Quote:US Army Center for Military History Wrote:

...there is no record that the flame thrower was used during the Normandy landings. Many of the weapons were lost in the rough surf, and infantrymen perforce abandoned others in the struggle to get across the beaches in the face of heavy enemy fire. The 14th Chemical Maintenance Company, which landed in Normandy at the end of June, repaired and returned to depot stock over 100 portable flame throwers which it had picked up from salvage piles on the beaches. In any event, German positions encountered on the beachheads usually were not suitable flame thrower targets.

http://www.history.army.mil/html/referen.../CWS16.htm

I've been starved for a good WWII movie, but some things about Dunkirk feel off to me. One is the PG-13 rating. This is Christopher Nolan's reasoning for it:

Quote:Quote:

All of my big blockbuster films have been PG-13. It’s a rating I feel comfortable working with totally. Dunkirk is not a war film. It’s a survival story and first and foremost a suspense film. So while there is a high level of intensity to it, it does not necessarily concern itself with the bloody aspects of combat, which have been so well done in so many films. We were really trying to take a different approach and achieve intensity in a different way. I would really like lots of different types of people to get something out of the experience.

That last sentence seems like another way of saying "I think I can make more money off PG-13." I don't know, I think Dunkirk is very much a war story no matter how you slice it, and couching it in pseudo-Hitchcock genre does a disservice to the event itself, IMO. So I hate to say it, but I'm expecting kiddie gloves. Nolan is a sincere and talented director, but I disagree with his assignment of the movie to his PG-13 comfort zone. The story of Dunkirk simply deserves better focus than that.

The other thing niggling at me is that nowhere in Dunkirk's casting do I see Charles Lightoller's name:



That's Lightoller aboard the Sundowner, on his way to Dunkirk. Lightoller had a little bit of a life, to say the least. He was Second Officer aboard the RMS Titanic. Yeah, that Titanic. He survived (at the time) the world's most famous maritime disaster, went on to sink a German U-Boat during World War I, and then participated personally - at age 66 - in the evacuation of Dunkirk as one of those "little ships" the film is about. The Sundowner is even a museum ship today. Yet the way he followed his orders aboard Titanic and the murky accounts of the U-Boat sinking (he was accused by the Germans of having ordered a massacre of the surviving crew, but this was never confirmed) paint a picture of a very hard and mission-focused Englishman. His experiences pose difficult, meaty questions about duty, emergencies, and wartime that I can't imagine would do anything but enrich a story like "Dunkirk." Any screenwriter worth his keyboard would be salivating at a chance to use a character like this in a script for a Nolan blockbuster.

So where the fuck is he? Why relegate such a fascinating and storied character to mere supporting cast at best, or (apparently) omit or revise him entirely? It makes no sense to me. I understand there are legal and financial considerations when you portray real people in these things, as opposed to making up your own cast, but that's a price worth paying in this case. It'll be a shame if he's nowhere to be found at all in this film.

I'm sure it'll be a suspenseful and well-made film, but between Nolan's comments and my own hangups over what I see is (heh) missing the boat, my expectations run middling for this one.

Quote: (07-07-2017 11:06 AM)RexImperator Wrote:  

Quote:Quote:

I still remember a scene in Saving Private Ryan near the beginning when US forces storm the beaches of Normandy and start using flame throwers on the Nazi gun nests/bunkers.

IRL Flamethrowers weren't even used at Normandy.

Also, a lot of the "German" troops there weren't German but Ost-Bataillone.

Doesn't surprise me.

But don't let facts get in the way for an excuse to have a good ol' Nazi barbeque! Yee Haw!

very much looking forward to it. i understand some concern over sjw/propaganda machine but nolan has a decent track record as far as that goes. it's history, it happened - hopefully they are simply telling the story.

The Dark Knight is a masterpiece, but politically it seems to be an endorsement of Bush's so-called war-on-terror.

Quote: (07-06-2017 10:18 PM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  

I'm curious how WWII movies will do with so much of the west being filled with foreigners now, who have no connection to the history the way many kids have grandparents who were involved in those wars in one way or another. Couple that with kids in school being removed from their own history and ancestors I wonder if demand will wane.

We will need a WW3 for them to feel at home.

Quote: (07-06-2017 09:32 PM)la bodhisattva Wrote:  

I've seen all but one (Insterstellar)

You aren't missing much.

Quote: (07-06-2017 11:37 PM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  

Hitler acted like an NFL owner calling plays in the redzone. So many times he ignored or over-rode the recommendations of his field generals.

So Hitler was the Jerry Jones of WWII?

I only want to watch this movie because it's being displayed in legit, 70mm IMAX.
Seeing that huge 70 foot screen fill up is the best you will get when it comes to movies.
It's a shame so few movies take advantage of it.

A word of warning though to those who want to see it in imax.
A lot of places will say it's an imax showing, but use digital projectors to play the movie.
These are barely better than regular showings.
You have to do your homework and find out which theaters have an analog 70mm projector for the movie.

Quote: (07-07-2017 03:58 AM)Malone Wrote:  

Quote: (07-07-2017 01:09 AM)puckerman Wrote:  

I couldn't care a less. World War Two was a complete and total disaster for the USA. The country gained nothing and lost a whole lot.

If you're not trolling us, please expand.

I will gladly explain. World War Two gave us:

income tax witholding
more lasting federal bureaucracies than the New Deal
employer-sponsored health-insurance plans
the growth of "teenage" culture and shopping, etc.
the GI Bill afterward, which began a huge trend in more people going to college
ridiculous military spending which lasted until 1989
working women ("Rosie the Riveter")
shallow patriotism
selling Eastern Europe out to Josef Stalin

That's a pretty good list so far. War often changes a culture quickly and not for the better in this case.

I am looking forward for this movie. I don't care about SJW, leftists or whatever. If I want to see the truth, I can always read the history books.

Actually the Dunkirk story was certainly not the way it happened above. 330.000 of 400.000 escaped and they escaped because Hitler told his generals (against their vicious protests) that they should halt the advance which would have resulted in the killing or capture of all 400.000 - it may have even significantly changed the outcome of WWII.

Now the reasons for this are given my marginally alternative historians that Hitler did not want war with Anglo-Saxon nations as he considered them Aryan as well.

The other view is that Hitler was a traitor all along and he was ordered by the globalist masters to let this huge amount of soldiers go. No tactician in the history of military history would let such a large force escape while they had them on a silver platter - they were already at war with each other. Napoleon only let such forces go free (as he cleverly outmaneuvered them), because the entire country surrendered. I did not see Britain surrendering to Nazi Germany there.

The movie looks interesting and well-made at least. But the truth is that it was a colossal military blunder - luckily our benevolent globalist masters needed those boys to fight the Nazis later, Hitler played along and thus the overwhelming majority survived unscathed.

I read too many theories about Hitler being a puppet to let simply slide idea that he let go huge enemy defenseless army. From what I understand Bormann together with what they call "Nazi International" were true rulers of the Reich and this cabal survived the war and become probably founding fathers of many NGOs or companies today.

Sterling and Zelcorpion, please expand.

Quote: (07-07-2017 06:22 PM)LeeEnfield303 Wrote:  

Quote: (07-06-2017 09:32 PM)la bodhisattva Wrote:  

I've seen all but one (Insterstellar)

You aren't missing much.

Thought Interstellar was fantastic to be honest. What didn't you like about it?

Quote: (07-08-2017 04:43 PM)polar Wrote:  

Sterling and Zelcorpion, please expand.

Regarding my stance on matter, recently I read book by Joseph P. Farrell "SS Brotherhood of the Bell".
The Bell was/is a top secret project but never mind about it for now. What book does is unmasking of this "SS Brotherhood". That is the nickname author uses to describe Reich deep state, i.e. true rulers of Reich.
I mentioned Bormann. He was one of the Nazis that survived the war and you can see on wikipedia that his date of death is unknown and that majority say that he died in 1945 in Berlin.
Bormann was one of these cabal that would later become some sort of Nazi International and have fingers in various businesses around the world. There is even connection with Onassis and JFK, with NI being one of the key players.
These Nazis got rid of swastikas and uniforms and their descendants probably work even today.

Previous book of author is Reich of the Black Sun, which is also interesting read. In it, he describes how its is very possible that Reich had advanced atom bomb project and were technologically more advanced than Allies.

My take on it is that Nazis had a role to play and after they served it they were defeated. Ordo ab Chao.

I will not offtopic further.

Quote: (07-08-2017 04:43 PM)polar Wrote:  

Sterling and Zelcorpion, please expand.

There is some stuff on Henry Makow that you can use as a starting point.

Then of course the book by Stanford historian Antony Sutton - "Wallstreet and the Rise of Hitler"

I have also read excerpts of some independent genius-level Gammas, who delved into old history books that analyzed military movements. Some of the decisions of Hitler seriously made no sense at all unless he was a traitor. Dunkirk was one of those instances. The movie is painting the usual mainstream propaganda.

"They halted the tanks because they wanted to pick us off one by one from air." Yeah right - that worked so well when 330.000 out of 400.000 could leave.

Some German generals were even found to voice concerns that Hitler is deliberately sabotaging the war effort. There were even greater "errors" done in Russia that cost more of the war.

Borman by the way was later more or less confirmed to be a double agent for Russia and for the West, which is really strange since he was far up in the hierarchy.

Anyway - if you dig into all those books - as well as the ones by Carroll Quigley, then you find connections between the US big industrialists and the Nazis. There are many strange inconsistencies that only make sense when an even greater power was steering the conflict for their own gain.

Quote: (07-09-2017 03:18 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  

Quote: (07-08-2017 04:43 PM)polar Wrote:  

Sterling and Zelcorpion, please expand.

There is some stuff on Henry Makow that you can use as a starting point.

Then of course the book by Stanford historian Antony Sutton - "Wallstreet and the Rise of Hitler"

I have also read excerpts of some independent genius-level Gammas, who delved into old history books that analyzed military movements. Some of the decisions of Hitler seriously made no sense at all unless he was a traitor. Dunkirk was one of those instances. The movie is painting the usual mainstream propaganda.

"They halted the tanks because they wanted to pick us off one by one from air." Yeah right - that worked so well when 330.000 out of 400.000 could leave.

Some German generals were even found to voice concerns that Hitler is deliberately sabotaging the war effort. There were even greater "errors" done in Russia that cost more of the war.

Borman by the way was later more or less confirmed to be a double agent for Russia and for the West, which is really strange since he was far up in the hierarchy.

Anyway - if you dig into all those books - as well as the ones by Carroll Quigley, then you find connections between the US big industrialists and the Nazis. There are many strange inconsistencies that only make sense when an even greater power was steering the conflict for their own gain.

One rationale that's been ascribed to Hitler is that he really didn't think the English would come back across the channel once he'd beaten them off the mainland. He may also not have wanted to waste his troops: had he pressed against Dunkirk and cut them off from the sea, there's every possibility the British would have stood and fought to the death, which would've been expensive in troops.

Remember, at this point the US was still isolationist and the Lend Lease deal wouldn't start (and that itself unpopular) until later that year if I remember right. Hitler probably thought he'd managed to knock England out of the war, which was one of his early aims.

In addition, Operation Sealion was still being considered; perhaps Hitler thought 400,000 demoralised, beaten British troops with no heavy artillery and fuck-all airforce would've been an asset for his forthcoming amphibious campaign against England. It may also have been he overestimated the Luftwaffe's abilities; they'd been instrumental in most of his victories up to that date. He might have thought the English channel with lots of mainly merchant or transport ships would've been a shooting gallery for his air force.

Also ...

Quote: (07-07-2017 12:02 PM)Canopus Wrote:  

The other thing niggling at me is that nowhere in Dunkirk's casting do I see Charles Lightoller's name:



That's Lightoller aboard the Sundowner, on his way to Dunkirk. Lightoller had a little bit of a life, to say the least. He was Second Officer aboard the RMS Titanic. Yeah, that Titanic. He survived (at the time) the world's most famous maritime disaster, went on to sink a German U-Boat during World War I, and then participated personally - at age 66 - in the evacuation of Dunkirk as one of those "little ships" the film is about. The Sundowner is even a museum ship today. Yet the way he followed his orders aboard Titanic and the murky accounts of the U-Boat sinking (he was accused by the Germans of having ordered a massacre of the surviving crew, but this was never confirmed) paint a picture of a very hard and mission-focused Englishman. His experiences pose difficult, meaty questions about duty, emergencies, and wartime that I can't imagine would do anything but enrich a story like "Dunkirk." Any screenwriter worth his keyboard would be salivating at a chance to use a character like this in a script for a Nolan blockbuster.

So where the fuck is he? Why relegate such a fascinating and storied character to mere supporting cast at best, or (apparently) omit or revise him entirely? It makes no sense to me. I understand there are legal and financial considerations when you portray real people in these things, as opposed to making up your own cast, but that's a price worth paying in this case. It'll be a shame if he's nowhere to be found at all in this film.

I'm sure it'll be a suspenseful and well-made film, but between Nolan's comments and my own hangups over what I see is (heh) missing the boat, my expectations run middling for this one.

In short, Nolan doesn't want him in the story because Lightoller is a genuine hero: a man who served his fellow men and then his country when it asked for his help, even as he got old and frailer, without a moment's hesitation.

In every version of the Titanic story (he was played by Kenneth More in A Night to Remember and he was its protagonist, as opposed to the undeservedly maligned William Murdoch) Lightoller comes across as about the only guy among the upper crew who had his head partially screwed on straight.

Nolan, and modern war movies, don't want heroes. They don't want individuals to inspire us, and certainly not white fucking men. They want some sort of generalised group inspiration or some bullshit that everyone's a fucking hero. With this, The Incredibles' theme shines through: when everyone is a hero, when everyone is special, nobody is.

Nolan is making a movie about victims rather than heroes.* Per his own words it's in the survival genre, he says so himself. Survival movies are about people to which shit is done, not about people who markedly change events. I imagine this film'll do well among the hipster crowd that secretly goes to see it; people in the West these days are conditioned to be victims, there's good money in it.

* And his denial of heroic figures is a prevailing element/factor/theme in his films. What's the tagline of his best-known film, The Dark Knight? "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain." In the first film, the driving reason for the Bat coming to be is because men are weak and fallible, symbols are indestructible. Great, upstanding ideals there, especially in this context. He doubles down on the idea with Bane shaming the fuck out of Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent in the sequel.

A globalist conspiracy keeping Hitler back in '40? The events that led the Axis' inability to capitalize on the situation have been corroborated by hundreds of eyewitness accounts om both sides. While damning there's nothing particularly illogical about Hitler's decision to stay the advance.

Supply lines where a major factor, which could not keep up with the surprisingly fast advance of the Wehrmacht. This was amplified by the big pockets of French forces remaining, just policing and handling these provided a considerable strain on logistics. Even Rommel's ghost division which was notorious for operating independently stopped short of attacking Dunkirk. In southern France the Italian offensive got beat so badly that Mussolini would later make very few demands on France's surrender.

Looking at a map, the German troops were stretched all across northern France while there was still resistance to their flank. Such a situation gave Hitler pause as it was the same overextension that had grinded The Schliffenplan to a halt in WWI. It's also easy to call this a blunder in hindsight when it was not immediately clear to the Germans how badly demoralized the Allies was as a fighting force.

Some good reading on the entire situation can be found in Erich von Manstein's autobiography Lost Victories, Charles Messenger's biography on Gerd von Rundstedt and the stellar Supplying War by Martin van Creveld.

Quote: (07-07-2017 09:13 PM)puckerman Wrote:  

Quote: (07-07-2017 03:58 AM)Malone Wrote:  

Quote: (07-07-2017 01:09 AM)puckerman Wrote:  

I couldn't care a less. World War Two was a complete and total disaster for the USA. The country gained nothing and lost a whole lot.

If you're not trolling us, please expand.

I will gladly explain. World War Two gave us:

income tax witholding
more lasting federal bureaucracies than the New Deal
employer-sponsored health-insurance plans
the growth of "teenage" culture and shopping, etc.
the GI Bill afterward, which began a huge trend in more people going to college
ridiculous military spending which lasted until 1989
working women ("Rosie the Riveter")
shallow patriotism
selling Eastern Europe out to Josef Stalin

That's a pretty good list so far. War often changes a culture quickly and not for the better in this case.

And fiat money.

With regards to the movie, I love WW2 movies and will watch it. I don't care about the historical facts, propaganda aspects, etc.

As for why the Germans didn't initially pursue their advantage at Dunkirk, I've heard the following rationale and supporting evidence:

In 1940, the German army was mainly supplied by horse-drawn conveyances. After overrunning Belgium and northern France, the German 4th Army/Army Group A was running low on fuel and ammunition. Fifty percent of its armor had broken down, were out of ammo and gas, or had been disabled in combat. So, the panzer commander requested a pause to refit. General Gerd von Rundstedt approved the request and ordered a halt. General von Kluge likewise agreed to the combat pause. Herman Goering assured them that his air forces could keep the pressure on the British beachhead while the Army regrouped. Hitler approved their request later that day.

General von Brauchitsch, the Wermacht chief-of-staff, was then informed and disagreed with the halt. He asked Hitler to rescind the order. Hitler, who had been looking for an opportunity to show that he, not the army high command, was really in charge of the army, refused to back down.

The German attack resumed two days later, but by that time the British and French armies had cobbled together a defense line that held the Germans at bay for the remainder of the evacuation. The area around Dunkirk contained a lot of swampy terrain and canals, which made it difficult for the Germans to employ their tanks effectively. Also, bad weather hindered the Luftwaffe.

So, it was a combination of factors that allowed the British and many of their allies to pull off a fairly successful evacuation.

I love a good WW2 movie. But I'm apprehensive about anything Hollywood, never mind when it comes to WW2. The ratings for Dunkirk are high, so I might see it later.

If you're looking for a good WW2 film, stick to Das Boot, Stalingrad (1993), and Come and See.

Quote: (07-06-2017 10:57 PM)Vicious Wrote:  

Given how little known the subject matter is I'm cautiously optimistic towards the movie. In a sense Dunkirk is a military blunder on both Allied and Axis side. The Allied due to the extreme loss of equipment and the Axis because of their inability to properly rout their opponent. Few other situations were as decisive in ending/prolonging the war. The only ones coming to mind are Stalingrad, Kursk and Midway.

I always thought Leyte gulf ended the Japanese navy as an effective fighting force. Decisive.

I'll watch Dunkirk just for the visuals. I understand people have agendas. But sometimes, it is cool to just watch something visually powerful/beautiful even if it is lacking intelligence or insight. Like a hot chick.

I used to love movies like this but now that I understand more of the politics surrounding the event it makes me sick to my stomach. I suppose it's like when people watch how hot-dogs are made and can't eat them after that.

My son is interested in WW2 and just bought a book about the major battles, but I've made it clear to him from the time he could understand that national wars are fought for banking cartels and have nothing to do with "good and evil".

They exist to toss society's alpha males into a meat grinder for profit so that only the beta sheep are left to be shorn at leisure.