Behind the scenes media about World War II
November 30, 2022 10:44 PM Subscribe
I'm looking for more media about behind-the-scenes or little-known aspects of World War II.
I've enjoyed "Code Girls" about women cryptologists working in D.C., books and movies about Turing and the Enigma codebreaking, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" which purported to show some of the lesser-known things about the Pearl Harbor attack, and "Ultra" the recent Rachel Maddow podcast about the original America Firsters. As a kid I read a novel about the ski patrols in, I think, Norway, which fought a winter guerilla war against Nazis.
I am looking for more in this vein, specifically in the era of buildup to, and then for the duration of, World War II. Please give me your recommendations. Both fiction and nonfiction are fine, but I'd prefer "interesting" to a dry recitation of facts and dates.
I've enjoyed "Code Girls" about women cryptologists working in D.C., books and movies about Turing and the Enigma codebreaking, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" which purported to show some of the lesser-known things about the Pearl Harbor attack, and "Ultra" the recent Rachel Maddow podcast about the original America Firsters. As a kid I read a novel about the ski patrols in, I think, Norway, which fought a winter guerilla war against Nazis.
I am looking for more in this vein, specifically in the era of buildup to, and then for the duration of, World War II. Please give me your recommendations. Both fiction and nonfiction are fine, but I'd prefer "interesting" to a dry recitation of facts and dates.
Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a kind of uncivilised Bletchley Park.
The Dambusters (book and original film) is a good insight to WW2 - my grandfather spent the war designing missiles, torpedos, mines and other deadly machines and I feel I have a little insight into his life from this, and Ungentlemanly above (as I think, but cannot prove that he was a spy). My great grandfather sold millions of quality boots to both! sides just before WW1 - or so family myth goes.
Any of John Buchan's novels, especially The Thirty-nine Steps, Greenmantle, and Mr Standfast, Buchan is a problematic figure but but he was the real deal; a soldier and a spy - with a very evocative way of describing place, but also waking one up to trends in our own time, and traits in people. Yes there is bias, racism and stereotyping but not all. I've read all of them multiple times and feel I've seen the films. Greenmantle is startling as mentions the Crimea, places in Turkey etc.
Dennis Wheatley did more than novels, spending WW2 in a department called Deception Planning. I haven't yet found the actual scenarios but I'm sure they're out there.
posted by unearthed at 12:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Dambusters (book and original film) is a good insight to WW2 - my grandfather spent the war designing missiles, torpedos, mines and other deadly machines and I feel I have a little insight into his life from this, and Ungentlemanly above (as I think, but cannot prove that he was a spy). My great grandfather sold millions of quality boots to both! sides just before WW1 - or so family myth goes.
Any of John Buchan's novels, especially The Thirty-nine Steps, Greenmantle, and Mr Standfast, Buchan is a problematic figure but but he was the real deal; a soldier and a spy - with a very evocative way of describing place, but also waking one up to trends in our own time, and traits in people. Yes there is bias, racism and stereotyping but not all. I've read all of them multiple times and feel I've seen the films. Greenmantle is startling as mentions the Crimea, places in Turkey etc.
Dennis Wheatley did more than novels, spending WW2 in a department called Deception Planning. I haven't yet found the actual scenarios but I'm sure they're out there.
posted by unearthed at 12:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is pretty much what you're looking for. Randy Waterhouse is trying to figure out exactly what his Grandfather was up to in WWII, as are a dozen other characters, and events are slowly pulling them together. It alternates chapters between codebreaking and insane adventures in the 1940s and the same thing half a century later.
The main characters are fictional, but they're shoehorned into real history, and after a while you realize that everything you know about WWII is wrong, and the entire thing was about cryptography.
I've read about battles and unlikely outcomes repeatedly since I read it, and I've thought, "That wasn't what happened at all."
The second world war has been described as the conflict between the Nazi Party and the Cambridge University Mathematics Department. Add a thousand pages of insane battles and misadventures and you have this book. I've never seen anyone read it who didn't insist on reading passages to anyone nearby. It's exciting, tense, and hilarious. I can't recommend it too highly.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 1:19 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
The main characters are fictional, but they're shoehorned into real history, and after a while you realize that everything you know about WWII is wrong, and the entire thing was about cryptography.
I've read about battles and unlikely outcomes repeatedly since I read it, and I've thought, "That wasn't what happened at all."
The second world war has been described as the conflict between the Nazi Party and the Cambridge University Mathematics Department. Add a thousand pages of insane battles and misadventures and you have this book. I've never seen anyone read it who didn't insist on reading passages to anyone nearby. It's exciting, tense, and hilarious. I can't recommend it too highly.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 1:19 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Via 99% Invisible, the Ghost Army. You can play the podcast episode from that page, or if you prefer a whole book, that's available too.
posted by sigmagalator at 1:21 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by sigmagalator at 1:21 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Girls Behind the Guns: With the ATS in World War II is a memoir by Doffy Brewer about using tech [kine-theodolite] to track incommming. My mother has a walk-on part. Give your librarian a task to find a copy.
Also Munitions Workers US and UK. Thousands of women, who worked in munitions factories in the UK during WWII, were not allowed to tell anyone what they did. It was obvious that something was up because they were known as canary girls. There are other WWII suggestions in the cited MeFi-thread.
Nicholas Winton and the Prague Kindertransport [90 sec snippet]; deeper dives easy to locate. Necessary alt view.
Epic rescue, of German sailors by MV Kerlogue of the [neutral] Irish merchant marine.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:30 AM on December 1, 2022
Also Munitions Workers US and UK. Thousands of women, who worked in munitions factories in the UK during WWII, were not allowed to tell anyone what they did. It was obvious that something was up because they were known as canary girls. There are other WWII suggestions in the cited MeFi-thread.
Nicholas Winton and the Prague Kindertransport [90 sec snippet]; deeper dives easy to locate. Necessary alt view.
Epic rescue, of German sailors by MV Kerlogue of the [neutral] Irish merchant marine.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:30 AM on December 1, 2022
Maybe not what you're looking for, but my friends and I used to really enjoy watching WWII propaganda films.
There's also a bunch of US training films on youtube. These run from from pretty basic (this is how guns work) to advanced technical (this is how analog computers work, this is how to start up a P-47 or how to manage engines on a B-29) to more social training like the "life in the UK" one with Burgess Meredith and the longish bit about racism.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:12 AM on December 1, 2022
There's also a bunch of US training films on youtube. These run from from pretty basic (this is how guns work) to advanced technical (this is how analog computers work, this is how to start up a P-47 or how to manage engines on a B-29) to more social training like the "life in the UK" one with Burgess Meredith and the longish bit about racism.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:12 AM on December 1, 2022
As a kid I loved the story of Agent Garbo. There are some other amazing spy stories from the era, including the so-called Operation Mincemeat. I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing you're thinking of, but... :)
posted by Alensin at 3:38 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by Alensin at 3:38 AM on December 1, 2022
Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich is a book of interviews of German women about their memories of living under Hitler. Interviewees run the gamut from resistance fighters to an unrepentant Nazi living in a nursing home.
Every Man Dies Alone is a novel based on the real lives of a working class couple whose act of resistance was dropping anti-Hitler postcards in various public places in Berlin. They were eventually arrested and executed. The author had access to the police records.
I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp 1941-1944 is beautiful and heartbreaking.
For the war in the Pacific, We Band of Angels is about a group of Army and Navy nurses who were stationed in the Philippines from the beginning of the war. After the Japanese began attacking, they set up field hospitals in the jungle and were eventually captured and imprisoned.
This may not be little known enough for you - but The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II was really eye opening for me. Growing up in the US, I heard a lot about Nazi atrocities, but very little about the horrific actions of the Japanese military. This is a good corrective to that.
posted by FencingGal at 4:59 AM on December 1, 2022
Every Man Dies Alone is a novel based on the real lives of a working class couple whose act of resistance was dropping anti-Hitler postcards in various public places in Berlin. They were eventually arrested and executed. The author had access to the police records.
I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp 1941-1944 is beautiful and heartbreaking.
For the war in the Pacific, We Band of Angels is about a group of Army and Navy nurses who were stationed in the Philippines from the beginning of the war. After the Japanese began attacking, they set up field hospitals in the jungle and were eventually captured and imprisoned.
This may not be little known enough for you - but The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II was really eye opening for me. Growing up in the US, I heard a lot about Nazi atrocities, but very little about the horrific actions of the Japanese military. This is a good corrective to that.
posted by FencingGal at 4:59 AM on December 1, 2022
WWII is one of those things where a deep-dive into a single subject on Wikipedia can take you to a vast array of details and insights. One of my favorite WWII subjects is the Manhattan Project. It’s a deeply complex subject full of fascinating derails and rabbit holes, because there are so many pieces that have to come together for everything to work.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:12 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by Thorzdad at 5:12 AM on December 1, 2022
If I may be allowed a long nearly lost bit of family history
Though this is more mainstream history than what I think you are asking for, it's also very personal which gives it a behind-the-scenes feel.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:20 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Though this is more mainstream history than what I think you are asking for, it's also very personal which gives it a behind-the-scenes feel.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:20 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Wizard War covers the British effort to reverse-engineer Germany's mysterious new air navigation system and jam it, which then turns into the birth of electronic warfare.
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:33 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:33 AM on December 1, 2022
The Foyle's War TV show is an entertaining police detective series covering cases in Hastings on the UK south coast during WW2, but it also gives some insights into domestic life as the war progresses - the arrival of US troops, treatment of German PoWs, etc. Quite a few episodes also touch on various "dirty secrets" of the war that somehow impinge on the cases. Worth a watch.
posted by crocomancer at 5:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by crocomancer at 5:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
The Unwomanly Face of War is a fantastic book about Soviet women in the war and the Red Army.
The Polish stuff is rarely translated, but if you can get your hands on a copy of Moczarski's Conversations with an Executioner, it's fascinating stuff - Moczarski was imprisoned for his role in the Polish resistance after the war and shared a cell with Jurgen Stroop, the SS Commander responsible for suppressing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and destroying the ghetto. He was only able to publish his notes on their talks a quarter of a century later, but it's an amazing document. Another classic is Bialoszewski's Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising, as is Borowski's Auschwitz prisoner's memoir.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 6:12 AM on December 1, 2022
The Polish stuff is rarely translated, but if you can get your hands on a copy of Moczarski's Conversations with an Executioner, it's fascinating stuff - Moczarski was imprisoned for his role in the Polish resistance after the war and shared a cell with Jurgen Stroop, the SS Commander responsible for suppressing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and destroying the ghetto. He was only able to publish his notes on their talks a quarter of a century later, but it's an amazing document. Another classic is Bialoszewski's Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising, as is Borowski's Auschwitz prisoner's memoir.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 6:12 AM on December 1, 2022
The recent book "A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II" by Simon Parkin describes the young, British women who staffed one of the first real war games, which were used to train North Atlantic ship's captains to avoid German submarines.
I have read a lot about WWII and done some of my own family research, and this book was really good -- and new to me!
posted by wenestvedt at 6:14 AM on December 1, 2022
I have read a lot about WWII and done some of my own family research, and this book was really good -- and new to me!
posted by wenestvedt at 6:14 AM on December 1, 2022
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is pretty much what you're looking for. Randy Waterhouse is trying to figure out exactly what his Grandfather was up to in WWII...
I read this book as I was just getting properly into my own grandfather's WWII service, which was radio intelligence in the Pacific for the Army Air Force. Also super secret, also nearly undocumented.
It resonated so much for me that I found it really uncanny. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:16 AM on December 1, 2022
I read this book as I was just getting properly into my own grandfather's WWII service, which was radio intelligence in the Pacific for the Army Air Force. Also super secret, also nearly undocumented.
It resonated so much for me that I found it really uncanny. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:16 AM on December 1, 2022
The Man Who Never Was, a book and film about an apparently drowned courier handcuffed to a suitcase full of British operational plans to assault some place that definitely was not Sicily.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:23 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:23 AM on December 1, 2022
There was also the recent movie "Operation Mincemeat" (starring dreamy Colin Firth) about the same operation.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 6:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I recently learned about the Four Days of Naples, where the citizens of Naples drove the Nazis out of town shortly before the allies arrived. I learned about this by reading From These Broken Streets, by Roland Merullo. It is a fictionalized account of the uprising based on true events.
posted by bondcliff at 7:12 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by bondcliff at 7:12 AM on December 1, 2022
Although it is not directly about WWII, MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf was written and published during the war. It dealt directly with living with food shortages, and war was the chief instigator of those at the time. Unlike basic housewifery books or pamphlets, she discussed how to live as graciously as possible without pretending things were not terrible. I learned a lot from this book about how daily life actually went at the time from passing references to common knowledge of things like the British pet massacre of 1939. (I link to a review of a book about that, but I haven't read it, because if I did I would cry in giant cartoon fountains.)
posted by Countess Elena at 7:49 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 7:49 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
The Girls of Atomic City is about the women working at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, refining uranium for the Manhattan Project. And Richard Rhodes‘The Making of the Atomic Bomb covers a lot of earlier 20th century physics history but is mostly about the Manhattan Project.
posted by janell at 8:42 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by janell at 8:42 AM on December 1, 2022
Land Girls and Bomb Girls both BBC series. I watched them on DVDs from the library. There are more sessions than I realized, yay! You've seen A League of Their Own, right?
Ooooo, they're making a series out of it.
posted by BoscosMom at 9:14 AM on December 1, 2022
Ooooo, they're making a series out of it.
posted by BoscosMom at 9:14 AM on December 1, 2022
Response by poster: Not to threadsit, but I have read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I agree with those who recommend it. Stephenson mixes fiction with history in a way that is practically magic.
posted by TimHare at 9:42 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by TimHare at 9:42 AM on December 1, 2022
Pacific War Diary, 1942-1945 is the diary of an American seaman who served on USS Montpelier (CL-57) and one of the few books written by an ordinary sailor rather than an officer.
posted by leaper at 9:53 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by leaper at 9:53 AM on December 1, 2022
The Wizard War
And Most Secret War by R.V.Jones. It's his account of his work in British Scientific Intelligence between 1939 and 1949, trying to anticipate what the Germans were working on, and devising ways to counter those developments as well as what they were using already. Which included trying to keep them in the dark as much as possible on the Brits' counter-measures.
posted by Stoneshop at 11:47 AM on December 1, 2022
And Most Secret War by R.V.Jones. It's his account of his work in British Scientific Intelligence between 1939 and 1949, trying to anticipate what the Germans were working on, and devising ways to counter those developments as well as what they were using already. Which included trying to keep them in the dark as much as possible on the Brits' counter-measures.
posted by Stoneshop at 11:47 AM on December 1, 2022
I saw National Treasures: Saving the Nation’s Art in World War II (Caroline Shenton) yesterday in Waterstone's and thought it looked good. Shenton's website. Google tells me there is also a book about the French effort to save art, Saving Mona Lisa: The Battle to Protect the Louvre and Its Treasures During World War II (Gerri Chanel).
I haven't seen the new film Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War yet, but that also looks good.
Home Fires: The Women's Institute at War 1939-1945 (Julie Summers, also published as Jambusters, is readable, as is How the Girl Guides Won The War (Janie Hampton). I can't find an online review of The Children's War: The Second World War through the Eyes of the Children of Britain (Juliet Gardiner), but that is also good.
There are several books about the women pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary., but here is a website: solentaviatrix, category ATA.
Gabriel Moshenska's Material Cultures of Childhood in Second World War Britain is free online (PDF).
I've not found a book on knitting in the Second World War, but there are articles and blog posts: Knitting Songs (that needs a post to the front page), knitting history blog post, knitting photoessay.
And in Googling for a review of the Gardiner book, I found this previous Ask: I want to read about life in Great Britain during WWII, which you may also find useful.
It sometimes feels you can Google any niche topic plus Second World War and there will be a book about it - though I have never found one about disabled people in the war.
posted by paduasoy at 1:19 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I haven't seen the new film Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War yet, but that also looks good.
Home Fires: The Women's Institute at War 1939-1945 (Julie Summers, also published as Jambusters, is readable, as is How the Girl Guides Won The War (Janie Hampton). I can't find an online review of The Children's War: The Second World War through the Eyes of the Children of Britain (Juliet Gardiner), but that is also good.
There are several books about the women pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary., but here is a website: solentaviatrix, category ATA.
Gabriel Moshenska's Material Cultures of Childhood in Second World War Britain is free online (PDF).
I've not found a book on knitting in the Second World War, but there are articles and blog posts: Knitting Songs (that needs a post to the front page), knitting history blog post, knitting photoessay.
And in Googling for a review of the Gardiner book, I found this previous Ask: I want to read about life in Great Britain during WWII, which you may also find useful.
It sometimes feels you can Google any niche topic plus Second World War and there will be a book about it - though I have never found one about disabled people in the war.
posted by paduasoy at 1:19 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
As FencingGal mentioned, Hans Faluda's Every Man Dies Alone cannot be emphasized enough, if you want to know what it was like inside the Reich during the war. For the period before, Erik Larson's In The Garden of Beasts has a focus on the American ambassador William Dodd and his family, living in the embassy in Berlin between 1933-37.
In the latter you'll meet a very interesting little-known aspect, Ernst Hanfstaengl. Harvard grad (1909) with an American mom and chummy with der Führer from the beginning, he also got out in '37, eventually working for Allied Intelligence in London, during the war. Read about 'Putzi' (as everyone called him) in Hitler's Piano Player.
For fiction set in Europe in the period leading up to and during the war look into the novels of Alan Furst.
posted by Rash at 1:22 PM on December 1, 2022
In the latter you'll meet a very interesting little-known aspect, Ernst Hanfstaengl. Harvard grad (1909) with an American mom and chummy with der Führer from the beginning, he also got out in '37, eventually working for Allied Intelligence in London, during the war. Read about 'Putzi' (as everyone called him) in Hitler's Piano Player.
For fiction set in Europe in the period leading up to and during the war look into the novels of Alan Furst.
posted by Rash at 1:22 PM on December 1, 2022
The Dark Histories Podcast is good for this. I listened to Garbo & the Ghost Spies and it was fascinating.
posted by onebyone at 3:58 PM on December 1, 2022
posted by onebyone at 3:58 PM on December 1, 2022
Career diplomats like Chiune Sugihara (Japanese, posted to Lithuania) and Aristides de Sousa Mendes (Portuguese, posted to France) defied their governments and issued thousands of visas to Jews escaping the Holocaust.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:13 PM on December 1, 2022
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:13 PM on December 1, 2022
I always take an opportunity such as this to plug Stanley Weintraub's masterful Long Day's Journey Into War: Pearl Harbor and a World at War-December 7, 1941. I've got two copies (because one is presently inaccessible) and have read the book four or five times.
posted by bryon at 7:08 PM on December 1, 2022
posted by bryon at 7:08 PM on December 1, 2022
You might look at Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, a look at the first year of WW2 in England from inside Churchill's world. Larson is a very enjoyable pop history writer.
posted by lhauser at 8:09 PM on December 1, 2022
posted by lhauser at 8:09 PM on December 1, 2022
Also, check out Lynne Olson's books. Several are on topic. Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour is riveting. You might also enjoy Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler and Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War.
posted by bryon at 11:52 PM on December 1, 2022
posted by bryon at 11:52 PM on December 1, 2022
Goodnight Mister Tom for a look at the experience of evacuees in England. Children's book.
If you can get hold of it, the 3-part BBC documentary "Rise of the Nazis" looks at how Hitler and the Nazis came to power. Particularly interesting is the episode that focuses on early legal issues.
World on Fire, again BBC. Looks at the very beginning of the war in Poland and the UK.
And of course, Housewife, 49. The wartime diaries of Nella Last, part of the Mass Observation project. The diaries themselves have also been published.
For a completely different option, Dad's Army is a sitcom about the Home Guard. Clearly the whole thing is played for laughs, but Pike is modelled on the creator who was part of the Home Guard between 1940 and 1943 and much of it is surprisingly true to life.
John Buchan novels are ripping yarns, but WW1 rather than WW2.
posted by plonkee at 7:10 AM on December 2, 2022
If you can get hold of it, the 3-part BBC documentary "Rise of the Nazis" looks at how Hitler and the Nazis came to power. Particularly interesting is the episode that focuses on early legal issues.
World on Fire, again BBC. Looks at the very beginning of the war in Poland and the UK.
And of course, Housewife, 49. The wartime diaries of Nella Last, part of the Mass Observation project. The diaries themselves have also been published.
For a completely different option, Dad's Army is a sitcom about the Home Guard. Clearly the whole thing is played for laughs, but Pike is modelled on the creator who was part of the Home Guard between 1940 and 1943 and much of it is surprisingly true to life.
John Buchan novels are ripping yarns, but WW1 rather than WW2.
posted by plonkee at 7:10 AM on December 2, 2022
Between Silk and Cyanide: an account by codenaker for the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE). Training agents, and not knowing if they'd make it back. Sometimes, knowing they'd been captured, and were transmitting under duress.
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:29 AM on December 2, 2022
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:29 AM on December 2, 2022
US: A surprisingly large number of people don't know about the 442nd, a segregated Japanese American-only unit and the most decorated unit in US military history. The Military Intelligence Service, staffed by Japanese American and German American linguists, is also little known. Code talkers' work was secret by its very nature. While we're discussing Americans of color in WWII, the Tuskegee Experiment was very much behind the scenes. The Tuskegee Airmen weren't, but sometimes they're forgotten anyway.
Europe: Hannah Senesh was executed by Nazi firing squad, leaving behind diaries and poetry. Meanwhile, Jews, Roma, Disabled people, Queer people, Jehovah's witnesses, and other groups faced genocide. I know that many people already know this, but I mention it because it was intentionally covert at the time and because we need to remember that history, including how many groups were targeted.
posted by spiderbeforesunset at 8:59 PM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Europe: Hannah Senesh was executed by Nazi firing squad, leaving behind diaries and poetry. Meanwhile, Jews, Roma, Disabled people, Queer people, Jehovah's witnesses, and other groups faced genocide. I know that many people already know this, but I mention it because it was intentionally covert at the time and because we need to remember that history, including how many groups were targeted.
posted by spiderbeforesunset at 8:59 PM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Rape of Europa, about the Monuments Men, is a great documentary about the role of art historians and preservationists in WWII. There's also a feature film just called the Monuments Men about the same subject (have not seen, so no opinion on its quality).
posted by catesbie at 2:28 PM on December 3, 2022
posted by catesbie at 2:28 PM on December 3, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
I feel it gives a really interesting glimpse into what things were like on the ground, both for rank and file soldiers and for the people at home trying to support the war effort. Donald Duck dipping his one pathetic bean of coffee into a mug of hot water and cutting off a slice of bread so thin you can see through it (I think this is in "Der Fuehrer's Face") - it's so wild that these iconic characters were called into service this way.
posted by potrzebie at 11:16 PM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]