[lit-ideas] Re: Had Thousands Died in Papua, New Guinea
- From: carolkir@xxxxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:30:13 -0800
>To have TV crews break into the
>death camps with the first American soldiers . . . would that have
>affected anything?
ck: That's what did affect things, after the fact. That footage
created the mass perception, in America, of the shoah's terror. There
was something grandly humanistic about the reaction of American
soldiers. Not sure if those same soldiers would have responded so
openly with disgust had there not been pathetic survivors in the
camps--or if the survivors had not been white. Or if they, and the
American public back home, had been prepared-- calloused--by seeing
some piano-wire decapitations on their TVs. But would Americans have
been so eager to go to war against just about anyone after watching
the towers on 9/11? After seeing the moment before Pearl's beheading
on their TV news?
Something, some image, usually mobilizes the population to care that
much. For Vietnam, images of the self-immolating buddhist monks and
that one photo of a skinny Asian man with a gun to his head did it for
me. (My sympathies to all photojournalists suffering nightmares of
conscience.)
Carol
On 1/9/08, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>Would TV have affected the course of WW2?
>
> If the technology were available, only the US and UK would have TV as we
> know it. Hitler would run German TV. Stalin and Tojo would run theirs.
> (On the bright side, the Free French could have transmitted their own
> pirate TV shows to the Vichy population of France.)
>
> American or UK TV coverage would have foregrounded some of the more
> horrible parts of the war, such as huge civilian bombing casualties or
> particularly savage tactics. That could have undermined US public
> confidence.
>
> For example, when the Germans retreated over the Rhine, they strung
> piano wire across the roads so that Allied officers riding in Jeeps
> would be decapitated as they drove past the hanging wires. Think of it
> as a Nazi IED. Terrible. Lethal. Invisible.
>
> Popularizing this tactic would have created a call for safer Jeeps,
> cries of Army mismanagement and complaints about the Army's lack of
> materials-design foresight. Nazis, learning of this, might have strung
> more piano wire. Made beheading videos even.
>
> As for the Holocaust, I tend to view it as an annex of the war. WW2, in
> part, was the destruction of the Nazi government's capacity to wage war.
> The Holocaust is a different species. To have TV crews break into the
> death camps with the first American soldiers . . . would that have
> affected anything?
>
> Eric
>
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