Then There Were Giants AKA World War II: When Lions Roared
Bob Haskins as Winston Churchill
Michael Caine as Josef Stalin
John Lithgow as Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Ed Begley Jr as FDR's assistant Harry Hopkins
I saw this many years ago on HBO or Showtime only once and have been searching for it ever since. I loved the editing and cut sequences as they really keep the story moving with little down time. Eliminates lots of wasted time trying set up scenes as they follow the timeline. Starts off in 1941 as the Germans invade Russia. You can see the desperate and frustrated attitude of Stalin eventually change as he begins to get the upper hand
Unfortunately most Americans think WWII began the moment we entered the war which couldn't be further from the truth. I'm just about convinced that if the war were fought today the Nazi regime would win just because we couldn't get enough fools to vote to pay a nickel in taxes to defeat them .. Our only saving grace was that Roosevelt was so popular with voters at the time he was able to throw the full force of our industrial output at it not to mention we had an enormous steel industry then and our technology of the times was able to grow by leaps and bounds in the 40s.. There are other reasons of course, but could you even imagine if we'd had the likes of trump or Moscow Mitch in power then?
In the immortal words of my old man, "Wait'll you get to be my age!"
Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse, but the one comfort we have is Cincinnati sounds worse. ~Oliver Wendal Holmes Sr.
(02-03-2021, 11:13 AM)grampahol Wrote: Unfortunately most Americans think WWII began the moment we entered the war which couldn't be further from the truth. I'm just about convinced that if the war were fought today the Nazi regime would win just because we couldn't get enough fools to vote to pay a nickel in taxes to defeat them .. Our only saving grace was that Roosevelt was so popular with voters at the time he was able to throw the full force of our industrial output at it not to mention we had an enormous steel industry then and our technology of the times was able to grow by leaps and bounds in the 40s.. There are other reasons of course, but could you even imagine if we'd had the likes of trump or Moscow Mitch in power then?
That's all most Americans are taught, is our side of the war. I would wager that most of us think that we only fought the Germans, despite only entering Europe in 1944. We had been fighting in the Pacific for nearly three years at that point, island hopping against the Japanese.
(02-03-2021, 12:10 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: That's all most Americans are taught, is our side of the war. I would wager that most of us think that we only fought the Germans, despite only entering Europe in 1944. We had been fighting in the Pacific for nearly three years at that point, island hopping against the Japanese.
Isn't it true that the cowboys were all white hat good guys and indians were all savages hell bent on killing cowboys and their wives?
Oh, and Christopher Columbus discovered AMERICA!
In the immortal words of my old man, "Wait'll you get to be my age!"
Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse, but the one comfort we have is Cincinnati sounds worse. ~Oliver Wendal Holmes Sr.
The Japanese were invading and destroying China in 1931, years before the Germans invaded Poland in September of 1939 but most Americans don't care too much about Asians fighting Asians. If you ever see the election speeches leading up to the 1940 election, BOTH sides were very strong on "No Foreign Wars". It took for Hitler declaring war on the USA after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to take us past Lend/Lease for Britain.
If Trump was in charge in 1941, Pearl Harbor would have never happened. He would've had the USA joining the Germans long before that since he could see the good in the Nazis. One thing that does get lost in history is that the Germans merely wanted to exclude the Jews the way America treated black people. The death camps didn't exist in Germany, only in the conquered countries well after the war started when the Germans were stuck with millions of Jews and no other country would take them in. You feed your soldiers first, your people second and your prisoners third. The Jews that couldn't help out with the war effort were sent to the death camps so that they would no longer put a strain on their limited resources. Brutal, but the Germans viewed it as a war of survival against the Communists.
Much of the changes for black people in our country only happened after International disputes and trade discussions were marred with "How can you tell us to improve citizens rights when black people in your country have almost none". If we wanted the title of "The World's Police", we'd have to shore up our unbalanced rules and laws before telling other nations how to behave under a democratic system. Only then was Washington open to hearing the grievances of minorities in America. Almost 20 years after WWII, many black people were still not allowed to vote in large portions of the US.
If you consider N Africa as part of the European theater, then we entered in 1942. If not, we landed in Sicily in 1943.
Does the actor portraying Stalin reveal how buckets of crazy and paranoid the man was? He was every bit the monster that Hitler was, accruing far more deaths to his own people than Hitler did to Jews and others (there were colored triangle symbols for undesirables such as Communists, Gypsies. Catholics, Homosexuals and others. I guess Hitler Systematic method of genocide is particularly terrifying, but make no mistake, Joe was as bad or possibly worse.
(02-06-2021, 12:37 PM)SladeX Wrote: If you consider N Africa as part of the European theater, then we entered in 1942. If not, we landed in Sicily in 1943.
Does the actor portraying Stalin reveal how buckets of crazy and paranoid the man was? He was every bit the monster that Hitler was, accruing far more deaths to his own people than Hitler did to Jews and others (there were colored triangle symbols for undesirables such as Communists, Gypsies. Catholics, Homosexuals and others. I guess Hitler Systematic method of genocide is particularly terrifying, but make no mistake, Joe was as bad or possibly worse.
I'd say once you reach a certain point of shittiness there's no point in keeping score. I mean pound for pound, Pol Pot is right up there, and a case can be made that Mao is the biggest mass murderer of all time. I think in the end it's the racism and brazen way that the Final Solution was carried out that puts Hitler over the top.
This guy has crude but effective graphics and a lot of good information. His three part Battle Of Midway presentation is spectacular. He pretty much explains it in the first two episodes, which are from the Japanese perspective, but really brings it all together in the third episode explaining how luck and gut feelings had more to do with it than American ingenuity. I'm very impressed with his laying out of the information at hand and adding in 'The Fog Of War' as part of his analysis. I would not be surprised if a history based channel or group hires him.
(02-03-2021, 12:10 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: That's all most Americans are taught, is our side of the war. I would wager that most of us think that we only fought the Germans, despite only entering Europe in 1944. We had been fighting in the Pacific for nearly three years at that point, island hopping against the Japanese.
idk what schools you went to... But we learned about the whole thing. Most probly dont remember as many didnt pay attention in history and it shows now
Amazingly in depth documentary of the Versailles Treaty. I saw it on The History Channel when it came out. It's World War I but sets up World War II. A test of patience with an absurd amount of 10 ad breaks the first 36 minutes but only one for the last 59 minutes.
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
![[Image: large_qVCAPIKr0nACDdyyS1T8gsclUJY.jpg]](https://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/movie/movie_poster/1941-1979/large_qVCAPIKr0nACDdyyS1T8gsclUJY.jpg)
