in their undies and their vests it's not unheard of in the second world war that Allied units would wear German uniforms as disguises to confuse the enemy there were Special Forces raids for example in t Brook in North Africa and Libya where uh the SAS other units wore German uniforms to infiltrate into German positions good luck they're going to leave their comrade behind on and that wasn't unusual it was thought that if someone was badly wounded their best chance of survival might be to leave them with the Enemy and hope that they received Humane treatment he's a wounded officer I expect him to get proper medical attention we don't make war on wounded men we're not all like Hopman zeser so that we're not all like halman zeser so there's a Nuance there you see that already people are trying to make a distinction between the SS these fanatical Nazis and the rest of the German Army now historians have challenged that distinction in recent years but the as we as people tried to rehabilitate Germany and Germans following the second world war it became easy to say actually there were good German soldiers and then there were particularly evil Nazis and you see that in this movie you don't hear very much about the do diones campaign and that's because it was a disaster for the Allies it was Hitler's last victory of the second world war in the second half of 1943 the Americans thought it was such a bad idea they refused to get involved so it was all down to Winston Churchill and I do think Churchill wanted to establish Britain back in Greece uh back in that part of the world and I think Churchill was desperate to make sure he could try and contest Eastern Europe with the Soviets he did not like Stalin he was worried about Stalin's communist Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe even by 1943 he was worried about this and I think he wanted to try and feed British troops and influence up into the Balkans up into Eastern Europe to make sure it just wasn't a clear field for the Soviets so that's what's going on here that's the do deanes campaign it's a disaster for the Brits and the Allies thousands of British troops are captured uh and British ships are sunk by German aircraft in particular and it was Hitler's last great Victory Das Boot this an important reminder that OTS spent well most their time on the surface they had the capability to go under water of course but they traveled from A to B where possible they would do this they'd get their they' surface and get their binoculars out and try and look for Allied Shipping destroyers no no screen they have no protection nothing Allied ships were traveling in convoys they would group together for protection so that Naval vessels could her them a bit like sheep dogs with a big herd of sheep that damn Moon doesn't like the full moon of course he doesn't massively increases visibility at sea at night so it's much easier to see the Periscope or the conning Tower of a submarine or a ubot on the horizon it's worth a try captain come left to 180 you get a sense here that these ubo crews are predators they are like wolves stalking and attacking uh a herd of elk they're always wearing up the risk reward Factor should they go in or should they stay back on this occasion they decide to go for it what's the pressure of the lubricating oil our angle bearing 050 lock down range 2200 M those two that overlapping they're getting ready to fire Torpedoes and the torpedo tubes which Face Forward mount in the bowels and there you can see the allied ship it's incredibly veterans have always said this is a very very realistic movie of course there's things that they pick up on that say wer quite accurate but enormous they to enormous length to try and make sure this was authentic as could possibly be three fire two there you go an Allied Naval vessel has arrived at Cruiser usually quite a lightly armed ship with depth charges and a gun mounted on the B my grandfather did this exact job in the Canadian Navy in the second world war he looked out for OTS in the North Atlantic year after year and when they saw a cruiser the best thing to do was die quick quick quick keep it moving this way come on move move move move keep it on watch out hurry hurry [Music] hurry you get them all rushing forward to try and dive the ship which I think is accurate the the weight of the bodies on board did have a big impact on the trim of these submarines so get forward get some weight forward it'll help you dive quicker we hit the first out of the way we hit her [Applause] we Qui and the key thing is to remain as quiet as possible the sonar equipment on a Allied Naval vessel Cruiser like this it could pick up the scrape of a a pan moving across a grill so everyone had to stay as quiet as possible number three sometimes those German you boats would submerge maintain total silence the fleet would pass above them they could hear it passing above them uh and then they would uh reemerge from the water they surface to look at the damage that been caused in this case they've managed to destroy that Allied cargo ship our back's already broken he says the back's broken that's an expression uh use in Naval Warfare meaning the ship is irreparable it's it's it's lethally wounded if those Sailors were lucky enough to survive the explosions on the ships the fires the flooding sometimes the only option would be to jump in the Atlantic and they wouldn't last very long in there they went to extraordinary length to create a very realistic submarine the company that built the original u96 built the Set uh every dial every sprocket apparently was accurate the captain of 96 the wartime ubot was an adviser on the movie and so was another member of the ships company the actors were all trained as submariners so they got into the role they they understood how to move and operate within a submarine environment blow blow all tanks this scene comes just after an attacked by aircraft aircraft were fantastic Hunter killers of German submarines and as air power was extended across the Atlantic as the war went on submarines suffered more and more every submarine movie contains a scene where the submarine Dives much much deeper than its safe operating envelope and this is no exception they go down something like 900 ft here which is too deep and the idea is they hit this ledge they hit this underwater ledge and they they survive on this shelf a German submarine I think would have been crushed at about 400 ft the hulls simply weren't built to withstand the kind of pressures that acted upon uh the hull at this depth they know in this scene if they go any deeper they'll be crushed in a split second once that Hull is compromised water will come in at thousands of miles an [Music] hour 270 M First Watch stand by 260 m [Music] I'm sure that whole crew would have watched that depth gauge knowing their lives depended on what that little needle was doing 240 M there was obviously intense comaraderie on these vessels but it wasn't quite as informal as is shown sometimes in this movie and there was still a distinction between officers and Men officers were treated with some respect in this movie sometimes that isn't the case the movie has been praised for showing these Germans not as monsters but as human beings as young men who were given a job to do and no choice about doing it either let's be quite clear all dramatic adaptations are are made up they're fiction they're not history but this is a very very authentic very realistic depiction of of a ot's crew of a ubot campaign in the second world war it's widely regarded as the best submarine film ever made and I think as a movie it gave us a sense of the other side in the second world war the decades following the war the movies tend to focus on the Alli effort and here we are getting the other side we're looking at the Germans we're seeing them as human beings not as cardboard cutout evil Nazi officers and I think it's a very very powerful film a very human film it shows us how lethal German submarines were but how vulnerable they were as well bridge over the river Quai back in your place Alec Guinness who plays Colonel Nicholson in this movie knew what he was talking about in many ways he'd served in the second world war he'd seen action he commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Sicily in 1943 he was in the Navy theer May employ as workmen prisoners of War who are physically fit other than officers book by all means you read English I take it do you read Japanese I'm sorry no but if it's a matter of precise translation I'm sure that can be arranged you see the code specifically states that the the the Japanese Commander is obviously unimpressed with the Geneva conventions he calls it the coward's code what code the coward's code and it is true that the treatment of Allied PS particularly on the building of this soal way of death was appalling the Geneva conventions did exclude officers from manual labor it's true Alec Guinness is making a good point here but the Japanese had no interest in that since you refuse to abide by the laws of the Civilized world we must consider ourselves absolved from our duty to obey you my officers will not do manual labor he told talking to Colonel Nicholson who's based on a real life Colonel tuzy and in fact both characters are quite a long way off the the true the men that they they sort of represent major Sito by Japanese standards wasn't a very bad officer he was happy to negotiate with the men in return for labor and after the war Kel tuzi actually stood witness for him at his war crimes trial and they became friends after the war compy fire the right quick what what I like about this film is depiction of rank even in captivity officers still mattered officers commanded there'd be a senior officer for each prison of War camp and men were expected to do what they were told not just by their captors but by their own officers and then their own officers would act as the kind of goet between their captors and the men and attempt to sort of negotiate perhaps ameliorate some of the the harder aspects of [Music] captivity so the Japanese had an idea of using vast numbers of Prisons of War 60,000 British and Imperial prisons of War hundreds of thousands of laborers from Asia and they would build camps all along the route of this Railway some only hundreds of meters apart and then build the entire Railway simultaneously it was a gigantic undertaking from the end of uh 1942 to the end of 1943 a huge huge undertaking and it was incredibly difficult it was known as death Railway disease malnutrition mistreatment by the Japanese captors building at construction accidents it was terribly dangerous dozens and dozens of men were killed every single day on this death Railway and it's become infamous and this movie is the most famous depiction of it in [Music] drama hello Clon about time you paid us a visit in this clip you see the building process nearly everything about this film is wrong there were actually two bridges over there it wasn't the river Quai uh there was a concrete bridge and then there was a more temporary wooden bridge but this shows the building of the wooden bridge interesting there's only one Japanese guard picture on that mound and that's because Escape was pretty much impossible those jungles were so thick your chances of surviving in them as particularly as a European were very very slim indeed I've talked to a couple of veterans who remember people escaping from captivity in Malaya and in both cases they remember those escapes coming back to the prisoner of war camp because what they experienced in the jungle was worse than what they were experiencing in the prisoner of war camp what we're doing could be construed as forgive me sir collaboration with the Enemy perhaps even as treasonable activity are you all right Clon we are prisoners of War we haven't the right to refuse work I understand that sir but must we work so well must we build them a better Bridge than they could have built for themselves this is the part of the movie that's widely panned by historians and Veterans it was described as codswallop uh by a man who served on the Burma Railway the actual the man this is based on Colonel tuzi he was not as is portrayed by Alec Guinness at all who who seems to kind of get Stockholm syndrome to suddenly to suddenly take the Japanese side here it's very odd the bridge over the river choir I think gets the context right it gets the vibe right but it gets nearly everything else completely wrong gets the name of the river wrong gets the number of bridges across the river wrong and in particular I think gets the character of Colonel Nicholson wrong the man he's based on Colonel tuzi had to naate a very very difficult set of circumstances he had to ensure that his men did the bare minimum to keep the Japanese off their back and that means literally off their back keeping them from being beaten and starved to death but he also had to make sure he wasn't doing too much to advance the Japanese war effort and he did everything he could to slow down the build and make sure the build was low quality so it's a great movie but it's fiction the night of the generals D proud to see General T major grow just a minute sir get me CP Colonel sandar Ur the night of the generals it's not one of the most well-known second world war films but I like it and in this scene we get a a portrayal of the destruction of of Warsaw Warsaw was terribly well it was destroyed by the Germans during the second world war and this actually shows the action taking place in 1942 which is inaccurate real destruction of wara came in in 1944 with the warsa uprising what yes sir yes sir you may pass mjor stop obviously because they're depicting Germans they've got to depict armor but you know if you make a second world war movie the Germans got to be in tanks that's the rule moving quick all right with the others wait for me here this is ver Mar's radio unit assigned to the Reich General government of Poland the Polish were desperate that they would not be liberated by the Soviets under Stalin they want to liberate themselves and so in the warsa uprising which I think this is Loosely based on you get the polls rising up try and seize control their country seize control their Destiny before they're liberated by the Soviets the population is extremely cooperative and friendly sector 4 reports phase one operative sector 2 flame drawers went into action phase one to continue until further orders yes sir the order came down from German High command that Warsaw had to be leveled to the ground in order to set a terrifying example to the rest of Europe the Germans wanted to make sure that anybody else any other resistance organizations elsewhere in occupied Europe did not try the same as the polls and rise up and try and liberate themselves a few more [Music] minutes and that's why you see the appalling destruction and violence rain down on warsa and its people in this period flamethrowers look at those flamethrowers brutal weapons that's an accurate depiction of of flamethrowers phenomenal weapons to be used against enemy positions bunkers underground positions in this case buildings Flames could carry through corridors and they could be carried by infantry hugely effective for phase two phase two sir stand by for phase two yes sir notify all units phase one completed stand by for phase two yes sir so here you see General Tans he's called the hero of Leningrad he didn't exist he's based Loosely on a man called Kel um Yim Piper who was the youngest SS officer to be made Colonel he was a protege of himler he was an incredibly unpleasant human being he was involved in some of the most notorious maskers of the second world war he was involved in the Holocaust of course he mased people across Europe France and elsewhere he boasted that Genghis Khan would have willingly hired him and his associates that Terror was their best weapon a wave of Terror went before them Piper was an appalling appalling criminal the W Uprising saw horrific fighting 16,000 polish resistance Fighters died thousands more wounded and then something like 200,000 civilians killed many in Mass executions it was savagery [Music] so we see major growl driving through lots of uh lots of German unit lots of set dressing lots of mechanized infantry is sitting around doing nothing bit of armor he's off to arrest General tans in this scene thank you sir go ahead good luck to him we repeat the message from the office of the military governor of France ad Hitler is dead members of his staff are under arrest the new government as he gets out of the car as he arrives at headquarters he hears the shocking news that Hitler is dead and Senior Nazis in the government are under arrest the coup is underway the famous July 1944 coup the attempted coup by German Military Officers to kill Hitler and get rid of Key Senior Nazis it failed but for a few hours on the afternoon of the 20th of July 1944 people thought that Hitler was dead and certain officers moved to arrest key Nazis Sergeant get me burlin on the radio and put it through the General's office General Tans yes in Warsaw two years ago I wanted to question you about the murder of uh Maria Keta remember who cuted the telephone wires but Hitler was not dead Hitler had survived a Bomb Blast in his wolf slay headquarters a table leg had shielded Hitler from the blast which killed two people uh in very close proximity to him he had perforated eardrum his uniform was torn he was lucky to survive but he wasn't dead Corman driver this is Berlin we are transmitting the following most important message from the F's headquarters at renor today at 12:4 hours an attempt to assassinate the furer was made by a group of vicious traitors the fer is alive but word was trickling through from East Prussia from the wolf Slayer Hitler's headquarters that Hitler was in fact alive so all these officers were having to make second decisions and any officers that made the wrong choice were brutally brutally executed where were you last night General between 11: and 2: a.m. he shoots the man trying to arrest him patri and I think this is interesting because he knows at this point that there's going to be a gigantic Witch Hunt within the German officer court and you do see a bit within the German Armed Force at this point you do see a bit of score settling as people try and adjust this new reality and he realizes if ever there's a good time to shoot someone it's in the aftermath of this coup because he can claim well this officer came to try and convince me to break my oath to Hitler Sergeant yes sir take him away it's one of the most dramatic moments the second world war it's one of the great whs of history at 12:42 in the afternoon of the 20th of July 1944 a bomb was detonated in Hitler's headquarters he was leaning over a map table two people near him were killed his eard drum was perforated his uniform was ripped apart in the blast many people were injured in the room but his life was saved tragically by a very solid Table leg against which the bomb had been placed the plan was once Hitler had been killed was to round up senior committed Nazis have a military control of the government to try and come to some negotiated peace with the Allies perhaps with the Western allies in particular and fight on with the Soviets it was a desperate desperate plan which probably would never have worked but the message went out to C certain key conspirators that Hitler had been killed and they started acting accordingly in Berlin officers tried to arrest members of the SS they tried to arrest senior Nazis in Paris the commander of German troops in France went around arresting SS officers but as word trickled through that Hitler was alive the situation changed rapidly and for example that commander in Paris was forced to shoot himself and in the hours and days that followed you get loyal committed Nazis like General Tans portrayed in this movie they go around settling scores they arrest anyone who they suspect even had a whiff of involvement with the conspiracy anyone who they think Harbors disloyal thoughts towards Hitler anyone like that is going to get brutally brutally tortured they're going to get interrogated and they're going to be executed hope you've enjoyed these movie reviews I've made quite a few of these so if you want to watch some more click on any of the videos Around Me 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Channel: History Hit

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Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, world war two classic movies, ww2 classic movies, ww2 classic films, old ww2 films, ww2 movie review, ww2 movie accuracy, guns of navarone, das boot reaction, das boot convoy attack, das boot scene, das boot review 1981, das boot film review, bridge on the river kwai, bridge on the river kwai reaction, bridge on the river kwai history, burma railway, alec guinness movies, peter o'toole movies, gregory peck movies, night of the generals

Id: pj8JDfWDaOE

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2023