‘The War’ is Still Going On

By ROB PATTERSON

I recently rewatched the seven-part Ken Burns docu-series “The War,” and came away from it even more impressed and affected than the first time around. And pondered how, if past is prologue, as Shakespeare observed, World War II continues to echo through American life.

When Trump demagogues about making America great again, it’s one of the reference points – when we (last) decisively won a war, and the populace was largely unified behind a national endeavor plus patriotism was on high boil. It feeds into the mythic notion of American exceptionalism because in some significant ways Americans were exceptional. For those of us baby boomers, it served as a backdrop for our experience growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Burns’s goal is to convey how the war felt to those who fought it as well as citizens on the home front, eschewing the “great men” approach to history. On that front, “The War” is insightful: Not just the timeline of history but how its cultural experience was felt as events unfolded.

Choosing four far-flung locales across the nation to focus on serves that aim nicely as a storytelling device. As the series notes at the start of each segment, WWII is a huge story that can’t be fully told in this one work.

At the time the documentary premiered in 2007, some critics took it to task for not including more of the minority experience of Hispanics and Native Americans, a point well taken yet at the same time a natural outgrowth of its space and structure. The broad minority strokes about African-Americans (from segregated military outfits to racial conflicts to the Tuskegee Airmen) and citizens of Japanese descent (from the shameful west coast internments to the heroism of future Senator Daniel Inouye) catch the tenor of the times. And for all the flaws of its era, the war did create momentum toward a more diverse America and racially just future.

And where “The War” succeeds is in honestly assessing WWII as it happened not in myth but actuality. To put it mildly, many mistakes were made. Without saying as much, if further crumbles the already shattered image of General Douglas MacArthur in terms of how he handled matters in the Philippines. Outright military incompetence isn’t glossed over in campaigns such as the Anzio, Italy landings.

And even if I already knew this fact, something in the confluence of events in the final days of the USS Indianapolis really stood out as I watched “The War.” Just after it transported the first atomic bomb to the island of Tinian, where it was assembled and loaded to be dropped onto Hiroshima, the flagship heavy cruiser was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Its distress was overlooked by the Navy for a few days during which nearly 900 sailors floated in shark-infested waters, getting picked off and killed. Only 316 survived. The linkage of these two horrors in the last weeks of the war reinforces how, as Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman declared, war is truly hell.

If also a time of heroism, honor, moral determination and ethical lapses. Ultimately WWII changed our nation, and “The War” captures that in its most elemental, ground-level ways. And for all the ways in which war is horror, the Second World War was the last time a conflict’s its goal could be said to be worth the awful price paid. Directors Burns and Lynn Novick succeed in offering a smart overview for examining what that experience meant to America well worth watching more than once.

Populist Picks:

Films: “The Death of Stalin” – The title might suggest something as sombre and gray as a Moscow winter day. But this farce that follows the Communist Russian power brokers in the days following the passing of the dictator is a riotously funny delight, even if it’s less than historically correct. With a superb ensemble cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Rupert Friend, Michael Palin and Jeffery Tambor, to name a few, it zings the idiosyncrasies of the Soviet Union and power players in general with quite delicious elan.

TV Documentary: “Hitler of the Andes” – It does still remain open as to whether Adolf Hitler died by his own hand in his bunker at the end of WWII, or escaped to live out his life in South America. I’ve watched a few shows on the subject recently. This one is the most reasonable overview and best first look at what can be a rabbit hole and mad conspiracy speculation.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2019

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