This may have been posted about already since it's already in episode 8, and pretty sure most of you have heard of this series, but in case you haven't, it's excellent and well worth the watch. I've enjoyed every episode, more thorough than most television shows as well as a lot more honest.

http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-un ... tates/home

this it?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DxGzWenm20[/youtube]

Going to watch some of it now. What do reviews say, particular from experts?

yes that's part one, I believe its 10 parts.

So he thinks the soviets should be given the vast majority of credit for defeating Nazi Germany in the 1940's. And that all the focus on western battles is entirely disproportionate.

An interesting take on things, but is it accurate?

Is that Oliver Stone emblazoned there?

Like Oliver conspiracy theory Stone?

A video on "The Untold History of the US" posted by sandinista.

I have the strange feeling that it will describe the greatest evil that has ever befell the planet.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:So he thinks the soviets should be given the vast majority of credit for defeating Nazi Germany in the 1940's. And that all the focus on western battles is entirely disproportionate.

An interesting take on things, but is it accurate?

No. But inaccuracies are no barrier for Oliver Stones "documentaries" and "historical dramas".

Ah OK. Yeah I was going to say he doesn't seem to intent on helping people understand any "untold history", it seems more like him just telling you what to think.

However, I like these documentaries that put together lots of old footage to view/hear, and this has loads. So you get something out of it.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:Ah OK. Yeah I was going to say he doesn't seem to intent on helping people understand any "untold history", it seems more like him just telling you what to think.

However, I like these documentaries that put together lots of old footage to view/hear, and this has loads. So you get something out of it.

Just remember turn the volume off and start up Pandora.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... unked.html

Here, for example, is an incomplete list of Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s historical revisions, mostly concerned—as much of the book is—with the Cold War: If the United States hadn’t been resistant to assisting the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, then in throes of the Great Terror, Stalin would never have allied with Hitler’s Germany. The Nazi-Soviet pact was an attempt at buying time, because “Stalin understood that the Soviet Union’s turn was coming soon.” The brutal details of the alliance—Soviets and Nazi military cooperation, the violent bifurcation of Poland, the Soviet invasions of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—are ignored (Stalin, the authors say, “asserted control” over the Baltics and was guilty of “heavy-handed treatment of Eastern Europe,” a rather gentle way of describing an almost half-century of brutal occupation).

Did you know that the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II too was an anti-Soviet provocation, which “exacerbated Soviet fears of both a rearmed Germany and capitalist encirclement”? But the Soviets surely blockaded Berlin, right? No, they “attempted nothing of the sort.” In fact, the 1961 Berlin crisis was also precipitated by the United States, but “the Berlin Wall defused the immediate danger” of war. North Korea invaded the South with Moscow’s blessing, but “believing that a South Korean attack on the North was coming, Stalin decided to act first.” Why did the Soviet Union invade Afghanistan in 1979? Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, an “obsessed anti-communist” who, the authors note darkly, was a member of the Bilderberg Group and Trilateral Commission, “set the trap for the Russians in Afghanistan.

etc etc

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:So he thinks the soviets should be given the vast majority of credit for defeating Nazi Germany in the 1940's. And that all the focus on western battles is entirely disproportionate.

An interesting take on things, but is it accurate?

Wikipedia gives figures for German military dead between 1939 and 1945 at 1,107k on the eastern front and 106k in France and Belgium.

Add in missing, captured, wounded and sick and the figures are 5.6m on eastern front and 0.9m in west.

Do you think the focus is proportionate?

so they were getting their asses kicked on the east until the western side was all I GOT THIS YO

ED209 wrote:
Do you think the focus is proportionate?

It's a fair point. I didn't get to hear much about the soviet army effort in WW2 in high school, so maybe there is some bias that needs to be corrected (or just as likely I didn't pay close enough attention). Either way, happy I know that now.

But rather than praise the effort of the soviet solders, this documentary seems intent on giving Stalin all of the praise and to play down the insane stuff he did. I'm feeling kind of sick the more I watch.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:

ED209 wrote:
Do you think the focus is proportionate?

It's a fair point. I didn't get to hear much about the soviet army effort in WW2 in high school, so maybe there is some bias that needs to be corrected (or just as likely I didn't pay close enough attention). Either way, happy I know that now.

But rather than praise the effort of the soviet solders, this documentary seems intent on giving Stalin all of the praise and to play down the insane stuff he did. I'm feeling kind of sick the more I watch.

I don't remember learning much about WW2 at all during school, until I did History in grades 11 and 12. We did German and Japanese history in 11 and Australia 1950 to 1990 and Cold war over the same period. So I always felt that I got a pretty fair teaching of who did what during WW2 and the Soviets got the credit they deserved for the lives they lost...but they also got the credit for the evil shit they were doing as well. Watching US documentaries about WW2's Pacific conflict often annoys me because Australia is often downplayed or ignored.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:So he thinks the soviets should be given the vast majority of credit for defeating Nazi Germany in the 1940's. And that all the focus on western battles is entirely disproportionate.

An interesting take on things, but is it accurate?

It´s accurate. The thing you can start a controversy about is whether the contribution of the western allies was that small because they were unable or unwilling to do more. Stalin was promised the opening of a western front again and again and then told that for some reason that´d be delayed. When D-Day came around the Soviet Union already controlled the area they had held prior to the German attack, with the resources to press onwards and could have probably taken all of Europe. That there finally was an invasion to some degree was about denying western europe to the SU. There was strong anti-soviet sentiment in the US and the UK and there are quite a few sources pointing to them mainly trying to forstall a german ground invasion of the UK and otherwise dragging on the war as long as possible, to leave the SU weakened post war. There´s also the argument that the drop of the atomic bombs was mainly done to demonstrate to the SU that the US had it and thus disincentivize any further expansion in western europe.

History doesn´t really come in these nice chunks - "after WW II the cold war started as tensions between the allies started to grow" isn´t all that accurate. The cold war in quite a few ways started when WW II was still going on (arguably it had already started when the Russian revolution took place).

susu.exp wrote:

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:So he thinks the soviets should be given the vast majority of credit for defeating Nazi Germany in the 1940's. And that all the focus on western battles is entirely disproportionate.

An interesting take on things, but is it accurate?

It´s accurate. The thing you can start a controversy about is whether the contribution of the western allies was that small because they were unable or unwilling to do more. Stalin was promised the opening of a western front again and again and then told that for some reason that´d be delayed. When D-Day came around the Soviet Union already controlled the area they had held prior to the German attack, with the resources to press onwards and could have probably taken all of Europe. That there finally was an invasion to some degree was about denying western europe to the SU. There was strong anti-soviet sentiment in the US and the UK and there are quite a few sources pointing to them mainly trying to forstall a german ground invasion of the UK and otherwise dragging on the war as long as possible, to leave the SU weakened post war....

Another interesting consideration is if stopping hitler (and not keeping stalin in check) was the overriding and primary concern of the western allies then how many were killed in concentration camps in 1943, 1944 that would not have otherwise died had they taken action earlier on.

Of course I must declare an interest here, because I do not hold exceptionally incoherent pro-establishment wealth-worshipping anarcho-capitalist beliefs then I clearly love the great stalin and all his works

At this point, I'm fascinated by the difference between 'told history' and 'untold history'.

'Untold' in relation to readable historical accounts is kind of like 'genuine' said in relation to 'leather'.

"Well, here it is general, plutonium ..."

Someone's having a laugh.

Galactor wrote:"Well, here it is general, plutonium ..."

Someone's having a laugh.

I went into a general store, but they wouldn't sell me anything specific. -- Steven Wright

I bought some batteries, but they weren't included. So, I had to buy them again. -- Steven Wright

I also bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house. -- Steven Wright

ED209 wrote:Another interesting consideration is if stopping hitler (and not keeping stalin in check) was the overriding and primary concern of the western allies then how many were killed in concentration camps in 1943, 1944 that would not have otherwise died had they taken action earlier on.

Well, not just them, but also civilian casualties on all parties involved. And one should also note that the soviet union tried the same thing really, when they did the non-agression pact with Hitler. Broadly speaking WW II wasn´t axis vs. allies, it was 3 blocks: The axis, the SU and UK/US and there were coalitions of the willing between any two of these at some points in time. Stalin kept worrying about the UK and US joining with Hitler to crush communism, the western allies were shocked by the Stalin-Hitler pact. And of course Stalin thought that the intelligence pointing towards an attack by Germany was planted by them just to break up this pact.