[lit-ideas] Re: Herman Wouk's mini-series
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:51:32 -0600
Herman Wouk's mini-seriesLH:
>>The pacifists among us will always prefer the Athenian approach, and the
>>enemy will always see that as a sign of weakness, and the death toll will
>>always be much much too large as a result.<<
You're probably right, but then the warmongers among us will always prefer the
Lyndon Johnson - George Bush approach -- preemptive war even though there's
nothing to preempt. And the death toll of innocent people has been in the
millions. Forty years of war is enough. We've proved to the world that we
have no more concern for human life than anyone else. They know that now. We
don't need to kill anyone else to prove it. I prefer going to war when there's
absolutely no other option, but then, I'm a coward, the thought that so many
innocent people were killed by my government scares the hell out of me. Karma
is coming, boys and girls, karma is coming.
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: Lit-Ideas
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 11:40 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Herman Wouk's mini-series
I watched War and Remembrance the other day. It is the 1988 12-part
mini-series based on Herman Wouk's book about World War II. Commander Pug
Henry is played by Robert Mitchum and his wife Rhoda by Polly Bergan. Steven
Berkoff did a chillingly realistic rendition of Adolf Hitler, much better, I
thought, than that done by Gunter Meisner in the 1983 6-part mini-series Winds
of War which I just started watching.
There is a tremendous difference between Mitchum's physical appearance in the
two series. He is overweight and doesn't look well in War and Remembrance.
Someone else should have gotten that part. The director knew it and said he
looked but couldn't find anyone else that seemed plausible as Pug Henry.
There was much too much about the Holocaust in War and Remembrance - far too
much detail, but the director, Dan Curtus said there had been too much glossing
over the event. He wanted a pictorial record so no one would ever again be
able to say it didn't happen - or that it wasn't as bad as some people said.
Ali MacGraw plays Natalie Jastrow in Winds of War, and Jean Seymour plays her
in War and Remembrance. MacGraw is feisty and believable as someone who would
drag Byron Henry off to Warsaw shortly before Hitler invades Poland, and
Seymour is believable as the Natalie who is dragged closer and closer to
Auschwitz. Seymour's Natalie will do anything necessary to get back to her
son. She will bend as far as necessary. I can't imagine MacGraw bending like
that. Also, Seymour was so beautiful in that role that it was unbearable to
think of here becoming one of those emaciated inmates at Auschwitz. McGraw
wasn't that beautiful. Also, McGraw would hae been too old to play Natalie in
War and Remembrance. She was supposed to be a girl but would have found that
difficult at age 48. Seymour at 37 could pull it off.
I kept wondering what was wrong with Seymour's eyes. I learned that her eyes
are different colors; so they probably made her wear a contact lens in one of
them.
I've been reading, off and on, what some consider the definitive work on
Hitler, Ian Kershaw's Hitler in two volumes. I finished the first volume and
am 150 pages into the second. Also, I've read other books about Hitler in the
past. It is impossible for me to take him in, that is, to understand him. He
is too monstrous for that, and should only be destroyed, even though I keep
trying to understand him. I tried once again during War and Remembrance. He
obviously did believe the Jews were to blame for all sorts of absurd evils, and
one shouldn't be too quick to say that prejudice was unique to him because it
wasn't. Also, it is revitalizing itself in Europe today - thanks to the Arabs
but there was a core hatred of the Jews that wasn't turned to love just because
Hitler and Eva Braun took cyanide pills in a bunker.
At one point the Germans line up large group of Czechs, one of whom is taking
care of Natalie's four-year-old son, Louis. The care-taker shields Louis with
his own body and so you know that under this huge heap of dead bodies is one
little four-year-old boy who still lives.
Did the Greeks ever do anything like that? [from Hanson, A War like no
other, pp 183-185]
"Lining up and murdering the surrendered adult Greek male population was
still rare before the Peloponnesian War, and such slaughter became habitual
only after the siege of Plataea. Then a discernible pattern emerged: free exit
without one's property was offered to the besieged before the fighting started.
After that window of choice close, it was assumed that all guarantees were
off, and death and enslavement loomed respectively for captured men and women.
. . ."
". . . the Spartans had initiated the cycle of executing surrendering
citizens at the very outset of the war, and had continued that policy
throughout the first decade of the fighting. In the winter 424, for example,
at the small outpost at Lecythus, Brasidas, who had none of the aristocratic
restraint of Archidamus, had executed all the Athenian defenders who could not
escape. The Spartans would go on to repeat such slaughter at Hysiae in 417 by
killing all the free males of the doomed town."
The Nazis went beyond what the Spartans did here. The Spartans wanted to
kill the potential soldiers, but thanks to their pseudo-science and bizarre
beliefs about the Jews, the Nazis wanted to destroy a genetic entity, men,
women and children.
At one point in War and Remembrance Americans are shown doing something like
the Spartans did. A submarine captain (played by Barry Bostwick) torpedoes a
Japanese troop ship. He then surfaces and has his men machine gun the Japanese
survivors in the water because, he tells his appalled XO, Byron Henry, if they
let them live, they would only kill more Americans; so it was his duty to kill
them. When the XO still isn't convinced, he says, don't forget, they
attacked us. We didn't attack them.
One might, like the XO, disapprove of slaughtering soldiers in the water, but
one can understand the thinking of the Submarine commander, but one can't . . .
or can one understand the Nazis? That is if one believes in a pseudo-science,
if one believes in conspiracy theories about the Jews, then . . .
To say you believed in a pseudo-science or a conspiracy theory and that is
your excuse for killing Jews is not acceptable. Neither is it acceptable to
believe conspiracy theories about America today, but at least no one is
slaughtering huge groups of Americans , other than the Islamists, and then not
very often, but just as in Europe there is a huge core of hatred of the Jews,
so is there in this post-Communist world a huge core of hatred for Capitalisms
flag-ship America.
Understanding Naziism, Islamism, and Post-Communist Anti-Americanism may not
be possible for those of us in possession of western sanity, but it is possible
to recognize the enemy, to oppose him, and if in a war with him, to kill him.
Democratic Athens waited far too long to see what Sparta would do. They were
too hesitant, too half-hearted, too seemingly weak, and that encouraged Sparta
to move against them.
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
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