WW2 Historian James Holland Breaks Down World War 2 Movies

terms of spirit it's absolutely your message the just total craziness of those final days of those who were determined to just keep fighting hello i'm james holland and i'm an author specializing in the second world war and i'm here to break down some iconic second world war movies [Music] start with side stick move fast and clear those murder holes plenty so this is saving private iran and it's one of the most iconic war movies ever made and that first 20 minutes has become so famous they're kind of fizzing around of bullets the realistic violence of it and so on for most people that is d-day you know as a historian you're absolutely delighted that people are making movies about the second world war about your subject matter but it's also just absolutely riddled with inaccuracies well there's a massive load of problems here the beach is much too short so much too narrow the beach obstacles are facing the wrong way they're actually pointing the other way you can see these poles on this on the scene here and they're actually they should have been pointing towards the beach rather than the other way around so the idea is you're you're landing they're pointed this way your landing craft comes in and as it kind of swells back it fall then falls onto the on to spike rather than that way around what spielberg is trying to do at this point is consciously ape those famous photographs by robert kappa and he does that very effectively but robert kappa wasn't coming ashore at this particular point where the rangers are coming sure is is is at the verville end but kind of not quite at that that really strong point and their casualties aren't anything like as bad as being depicted here the other point is worth saying about the mg42 which is what they're depicting here this could fire at sort of 1400 rounds a minute which means you're firing 23 bullets a second that is creating volcano heat your barrel very quickly goes very hot and then it goes white hot and when it gets white hot even when it's getting red hot it starts to melt so you have to have absolutely rock solid firing discipline which means you can't fire more than 250 rounds in one burst and very quickly these things become totally totally inaccurate they're just flying bullets all over the place that is another problem with this because they're just hanging onto the trigger far too long you want it it's like it's like that these little little bursts at a time and if you don't maintain that firing discipline your gun is not going to work very very very quick order so you've got a problem on your hands well one of the problems with a historian looking at this stuff is you come across as a royal smartypants and the bottom line is this is an absolutely fantastic movie overall out of 10 i mean as an amazing bit of cinema i'd give it kind of nine out of ten historical accuracy i'd give it about six well this is just a an absolutely brilliant movie and this scene in terms of historical accuracy is about as good as it gets there's so many accounts of those last days in the bunker there's so many eye winners testimonies saying what happened you know the germans were recording this stuff right up to the very end and this depiction of hitler always just rings true to me i mean i i think this is what it was like i mean you've got to remember by this time hitler is not a well man you know he's telling this taking this daily cocktail of drugs for combination what is almost certainly parkinson's but other kind of fictitious maladies stress the way the others watch this the listening outside the trepidation with which they reveal to the fuhrer what is actually happening the map that's all pretty much spot on you know i really as a movie you can't really fault it it's also a really accurate depiction of hitler's mannerisms they've really looked at how hitler projected himself when he was doing his big speeches we're very lucky that we've got verbatim conversations of the fewer conferences we know that this is an absolutely accurate portrayal of what he thought of his generals he always hated that prussian military aristocratic class and this ranting and raving that he's doing here is completely consistent it's also very interesting that despite this and although a lot of the generals were completely terrified of him he actually never really executed anybody rommel is a obviously exception the people that were caught up in the in the july plot they were obviously executed but for the most part generals were sacked but they weren't executed he wasn't like stalin so when he was saying you know i should have shot high-ranking officers just as stalin did that really rings true you know because he actually didn't do that very often i think this is absolutely tip-top it's a it's a brilliant portrayal by bruno gans it's a it's a brilliant brilliant film and it very very effectively portrays the kind of the drama the chaos of absolute descent into mayhem nine out of ten as a movie and nine out of ten for historical accuracy i think this is really pretty darn good [Music] i mean i don't really have a problem with benedict cumberbatch's depiction of alan turing the problem with the imitation game is that it kind of makes out that alan turing is the only person on the planet who can save save britain and deciphering the enigma machines and that is just simply not the case and they do a really gross injustice to some of the other players turning kind of total heroes into baddies of the peace and the idea that that he's the only one is just so far from the truth i mean what one has to understand about the work that was done at bletchley park is it was such a team effort with so many different component parts to it alan turing was one of the one of the legends and he's one of the great heroes but he is only a cognate it looks like it's kind of sort of three men in a hut um kind of saving the world and and that is just not how it was at all i almost think this is kind of worse than u571 as one of the least historically accurate films that have ever been made about the second world war as a movie i thought it was a bit boring if i'm honest so i'd only give it five out of ten historical accuracy about one [Music] yeah it's a jacket on so they know not to shoot you we must kill everything that we see for hitler well jojo rabbit is obviously a comedy at heart and it's also slightly surreal but actually i think it gets really really close to the mayhem of the fall of berlin in a very very vivid and strikingly realistic way it's not realistic but but in terms of spirit it's absolutely your message the just total craziness of those final days of those who were determined to just keep fighting but it was just total implosion of a totalitarian state and i think this final scenes these final scenes of this movie really depict it fantastically i love this movie oh god it's so good in terms of historical accuracy of course it's kind of really hard to judge because it's not accurate at all but but in terms of it's kind of conveying the mayhem of the end of the war i think it's really really really spot on so true historical accuracy about about two one in essence nine as a movie absolutely nine i thought it was brilliant so i've been watching this movie the first time at the imax outside waterloo and i remember when that first rifle crack shot out i absolutely jumped out of my skin again historically there's lots of problems with this and and christopher nolan famously doesn't like using cgi and for me that's a bit of an issue because actually this street just looks way too clean dunkirk has just been shelled within an inch of his life you know it's on fire the whole time there's huge great clouds of smoke there would have been debris everywhere broken glass um telegraph wires on the on the ground the other thing is i don't really understand why they're wearing great coats i've seen lots and lots of photographs and film footage of british tommy's a dunkirk and i'm not aware of seeing any wearing these great coats it's may it's summer i just don't know why they've given them this extra layer of uniform and again this is i remember actually i remember being in dunkirk when they were filming this scene and you could see in the morning you can see them all lined up on the beaches so those flagpoles weren't there in 19 1944 and i know what he's trying to do he's trying to sort of go you know this really is dunkirk so i'm transporting it back to 1940 and i think it's a it's an effective trick so that that kind of broad sunlight that just wasn't like that the whole week the sea was flat as a board the whole week as well which made it much easier to get out into the boats whether you're going from the east mole or whether you're actually going from the beaches themselves there is just not enough people here it's it's it's two is too empty it's too sparse it was absolute chaos by insisting on using dunkirk itself it's taking away massively from the historical accuracy although there is something rather marvelous about him actually using the real beaches for real i think enough to drop our lord on that main sweeper fighters yeah 109's up for starboard i love these aerial sequences i really think they're fantastic they're incredibly exciting in terms of historical accuracy again it gets a pretty low rating i'm afraid so first of all you've got a metronome 109 which isn't a messerschmitt 109. it's a message with bouchon which was post-war spanish built with a rolls-royce merlin engine not at daimler-benz which the germans had second thing is that they're they're operating at far too lower heights it just wouldn't happen that way what you'd be is you'd be high above the cloud kind of 18 25 000 foot you'd be hovering around the trying to get in position with the sun behind you and then you would dive down on your enemy because the lower you are the less room you've got for maneuver so you want to be doing this at a much greater height the other thing is is that spitfires um are coming from fighter command spitfires weren't sent to france so they're operating from southeast england that's fine but they'd be operating as a squadron and the squadron would always send out 12 aircraft so there's only two of them here and again that's just not accurate because before that you see them coming across the sea just as a trio as i think as a vic of three planes and that's because that's all they can get for the movie but they need 12. and this isolated little incident where the sky is completely empty apart from two spitfires one post-war spanish-built bouchon messerschmitt and one cgi heinkel is just not accurate at all so by my reckoning he's already done 15 seconds worth of of firing at this point a spitfire and a hurricane only had 14.7 seconds worth of ammunition which is why dog fights don't tend to last very long and and why you only tend to be doing really really short two to three second bursts at a time you know that's only five little bursts that you've got well you know he's gone way past that already yeah so so i really enjoyed dunkirk as a movie um i would give it um eight out of ten as a movie historical accuracy i'd give it about four i think for me you know one of the problems is when when depiction of combat is the attempt to make it look really realistic such as with saving private ryan and that's to kind of help you feel that these people are real and this is what it must have really really been like but in actual fact i think when you're watching a movie it doesn't matter how good it is you've got to know that it's a movie the most accurate war movie i've ever seen was it's probably the cruel sea which came out in the 1950s with people who actually fought in the war using a corvette that was used in the war you know it's absolutely spot on the most accurate film of recent years is downfall imitation game right at the bottom of the pile well thank you very much for watching and you can get my new book brothers in arms by clicking the link below to get the hardback ebook or the audio version and click here if you want to continue getting video content like this

Channel: Penguin Books UK

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Keywords: Penguin, Penguin Books, Penguin Books UK, breaking down world war two movies, historian breaks down world war two movies, wwii historian breaks down movies, penguin break it down, break it down, james holland breaks down world war two movies, expert breaks down world war two movies, world war two scenes, world war 2 movies, expert breaks down world war 2 movies, historian breaks down movies, war historian breaks down movies, world war ii, world war ii movies

Id: NrRTFMaL0LE

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 04 2021