Documentary Index

An Anarchist's Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald,

An Inconvenient Truth,

Asahi News Reels, The Showa Years / 昭和　朝日ニュース映画,

Berkeley in the Sixties,

Best of Enemies,
Bible Mysteries,

Capitalism: A Love Story,

Comic Book Confidential,

Counted Out: Math is Power,

I Am Greta,

El Che,

Fuck,

George Harrison: Living in the Material World,

Mai 68 Grands Soirs et Petits Matins,

Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause,

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song,

Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in our Times,

Project Nim,

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy,

Searching for Sugar Man,

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,

The Corporation,

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,

The People Speak,

The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick,

The World At War,

This Film is Not Yet Rated,

Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War

Playlist HERE:

Counted Out: Math is Power: Movie Review

(Movie Review)

This is my first time watching this movie, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.

Counted Out: Math is Power: Movie Review

I don't start the actual review of the movie until 15:00 in.  The first 15 minutes are just me talking about all my thoughts about math in general.

Addendum: There's one other point that I didn't make in this review, but that has occurred to me since, and that I wish to add here.  I mentioned in this review that I briefly returned to studying math when I was contemplating graduate school in the United States, and needed to take the GRE, which included a math portion.  Now, math had nothing to do with my field of study, but it was nevertheless a portion of the GRE, and thus a hurdle one must overcome if one wanted to do grad school in America.  When I went to graduate school in Australia, there was no GRE equivalent, and thus I didn't need to study math to get into grad school in Australia.

My wife is now studying to get into nursing school, and is preparing for standardized tests which also have a lot of math on them.  She's working hard at relearning her high school math--imaginary numbers, quadratic equations, trigonometry, all of that.  None of which she'll actually need for nursing, but it's just a hurdle that she has to get past to get into the program.

In the movie, one of the stories is of a woman trying to pass math in order to get into the nursing program.  I suspect that this is another case where math is not actually necessary for the profession, but is just some hurdle that someone decided the students need to jump through.

One of the theses of the movie is that we need to do a better job of educating minorities about math so that they can get into advanced degree programs.  But I suspect that you could also make the case that the math requirement is an unnecessary barrier for these advanced degree programs.

Related Playlists: 

Movie Reviews Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x6N06WoIoV2fLb6xRYrepTk&si=iWMhXdwlxxKxm6r6

Movies that I watched in 2025: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x67grGI4ZJsBc8QYFa5cSvu&si=oZDgEqLXtgLsGB2A

Support this Blog:

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

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I Am Greta: Movie Review

 (Movie Reviews)

This is my first time watching this movie, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.

I Am Greta: Movie Review

Related Playlists: 

* Movie Reviews Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x6N06WoIoV2fLb6xRYrepTk&si=iWMhXdwlxxKxm6r6

* Global Warming Vlogs: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x5pwCx8BpXakYITl8Gv2Nvu&si=bsL9eztCMEfTwx-7

Support this Blog:

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/42j4d8w            (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song: Movie Review

(Movie Review)

This is my first time watching this movie, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review. 

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song: Movie Review
 

For my own recollections of Peter Seeger, see this post HERE.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song 2007, FULL VERSION! The voice of Pete must be heard!

Berkeley in the Sixties: Movie Review

 (Movie Review--Rewatch, History)

As I mentioned in the video, I've seen this documentary before several times  But it's my first time reviewing it on this blog so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.

Berkeley in the Sixties: Movie Review

Links to stuff mentioned in the video:

* Watch this movie on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/DGbUrzDkXKM?si=CLCL3mBiyS9SAKcn

* Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_in_the_Sixties

* My college paper: The Conditions Leading Up to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement: https://papersiwrote.blogspot.com/2005/12/conditions-leading-up-to-berkeley-free.html

* My review of The '60s (TV Movie): https://youtu.be/JXoqGLasO9Y

Berkeley In The Sixties (The Documentary)

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

(Movie Review)

Why I Watched this Movie
This documentary came out in 2015.  I think I remember seeing some of the buzz for it on the Internet at the time, but couldn't track it down because I was out here in Asia.  But it's the kind of thing that would really interest me.  I'm a huge fan of history documentaries in general, and the Black Panthers have always been one of my interests in particular.  (I was really interested in the Black Panthers in my youth.  See for example these school papers I wrote on the Black Panthers: here and here). 

Some kind soul uploaded the documentary onto Youtube.  I stumbled upon it the other day while searching for old clips of the Black Panthers.
I watched just a couple minutes of it, and I was hooked.  The documentary just pulls you in, and I couldn't stop watching.  And then I had to watch the whole thing.

I doubt the Youtube version is approved by the copyright holders, but for the time being it's online, so I'll link it down below.

Vanguard of the Revolution- The Real Story of the Black Panther Party

The Review
I'm coming to this documentary after years of being interested in the Black Panthers, so I knew a lot of the shocking stuff already.  But I'm sure for some younger people out there, this is going to be the first time they hear about COINTELPRO or the assassination of Fred Hampton or the murder of Bobby Hutton, etc.  And for those people, I'm sure this this movie will blow their minds.  (One Youtube commenter writes: they need to show this documentary in all us high school history classes.)
On the plus side, the documentary has done an incredible job of shifting through the archival footage, and combining it with a great soundtrack to create a fascinating and entertaining viewing experience. 
The documentary moves at breakneck speed.  I guess they have to in order to cover everything in 2 hours.  But you could make a long, long list of things that are completely omitted from the documentary, or which are included in the documentary but never explained. 
One example out of many: the documentary spends a lot of time on the free Huey movement, but never attempts to explain what happened on the night Huey Newton was arrested, or what happened in the trial or why Huey Newton was acquitted.  Presumably the filmmakers felt they didn't have time to open that can of worms, and still cram everything else in under 2 hours.
And there are so, so many other things like that in the documentary. 

But if you accept the documentary as simply an introduction to the Black Panther history, and not the definitive account (or in cases of us older folks, a review of the history), then it's a really entertaining 2 hours.

To really do the Black Panther Party justice, you'd need a 10 hour Ken Burns style docu-miniseries.  Apparently HBO is working on developing one.  But while we wait for that to come out, my favorite documentary series on the Civil Rights movement is Eyes on the Prize.  It's not only about the Black Panthers, but the Black Panthers come in a lot during the later episodes.

Entire Playlist HERE



Rating :
9 out of 10 stars.  I almost gave this 10 Stars.  It deserves 10 Stars just based on presentation and entertainment factors, but in the end I decided that all the historical omissions deserved taking at least 1 star off.

Video Review
Video review HERE and embedded below:



Link of the Day
Chomsky on the Black Panthers and Cointelpro

The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

(Television Addiction)

I mentioned two weeks ago that if I ever finished the whole thing, I'd review it on this blog.  Well, here it is.

First, some brief comments on...
Watching This Documentary from Vietnam

I suppose I should give some background to my situation.  (Just in case someone stumbles upon this blog who doesn't know me).
I am currently living in Vietnam, in Saigon.  (Officially now renamed Ho Chi Minh City, but still colloquially referred to as Saigon by the people who inhabit it.)

Through the magic of the Internet, I was able to watch this documentary series.  PBS made it available on its website.
In an effort to reach out to the Vietnamese people, PBS translated the documentary into Vietnamese, and had a version on their website with Vietnamese subtitles.
The Vietnamese government did not promote the documentary, but it did not censure it either.

The Voice of America website states that:

Moriarty added that people in Vietnam "can still watch the Vietnamese documentary film with Vietnamese subtitles" on the PBS website. He also said they have "people in Vietnam [who] have checked and confirmed this.”

Indeed, speaking officially in my capacity as "a person in Vietnam," I can also confirm that the series has been available here.
And actually, this is not so surprising  The Vietnamese Government rarely censures anything on the Internet nowadays. (Contrary to popular perception).   It would have been more surprising if they had censored it.

Through the magic of Facebook, I can also confirm that this documentary generated some interest among the Vietnamese population.  Or at least some of them.  (A few of my Vietnamese friends on Facebook posted about it.)

Initially just the first 5 episodes were available.  Then, from last week, the whole series became available on PBS's website.

...But then, yesterday around 11 AM, right as I was finishing off the last episode, the video player suddenly stopped working, and I got the message that "This video unavailable in your area"

My first thought was "Oh, so Hanoi finally got around to censuring this."  But, actually, after doing some research, it appears this restriction comes entirely from PBS's side.
Apparently this type of thing is quite common.  New series only get released for free on the Internet for a short amount of time, and then after that, international licensing fees and royalty agreements have to be worked out region by region.
What a shame! I thought.  For all its flaws (and I'll get to its flaws down below) the series had provided a nice counter-balance to the official communist version of the War, and I had rather hoped it would stay on-line as a permanent resource for Vietnamese citizens.

...Although maybe it doesn't matter anyway.  In my conversations with friends and co-workers, it turned out I was one of the only people I knew who was watching this documentary legally through the PBS website.  Almost everyone I knew was illegally downloading the series through various torrent websites.
I think Illegally downloading everything has pretty much become just a way of life among the younger generation.  And especially out here in Asia, because it's hard to legally get access to American television, torrenting everything has become just what people do. (People were so in the habit of pirating everything, they didn't even check to see if the series was legally available).

In my case, I only had 40 minutes in the series left to go by the time PBS restricted access to it, so I just finished it off on Youtube.  (Several people have uploaded this series onto Youtube, where it is temporarily available until it gets a copyright notice)

I watched most of this series with my Vietnamese fiancee, so we watched the Vietnamese subtitled version.
Unfortunately, the Vietnamese subtitled version didn't include subtitles for all the Vietnamese language parts (i.e. interviews with Vietnamese soldiers).  So most of those sections I wasn't able to understand.  (Feel free to take my opinion on this series with a grain of salt if you feel that this omission compromises my ability to review the series.)

My Biases
So, I've got some opinions on the Vietnam War, and I suppose I may as well just lay down all my biases upfront rather than pretend I'm a neutral observer.

I think what America did to Vietnam was one of the greatest war crimes in the modern era.

America cancelled the scheduled democratic elections in 1956 (because they knew Ho Chi Minh would win) and instead installed a dictator in South Vietnam, whom the majority of South Vietnamese did not support.
Then, in order to keep this dictator in power, America bombed South Vietnam.

The bombing of Vietnam is an event completely without parallel in the history of the world.  Never before in history has a country ever been bombed so heavily.  Never again since has a country ever been bombed this heavily.
More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were dropped in all of World War II (by all sides combined).
And all these bombs concentrated on a tiny 3rd World Country made up almost entirely of peasant rice-farmers.

As Chomsky wrote in 1969 (long before the bombing had even finished) “The Pentagon will gladly supply, on request, such information as the quantity of ordnance expended in Indochina. From 1965 through 1969 this amounts to about 4.5 million tons by aerial bombardment. This is nine times the tonnage of bombing in the entire Pacific theater in World War II, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki—“over 70 tons of bombs for every square mile of Vietnam, North and South…about 500 pounds of bombs for every man, woman and child in Vietnam.” The total of “ordnance expended” is more than doubled when ground and naval attacks are taken into account.  With no further information than this, a person who has not lost his senses must realize that the war is an overwhelming atrocity.” (Chomsky, At War With Asia p. 225)

Added to this, one-fourth of Vietnam was covered with the poison herbicide Agent Orange.  (One-fourth!)
Added to this, the free-fire zones in areas such as Quang Ngai, where everything that moved was considered a target.
Added to this, several massacres of whole villages by U.S. soldiers.  My Lai is the most famous example, but during the investigation of My Lai, an army colonel told reporters: "Every unit of brigade size has its My Lai hidden someplace."  Other reports indicate that the obsession with body counts and free fire zones were creating the equivalent of a My Lai every month during the Vietnam War.

So what about Ken Burns take?
While, Ken Burns's documentary mentioned some of this, hinted at other bits, and omitted others.

He interviewed several government and CIA figures, but very few anti-war activists.  And when he did interview anti-war activists, it was mostly to talk about the protest marches, and not what was actually happening in Vietnam.

To be honest, it was about what I expected.  I didn't really expect a documentary airing on PBS, and sponsored by the Bank of America and David Koch to get too in-depth on America's war crimes.

John Pilger has already registered his outrage at Ken Burns.  But I find the whole thing too predictable to bother about outrage.

So the documentary barely mentioned that this was the most extensive bombing campaign in history, and that much of it fell on civilian targets?  So the cancelled 1956 election only gets a one-sentence mention?  So My Lai is presented as an isolated incident?  Well, what did you expect?
As one of  my co-workers said: "Ken Burns's trademark is Americana."

There are, however, several things the documentary does well.

First of all, the story telling is amazing.  Burns, Novick, and their team have unearthed tons of interesting footage from the time, and it's fascinating to watch.
Also Burns skillfully weaves several individual stories through his documentary on the larger war.

Secondly, the documentary makes it crystal clear right from the start that this was an unwinnable war.  Right from episode 2, we can see that the South Vietnamese government has no support outside of Saigon.  And then, when mass protests erupt in Saigon, we see that the South Vietnamese government has no support even in Saigon.

The only way to keep this government in power would have been for the United States to stay in Vietnam forever.  It is immediately clear right from 1963 that the moment we left Saigon, the Saigon government would have crumbled without us.

To the viewer watching Ken Burns's documentary, the fact that this war was unwinnable is clear right from 1963.
What is amazing, then, is that it took the American public so long to realize this.

Everyone remembers all the anti-war protesters, but what people forget is that the anti-war protesters were only a vocal minority.  Almost right up until the end, the majority of Americans supported the War in Vietnam.   (Ken Burns points this out repeatedly in his documentary).

Why?

It appears that changing your mind about something, and admitting you were wrong, is very hard for some people to do.
I'm reminded of the Global Warming debate we're having right now.  The same stubbornness still seems to exist.  Despite all the over-whelming evidence, people still don't want to change their mind once they've committed themselves to believing something.

Other Notes
* Ken Burns's Civil War documentary has been so successful it's become pretty much THE version of the Civil War history.  It's possible that in the future, this could become THE history of the Vietnam War that the next generation grows up watching.

* Also to the documentary's credit: it mentions that Nixon illegally sabotaged the 1968 peace talks.  (This is something that's been declassified for years  - now, but that has still been under-reported, so I'm glad Ken Burns put it in the documentary).

* This is the second long documentary on the Vietnam War that I've sat through now.  The previous one was the 1980 Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War.
On the whole, Ken Burns's documentary is much better, but there are several details that I learned from Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War which are absent here.
For example, in Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War several of the capture American bomber pilots, after being shown what their bombs were doing to the country of Vietnam, actually willingly came out against the war and made recorded statements for Hanoi.
In Ken Burns's documentary, it doesn't mention any of this.

* Barbarella: Queen of the Universe, which I reviewed on this blog way back in 2007, gets briefly mentioned on the documentary.  (The documentary makes the same point that I did in my review--that because this movie established Jane Fonda as a sex symbol for that generation, it made her that much more hated when she came out against the war.)

Best of Enemies

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie
A co-worker of mine very highly recommended this documentary to me months ago.  I wasn't able to track a copy down in Vietnam, but when I was visiting home I used the Netflix account here to find a copy.

The Review
This is a documentary movie about the 1968 television debates between William Buckley and Gore Vidal.

This documentary won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're enough of a geek to be interested in this kind of stuff (someone who's either interested in history or media or the history of media) then it's fascinating.

The archival footage of the debates is entertaining in-and-of itself, but all the extra background the documentary goes into makes for a completely engaging story.

It's also fascinating to watch these debates from 50 years ago and realize how little has changed.
So many of the talking points from both the Left and the Right in 1968 sound virtually identical to the same debate we just had this past year.  It's eerie.

That, plus Buckley and Vidal's habit of "debating" by just exchanging personal attacks and largely ignoring the actual issues seems to be exactly the way most cable news shows operate nowadays.  Again, amazing how little has changed in 50 years.
(This documentary is heavily implying that the Buckley/Vidal 1968 debates helped create the current style of cable news debating.  Whether or not that's actually true, someone smarter than me will have to answer.)

Rating 
10 out of 10 Stars.  (Admittedly I'm biased.  Because this kind of historical political-debate news junkie stuff is exactly the kind of stuff a history political nerd like me would eat up.  But that being said, I still enjoyed this film immensely.  So 10 out of 10 it is.)

Links
My thoughts on Gore Vidal here.  My thoughts on William Buckley here.
Also, I'm pretty sure the Chomsky/Buckley debate, which I've linked to several times over the years (here, here and here), contains an inside joke reference to the famous Buckley-Vidal debates.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the part where Buckley threatens to "smash you in the goddamn face" is Buckley jokingly referencing the time he said the same thing to Gore Vidal. (Watch video from about 9:10)



(Actually, as a sidenote, the fact that Buckley appears to have a sense of humor here about this incident is different to the impression that the viewer gets from the documentary.  A minor quibble.)

Video Review
Video review here and embedded below:




Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky 2017 in Chicago

The World At War

(Television Addiction)

            Since it appears I’m unable to curtail my television viewing entirely, I’ve been trying to make it at least not a total waste of time by steering myself towards more towards historical documentaries than the normal vapid sitcoms (although I’ve been watching a lot of the latter as well).

           

            I had never heard of this series until a couple years ago, but apparently it’s quite famous in Britain, and whenever I had been talking about historical documentaries with British friends, this always ends up popping up in the conversation.  After about 4 or 5 people had recommended this series to me quite highly, I decided I might as well check it out.

            The DVD selection in Cambodia is not exhaustive (there are many documentaries I’d love to see, but have been unable to track down), but it is impressive, and I was able to find this DVD series  on one of the shops on the riverfront.

            This series was produced for British television back in 1974, but has aged remarkably well. 

            (That’s worth mentioning, because in my last review of a 1970s documentary series, I mentioned that the style of the documentary dated it somewhat.  But it’s funny how some stuff ages better than others.  I found The World at War to be indistinguishable from modern documentaries in everything from its pacing to its music to its narration.)

            The original series is 26 hours, but the DVD set includes another 9 hours of bonus episodes, plus featurettes on the making of the series, totaling around 40 hours. 

            I don’t usually consider myself a World War II nut.  I’m interested in World War II in the sense that I’m interested in all history, but I’m more interested in social, political, and biographical history, and less interested in military history.  (I know plenty of other history buffs whose only historical interest is World War II, but I’m not one of them.)  But I enjoyed this documentary.  The story telling qualities were quite good, the use of archival footage impressive, and I learned a number of new things. 

            I have a number of other thoughts, some about this documentary in particular, and some more philosophical in nature but inspired by this documentary.  I’ll deal with these in the subsequent sections.

Archival Footage

          This documentary was one of the most expensive shows ever produced for television—which is somewhat surprising considering all it consists of is interviews and archival footage.  But I suppose it’s easy to forget how labor intensive it must be to search through all the stored footage.

            Equally surprising is how much footage there is of World War II.

            I had seen World War II footage before of course on other various documentaries.  (We all have.)  But I had always assumed that a lot of it was either reconstructed or just generic battle footage that was applied to all situations.  I didn’t think the news cameras were actually filming at all the battles.

            It turns out though that the news cameras were actually filming just about everywhere.  (Although some of the British and Russian news footage was actually reconstructed after the events for the purposes of newsreels—the “Making of” featurettes talked a little about how they sorted through authentic and inauthentic footage.)

            Much of the authentic footage was without sound.  The sound equipment back in those days was very bulky, and most of the footage was filmed for the purposes of being used in newsreels, in which dramatic music would be laid over the footage anyway. 

            So, this means that most of the time when you’re watching old World War II footage, those classic sounds of airplanes diving and guns firing were all added later.

            A brief making of feature at the beginning of the DVD gave some interesting background information to the documentary, and they claim that they only used actual footage (not reconstructed footage) and that only footage from the particular battle was used to illustrate that battle.  It’s impressive how much footage they were able to put together considering these constraints.

            All that being said, if I had to make a complaint about this documentary series, it would be that there was too much archival footage.

            I know that’s an odd thing to complain about.  A history geek like me should be salivating over all the authentic footage used in this documentary, but I was more interested in the story and the narration, and began to regard the long stretches of authentic footage, unaccompanied by narration, as simply long breaks in the story.  I also quickly tired of seeing so much footage of battle after battle, much of which just started to look the same to me after a while.  (Part of this no doubt is because I “binged-watched” all 26 hours of this documentary in a few short weeks.  It was originally intended to be 26 episodes broadcast over 26 weeks.)

            I wouldn’t have minded all the archival footage if the narrator had continued to tell me interesting things while the footage was playing, but all too often the story would simply stop for 5 minutes or so while I just listened to the rat-a-tat of guns and the vrrooomms of airplanes while watching repetitive images of airplanes diving and guns firing.

            (In the “Making of” Featurette, someone said that this series was produced during a time when film documentary makers had an “almost messianic faith in the power of the image alone to tell the story”, and that documentary styles have since changed, so that if this documentary had been made today, it probably would be more heavy on the narration and less heavy on the archival footage.)

Scope of the Project

          The 26 hour documentary has the feeling of being comprehensive.  (That feeling is somewhat aided by the God-like voice of the narrator.)  But, as the filmmakers admit in the “Making of” featurette, they’re actually only just scratching the surface.

            In the “Making of” featurette, the filmmakers somewhat apologetically list all the campaigns and areas of the world that they simply didn’t have time to include, before concluding: “We realize how much we’ve left out, and we hope you realize how much we’ve left out.”

            Nevertheless, much of what they did include was very interesting.

            The decision was made to include both the military and social aspects of the War, and to give one episode to describing conditions in an occupied country in Europe, specifically the Netherlands.  (I’ll write about that in the next section.)

            The fact that this was a British television production, and not American, was occasionally evident in their choice of focus.  The fall of Singapore got more attention than the attack on Pearl Harbor.  But I didn’t mind this.  Having been inundated with the American perspective growing up, it was interesting to see how the British viewed the war.

Holland in the War

            The episode on the Netherlands was especially interesting to me, partly because I’m of Dutch descent, and partly because it’s one of those aspects of World War II that doesn’t usually get a lot of coverage.  Despite being of Dutch descent, I have very little knowledge of Dutch history, and before watching this DVD, I had only the vaguest ideas of what Holland’s role in the war was, or how they reacted to Nazi Germany.  Now I feel I understand it a lot better.

            I was recently talking to an Australian who was also of Dutch descent, and he was explaining to me how the Netherlands is actually a very divided country.  “When the Nazis came in,” he told me, “half of the Dutch resisted them, but the other half welcomed them with open arms, and thought the Nazi program was great.” 

            The division of Dutch society during World War II was reflected in this documentary much like my Australian friend described it.

The Nazis—Shockingly Evil!

          I know I’m not the first person to arrive at this observation, but it’s incredible how evil the Nazis were.

            The Holocaust is the main thing everyone remembers, but even excluding the Holocaust, the Nazis acted with shocking barbarity in every country they occupied.  They brutally crushed rebellions in Yugoslavia.  They used starvation as a weapon in Holland against millions of people.  In Slavic countries like the Ukraine, they either massacred the villagers or used them as forced labor.  When frustrated by the Russian army, they took their frustration out on the Russian peasants, whom they also massacred.  They took horrific revenge in Poland after an uprising in Warsaw, and responded by razing the whole city of Warsaw to the ground.  (An act of revenge which seems especially pointless because at that stage they must have known they were about to lose Warsaw to the Russian army anyway).   The World at War documentary begins and ends by recounting an incident when the Nazi soldiers systematically killed everyone in a whole village in France (for no apparent reason). 

            This was not, of course, my first time learning that the Nazis were no good.  I had learned a lot of this in high school and college history courses, but a lot of this information had since moved to the back of my brain, and I hadn’t actively been thinking about it recently.  This documentary moved these atrocities back to the front of my brain, and I was again shocked by how evil the Nazis actually were.

            It’s especially difficult to account for when you consider that this took place right in the heart of Western Civilization.  No doubt similar atrocities took place during the barbarian invasions of ancient Rome, but the fact that the Germanic countries had been for centuries the intellectual center of the Protestantism makes it all the more difficult to account for the mindless barbarism.

World War II and the Problem of Pacifism

          In my younger days, when I was still trying to sort out my politics, I was unsure if principled pacifism was a realistic world view to have. 

            In November 1999 I was travelling to the School of the America’s protest with a group from Calvin College and a few older activists who were mentoring our group, including a member of the Michigan Peace Team—an organization dedicated to principled pacifism.

            I explained to him that I was attracted to pacifism, but had difficulty in defending the idea when people brought up World War II.  He was used to being asked this question, and had an answer all prepared.  He gave me a detailed analysis about how it would have been possible to defeat the Nazis using non-violent resistance, and I’ve since then co-opted his analysis as my own.

            After watching this documentary, however, I’m having second thoughts. 

            The Nazis brutally put down any resistance they encountered, whether violent or non-violent.

            In the Netherlands, the Nazis responded to non-violent resistance by simply just diverting the food, and starving millions of Dutch people. 

            In many wars, forced annexation of one country by another has meant little more than a change in masters for ordinary people.  But this was not the case for the Nazis.  In Slavic countries, the Nazis used the native inhabitants as slave labor.

            In short, it seems hard to imagine any other appropriate response to the Nazi invasions than a violent counter-reaction.

            There is a rub though.  And the rub is that if World War II presents a problem for pacifists, it presents a problem equally great for Just War theorists.

            From this documentary, one gets the impression that civilization barely survived the destruction of World War II.  The result of all out total warfare on a mechanized scale meant that much of Europe’s and Asia’s cities were just completely destroyed.

            Given the advances in destructive capabilities since 1945, I don’t think civilization could survive World War III.  If we ever again had a total war on a world scale, there would just be nothing left at the end of it.

            Even assuming that somehow all sides were smart enough not to use nuclear weapons, conventional bombs alone would be able to completely wipe out all the major cities of any country in the war (as they did during World War II).

            There have of course been examples of total war since World War II (in the Vietnam War, more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were dropped by all sides in World War II combined), but all of these post-World War examples have occurred when one side was unable to respond in kind.  If we ever got into another situation where two or more superpowers went to war, as in World War II, it would be disastrous.

            So, if pacifism doesn’t work, and the Just War theory is no longer an option, basically we just better hope that the world never, ever, again gets into a situation which resembles 1939.  (The pessimistic side of me is worried that, like the thousand monkeys on the typewriter (W), given an infinity of future time it’s an inevitability that sooner or later another 1939 will occur.  But at least we’ve managed to avoid it for the past 70 years.)

The Sins of the Allies

          I think it’s pretty well established that the Nazis were pure evil.

            But even if the Nazis were pure evil, I’m not sure that de facto means that the Allies were pure good.  I had a Calvin College professor who, as a preface to his lecture about the American fire-bombing of Japanese cities told us: “You have been brought up to view World War II as a struggle of pure evil against pure good. I want you to try to see the War instead as incredible evil on both sides.”

            The Russian Army was just as brutal as the Nazi Army in their sweep across Europe (something which was included in the documentary.)  Churchill was just as concerned about preserving the British Empire as he was about defeating Hitler (something that was not included in the documentary.)

            But perhaps the biggest reason that neither side in World War II can lay claim to moral superiority is that both sides practiced total warfare against civilian populations in the bombing of cities. 

            Although the atomic bombs get all the press, more civilians were killed in the firebombing of cities that preceded the atomic bombs.

            Not that this justifies the atomic bombs at all.

            I personally have been greatly influenced by Howard Zinn’s account of the atomic bombs  [LINK HERE] since I discovered it several years ago, and which told me any number of things I was never told in schools—like the fact that prior to the atomic bombings the Japanese government was trying to find surrender, and had even approached the Soviet Union to act as an intermediary in negotiating a surrender, and that the United States government knew all this because we had long ago broken the Japanese codes, and we went ahead and dropped the atomic bombs anyway.

            But inside the United States, this is information one rarely hears outside of marginal figures like Howard Zinn.

            I was therefore surprised to find that all of this information was included in The World at War, which fully acknowledged all of the above.  Somewhat surprisingly, however, they interviewed several U.S. government officials who acknowledged that the Japanese had been trying to surrender, but said that the dropping of the atomic bomb was still justified because it probably shortened the length of the war by several days, and anytime you have the opportunity to shorten the war you should take it.

            This seemed to me to be an utterly indefensible view, but it was not challenged in the documentary.

The Problem of Evil

          I’m going to go on a little bit of a digression here, and mix in a quote from something completely unrelated that’s another one of my reading projects.

            I’m currently reading The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, (which I’ll get around to reviewing on this blog eventually.)

            When discussing the problem of Hell, Lee Strobel argues that Hell isn’t a place where God is actively torturing people, but simply a place where God removes his presence, and leaves human beings to their own devices.  To quote from that section

            “…if God took his hands off this fallen world so that there were no restraint on human wickedness, we would make hell.  Thus if you allow a whole lot of sinners to live somewhere in a confined place where they’re not doing damage to anyone but themselves, what do you get but hell?  There’s a sense in which they’re doing it to themselves, and it’s what they want because they still don’t repent.”

(The Case for Christ page 165).

            The implication then is that God is currently acting as a restraint on human wickedness, but it would get a lot worse if God were to remove that restraint.

            After watching this documentary, I’m at somewhat at a loss to imagine how human wickedness could get any worse than it is now.

            To be fair, there are numerous other ways that Christians could attempt to account for the problem of evil in the world.  You could argue that after God created the world, he then removed his influence and left humans to themselves.  Or you could argue, as my 12th grade Bible teacher did, that it’s unfair to blame God for the evil we humans do to each other—and that’s probably fair enough.

            But it’s clear to me that what you can not do is try to argue that God is in anyway moderating or restraining human evil, (or argue that things would get worse if God wasn’t around to restrain human wickedness.)  Because then you would have a quite a problem accounting for everything that happened during World War II, and asking why God let this happen.

            In The World at War, the idea that we seem to be living in a world which God has abandoned is brought to the forefront in the episode on the Holocaust.  One of the Holocaust survivors recounts the screams of the woman and the children as they were being gassed, and he says, “To this day, I still don’t understand how God couldn’t hear those screams.”

            In the same episode, another Holocaust survivor remembers a rabbi among the crowd of people who were being pushed into the gas chamber.  The rabbi lifted his head to heaven and cried, “God, this goes against everything you stand for.  Stop this.”  When nothing happened, the rabbi reportedly then exclaimed, “There is no God!”

            (Incidentally, World War II is not the only historical example which seems to indicate God has abandoned the world to its own devices.  One of the most brutal wars in European history was the Thirty Years War, which was in part a religious war between Protestants and Catholics.  If God has any influence at all on human actions, you would think at the very least he would be able to influence the minds of the religious zealots who were praying to him every day for guidance, and tell them to stop slaughtering each other.)

Pearl Harbor Conspiracy Theories

          I’m not sure if this is common knowledge, but on the fringes of American society there exist various conspiracies about the Pearl Harbor attack.

            According to the logic of the conspiracy, Franklin Roosevelt desperately wanted to get America into World War II, but knew that the American public was resistant to the idea, so he needed some dramatic event to change public opinion.  The conspiracy alleges that the American government knew the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor, but chose not to take any actions to prevent the attack.

            The conspiracy is based on the true facts that:

             1) Several friendly governments warned the US government about the attack, and the warnings were ignored.

            2) The primary target of the Japanese attack, the air-craft carriers, were coincidentally out on training exercises that day, and so the Japanese were thwarted in their attempt to cripple the American Pacific Navy in one strike.

          In America, this theory is believed only by fringe elements of society: the extreme Roosevelt hating right, and (closer to home for me) the pacifistic left.

            In Japan, however, the idea that Roosevelt tricked the Japanese into attack in Pearl Harbor has achieved mainstream acceptance—(or at least that’s the impression I got from my small exposure to Japanese media, and political arguments with my at-the-time Japanese girlfriend.)

            I don’t believe in the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory myself, and I tend to dislike conspiracy theories in general.  (I agree with Chomsky [LINK HERE] that the obsession with 9/11 conspiracy theories has been very destructive for the Left the past 10 years.  If you want to be taken seriously in the real world, you have to stick with what there is hard evidence for and not get lost in a world of conjecture and supposition.)

            However what I will say, though, is that it’s sometimes surprising just how slight a nuance sometimes separates “crazy-conspiracy-nut” from “established-historical-fact.”

            If you claim that the United States government knew in advance that the Japanese were planning a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, you’re into crazy-conspiracy-nut territory.

            But if you claim that the United States government knew in advance that the Japanese were planning a surprise attack somewhere, you’re arguing established history.

            The United States government knew negotiations with Japan had broken down, and because they had broken the Japanese codes, the United States knew in advance that the Japanese were planning a surprise attack somewhere.  The United States government did not declare war on Japan in advance because the US desired that Japan attack first, for propaganda reasons.

            And this was the story reported in The World at War.  (It was also, by the by, the view reported in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! , admittedly a Hollywood movie, but one that took a great deal of effort to get the history right.)

            To be clear: I don’t believe there was a Pearl Harbor conspiracy.  I don’t believe the United States government knew in advance that the Japanese were going to specifically attack Pearl Harbor. (I tend to believe nothing stays secret for long, and if such a conspiracy had existed it would have come out eventually.)  But what I do find interesting is that all the fuss over the “Pearl Harbor” conspiracy draws attention away from the plain facts that aren’t even controversial—the United States knew full well in advance that the Japanese were going to attack somewhere.

It’s Always About the Oil

          An Iranian friend was once explaining to me the historical antipathy his country feels for the British, and among other grievances he cited the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran during World War II.

            “We weren’t even in the War,” he complained to me.  “And yet they still invaded us anyway because they wanted to control the oil.”  (And for what it’s worth, the Wikipedia entry on the Anglo-Soviet Invasion largely supports his claims (W).)

            It occurred to me then just how important securing access to oil (and denying oil to your enemies) is during a war.

           

            During the Iraq War, you may remember it was common for conservative pundits to mock the “simplistic” belief among anti-war activists that the War was all about oil. 

            But it occurred to me: of course that War was all about the oil.  And it’s not only for the usual theories about gas prices at the pump, or about Halliburton profiteering off the war.  (Although it’s that as well).  But it’s mainly because modern mechanized armies run on oil, and wither without it.  Airforces, Tanks, Navys, supply trucks—all of them need oil to function.  The United States would not be in the superpower business if we weren’t securing strategic access to the world’s oil supplies.  If another major world war ever breaks out, whoever controls the world’s oil will be the victor.

            Although the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran was not in this documentary (one of the many parts they had to leave out), it was very evident how much of World War II was fought simply to control the oil fields.  Hitler’s invasion of Russia was in part to gain access to oil fields. 

            The war between Japan and the United States was entirely about oil.  Japan needed oil to continue its military campaigns in China, the United States had embargoed oil to Japan, and Japan wanted to take over the oil fields in the Dutch East-Indies, but was worried the United States navy would prevent them from securing that oil.  Thus, Pearl Harbor.

            Many of the military campaigns in Europe were fought to secure oil fields for the use of one army, or for the purpose of denying the oil fields to the enemy.

            So, don’t let anyone ever tell you the war in Iraq wasn’t about the oil.  It’s always about the oil.

The Olympics

            In a blog post from a few years back, I questioned whether the Olympics actually promote peace (as its proponents would have you believe) or just foster nationalism.  After seeing how Hitler and the Nazi Party used the 1936 Olympics to promote German nationalism, I’m even more convinced that the Olympics are primarily an instrument of nationalism.

Star Wars

          As every science fiction fan knows, Star Wars had a million different influences—from Kurosawa to Flash Gordon to Joseph Campbell. 

            But it’s also well known that George Lucas was heavily influenced by World War II movies and newsreels.  Someone of his generation must have grown up on it.

            Of course anyone of my generation grew up on Star Wars, and only knows the World War II references indirectly through Star Wars.

            So much of this documentary reminded me of Star Wars that I was constantly thinking to myself: Oh, so that’s where they got that from! 

            The World War II airplane fights are an obvious enough parallel to the Death Star attack in Star Wars, but I hadn’t fully understood before just how much Lucas had borrowed—the squadron leaders, the formations, the lingo they used to chat back and forth to each other, and even the command headquarters where everyone else was listening in is all straight out of the World War II footage.

            The battle on the ice planet in The Empire Strikes Back is borrowed straight from the footage of the Russian campaign—the snow white uniforms of the Siberian troops are exactly the same as are used in the Empire Strikes Back, and the Imperial Walkers are an obvious stand-in for the Nazi tanks.

           The Nazi uniforms, caps, and military ceremonies are duplicated several times over in the Star Wars trilogy. 

Other Notes

* One of the extra episodes features an interview with Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge.  I read her memoirs a few years back and found them interesting.

* I actually watched the bulk of this series several months ago, but among the bonus episodes is a 3 hour mini-documentary on the Holocaust.  For obvious reasons, I found that part so depressing that it took me a few months before I felt ready to force myself through it.

* Interesting, though, that in the “Making-of” featurette, the filmmakers say that it was only in the 1960s that the cultural consensus came around that the story of the Holocaust and what happened to the Jews was the most important lesson to take away from World War II.  (Before that everyone had apparently been focused on the big battles).  One of the documentary film makers hypothesizes that if The World of War had come out a few years earlier, the Holocaust wouldn’t have received so much attention.

* Because this documentary was made in the 1970s, there’s some interesting stuff about the generation-gap near the end of it.

            I’m used to hearing about the generation-gap from the literature produced by the Baby Boomers (who were a very vocal group), but it was interesting to hear the other side of it—the hurt many of these World War II veterans felt because their children didn’t understand what they went through in the war, and that their children were not interested in trying to understand what they went through in the war.

Link of the Day 

Noam Chomsky slaps down 9/11 truther: People spend an hour on the Internet and think they know physics
and Daily Show interview with Matt Taibbi (a must see) 

The World at War: TV Series Review