Speaker: How to Look Good as a Nazi
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and having a go at destroying the Pacific Fleet, which they got most of in one bang.
But in fact the attack was of very limited value militarily - the four battleships they sunk were elderly, and two were salvaged. The real assets - the aircraft carriers - were out of port at the time.
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Thinking out loud, perhaps the Japanese were gambling that by the time the US had used it's undoubted superiority in industrial muscle to rebuild the fleet, they would have had enough time to conquer and control sufficient territory and industry to be able to fight back on equal terms. The Pearl Harbour attack was a win or lose gamble on a single roll of the dice.
Given that the Enterprise, Yorktown, and a few other important capital ships were out of port at the time of the attack, it was a gamble they lost.
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win the war of industrial dominance that followed
Te reconstruction.
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Thinking out loud, perhaps the Japanese were gambling that by the time the US had used it's undoubted superiority in industrial muscle to rebuild the fleet, they would have had enough time to conquer and control sufficient territory and industry to be able to fight back on equal terms. The Pearl Harbour attack was a win or lose gamble on a single roll of the dice.
I think it more likely that they thought they could sue for peace after some kind of stalemate, rather as the Hitler thought, wrt Britain. Both Axis powers seemed to have highly romanticized views on warfare and diplomacy, and totally failed to understand that instead of cowing their enemies, they had actually strengthened them.
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The Japanese leadership were "forced" into action, based on the standards and norms prevailing in Japan at the time.
Which were basically criminal standards and norms, and the Americans had every right to be fucked off when the Japanese acted on them.
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Express all the outrage we like but at the end of the day it's really nothing but a bunch of daft middle class kids doing something that they think is "shocking" with little understanding of the effect it might have on some people. It's hardly the first time, I remember a couple of similar incidents from my time at Uni, one was a satirical advertisment for a fictional stage production "The Importance of Being Furnaced - featuring a cast of Six Million!" and the other a student pub's tagline for a St Patrick's day celebration - "More fun than a potato famine!"
Empathy is something you learn as you age, and kids will always be making light of Nazis, dead babies and cancer victims simply because they haven't always learned that particular trait yet. -
Empathy is something you learn from those who raise you and the people around you - or not, it seems.
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For what it's worth, I subscribe to the Jonathan Rosenbaum view of Inglourious Basterds.
I just had a look at your review, Philip.
The quotes from Bellamy and Holland are pretty stupid I'll grant you – especially the last from Holland. The link I gave is a much better response to Rosenbaum’s challenge:
“I’m waiting for any of the enthusiasts for Inglourious Basterds to come up with some guidance about what grown-up things this movie has to say to us about World War 2 or the Holocaust — or maybe just what it has to say about other movies with the same subject matter. Or, if they think that what Tarantino is saying is adolescent but still deserving of our respect and attention, what that teenage intelligence consists of. Or implies. Or inspires. Or contributes to our culture.”
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Empathy is something you learn from those who raise you and the people around you - or not, it seems.
True, some seem slower to get it than others.... the name Kyle Sandilands will spring to mind for anyone living in Australia.
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Oh, he's been mentioned here as well..
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Oh, he's been mentioned here as well..
Oops, hadn't read through all 5 pages... hardly surprised though given the subject matter. I have to say I've enjoyed his recent fall from grace just a tad... there aren;t too many people in the world I despise (hate being such a waste of energy and all) but he'd be one of them.
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When I say "here" I mean not this thread, but another one recently.
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My post appeared as an article in The Press this week as well. The long quote below is from a letter that a young German woman sent to me and The Presss yesterday in response. She went to see Tarantino's film, and that was her reaction - (and please excuse her bumpy English, I have left it as it was):
"I never felt awkward or bad, because I am German. But in the last two months it happened twice.
The first time I felt not just bad or awkward, but kind of guilty to have this part of history in my origin, was about a months ago in the US. After I had seen the advertisement for “Inglorious Basterds” on TV, I wanted to watch the movie. I thought it could be funny (ads can mislead) and I was curious how that would work with the Nazi theme. Honestly it didn´t work well at all! Of course I was aware of the cruelness of Quentin Terentino movies, but with the German history as a background it becomes a dangerous combination. I got the confirmation for that right there in the cinema. The audience, I would guess 98% Americans (my boyfriend, Kiwi, and I probably the only exceptions), had the time of their life. They laughed and applauded in every scene, where Germans got slaughtered or tortured in the cruelest ways. And when the cinema in the movie burned down, with all the Germans (and a few French) in it, there was almost a party going on. I couldn´t believe it. While I was sitting there, shocked, in a cinema with all those people having fun while Germans (yes, Nazis, but still humans) get slaughtered I was wondering about a few things: How can a cruel death be a reason for joy for people? How do you call those Americans, enjoying a death of a foreigner so much? Do those people know that a lot of Germans hadn´t had a choice to be Nazis or not in fear of losing their lives? Are they laughing as well, about the war and what is going on in Afghanistan? What would have happened, if the guy in the seat next to me would have found out that I am German? Would he stopped laughing and applauding? Or would he have seen me as a Nazi as well? And how many uneducated people in the world leave this movie with the conviction that this is exactly what happened? Americans are the heroes and Germans are the bad guys? We still are obviously. I was afraid of letting anybody know that this is my history and I am German. Even my boyfriend felt awkward and even if he has not German roots at all."she then goes on about the Oktoberfest at Lincoln.
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Nationalism has a lot to answer for really. Why should someone feel either proud or ashamed of their nationality, or race for that matter? After all it's not something that we choose, it's something we are born into. It's only really immigrants who have adopted a new country (and usually worked bloody hard at learning the language, adapting to the new culture etc) who've earned any real right to say that they are proud to be a kiwi/aussie/german etc etc. For the majority of us it's just a fact of our birth. Germans certainly shouldn't feel personal shame because of what the Nazis did- although I can understand their anxiousness to distance themselves from those actions.
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she then goes on about the Oktoberfest at Lincoln
What did she make of it?
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But in fact the attack was of very limited value militarily - the four battleships they sunk were elderly, and two were salvaged. The real assets - the aircraft carriers - were out of port at the time.
Yup. But the Japanese plan was to catch the carriers there and destroy them.
If they'd been successful at that, Midway would have looked a lot different.
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If they'd been successful at that, Midway would have looked a lot different.
Indeed and that's why I think it was a very smart military move. American military planners knew this but were largely ignored. Pearl was a known target.
To win the coming Pacific war they had no choice but to attempt a knock out blow against the US. They were well aware of the industrial potential of the United States and when they missed the carriers various Japanese opined that the war was lost.
The Pacific fleet was just about all the US had militarily then. It had a tiny army and the Army Air Force largely consisted of a few squadrons of ancient P-26 and a handful of B-17s and underpowered P-40s. What military industry it did have was almost totally employed by the British under Lend Lease or the Direct Military Purchasing Commission. It it hadn't been for that it may have taken the US several years to turn it's industrial might over to rearming.
The Japanese succeeded in knocking the UK out of the Pacific and SEA and were only defeated in doing so to the US by the lucky accident that the carriers were out of port.
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How can a cruel death be a reason for joy for people?
Even make-believe death in a movie? I can clearly recall my surprise, back in 1975, at the way a Chinese-Malaysian audience laughed uproariously whenever someone fell to their death in The Towering Inferno. Or how the cheerful betel-chewing crowd at an open-air night screening of The Godfather in West Sumatra cracked up en masse each time someone was blown away. Yet in both cases, when the show was over, they were the happiest people in the world, none of whom gave the impression that they were in the mood to hurt so much as a mosquito. No-one seemed to lose sight of the fact that what they were experiencing was a shared illusion that briefly transported them from their everyday lives.
I have no idea whether the audience that Anke's correspondent describes had anything in common with these. All I know is that when you're 'different', mass cultural behaviour in others can become starkly apparent. Perhaps I should fess up that I did walk out of an Australian screening of Blazing Saddles back in the day, during the baked bean sequence, because of the high-decibel teenage braying of the audience. The more Tarantino plays for laughs, the more he resembles Mel Brooks. No amount of art direction or retro-fanboy geekery can disguise that. I don't know whether Inglourious Basterds encourages the "uneducated" to treat real-life Germans as less than human. Anke's correspondent appears to be much better equipped to make that call.
My best friend is a native German speaker, from a nation that gave the world the present Governor of California, along with a certain failed artist who later switched to politics. Just the other week a German noticed her accent and interrupted her conversation with a group of English speakers, attempting to have her switch to their native language. She declined out of consideration for those present who didn't speak the language, and because there was little point in making the acquaintance of someone so annoyingly bumptious.
Like any nation, Germany has the usual human spectrum, from delightful people to insufferable fools. If we replace the nazi stereotype with one of a people unfairly demonized to carry the sins of the world we simply exchange one political myth for another.
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Do those people know that a lot of Germans hadn´t had a choice to be Nazis or not in fear of losing their lives?
I can't speak for "those people", but I'm perfectly well aware of that fact. I'm also perfectly well aware that Christopher Waltz isn't walking around with a swastika carved into his forehead, and most of the rest of the cast are alive and well because they're ACTORS. And I'm not psychotic.
Sorry, but I rather enjoyed 'Inglourious Basterds' as a vast, elaborate cartoon. (I'm also well aware that World War II didn't end when Hitler and most of the Nazi hierarchy died in a fire in a Paris cinema.) And I personally found it a damn sight less offensive that a little film called U-571 (which was on television here recently, and received generally positive reviews from American critics) which had "based on a true story" all over it when it was nothing of the kind.
But I guess presenting fiction as history doesn't really matter unless David Irving does it.
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Gotta say I find the idea of going along to a Tarantino film about Nazis when you are likely to be offended by negative German stereotypes makes about as much sense as renting a porno movies if you don't like sexist depictions of female sexuality (not to mention highly unlikely sexual scenarios). Tarantino has always been gratuitous, right from his early movies, that's one of the things I've always most liked about them. He doesn't piss around trying not to offend people, it's clear right from the outset that just about everything in them will be offensive from start to end. The question is: Are they entertaining? Most likely to a lot of people they are not, but to some people they are, and that's all that's being aimed for.
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"How do you call those Americans, enjoying a death of a foreigner so much?
... if the guy in the seat next to me would have found out that I am German? Would he stopped laughing and applauding? Or would he have seen me as a Nazi as well?"
Anke, I have some sympathy for your correspondent, given the situation she was in. But I will say that it was made pretty clear (notwithstanding some of the Basterds’ rhetoric) that the target of the Basterds’ ire was Nazis, not Germans. One of the plot points involved moving to the smaller cinema which resulted in an exclusively Nazi High Command audience. Also, one of the Basterds was a German.
I'm also well aware that World War II didn't end when Hitler and most of the Nazi hierarchy died in a fire in a Paris cinema.) And I personally found it a damn sight less offensive that a little film called U-571 (which was on television here recently, and received generally positive reviews from American critics) which had "based on a true story" all over it when it was nothing of the kind.
Quite. Some of the silliest complaints are about IG’s historical inaccuracies. (Even Rosenbaum seems bothered by that aspect.) It is obviously a fantasy; it would be like complaining that Man in the High Castle was bad history. A reasonably intelligent, averagely educated person, who happened not to know much about WW2 details, could quite possibly be mislead by U-571’s fabrication. Someone would have to be especially ignorant to take the history of Inglourious Basterds seriously.
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U-571 (which was on television here recently, and received generally positive reviews from American critics) which had "based on a true story" all over it when it was nothing of the kind.
I felt the same way about United 93, which had, as a subplot, the cowardly German, when there was and remains no evidence that the German on the aircraft was not as brave as the others. It was a slur that played to US "old Europe" bigotry at the expense of a real person whose family had to suffer as much as any American 'hero'. For that reason I'd give that movie, despite it's glowing critical reception, a large moral #fail.
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US "old Europe" bigotry
"freedom fries", in defence of liberte.
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Xeno,
I would have thought an Oktoberfest party would be about Beer, Blouses and Lederhosen, rather than Nazis and Concentration Camps. Lincoln aye? You'd think those stupid sheep-shaggers could at least get stereotypes involving beer right.
You have to wonder when we're going to get over the war. How many other countries do you describe in terms of the 40s? Modern pop-culture references like Rammstein for example don't get a look in. The comments here have filled up with armchair military historians, almost by reflex it seems. Like a dog with it's own vomit, or an adolescent with a collection of obsessively painted SS wargaming figurines, we just can't seem to leave it alone.
Collectively, I think that makes us borish at the very least. We might as well all be Lincoln Students, or Australians. At least we're not Americans though. They stuck a bloody great WWII memorial in the middle of their National Mall just a few years ago, and just to demonstrate that they really don't understand irony it features prominent eagles and quotations about military power.
(The use of stereotypes here is intentionally ironic. Can't you take a joke?)
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Here you go, specially for the school hols.
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