One thing I never get about American war movies/shows...

Well it's biased storytelling. Easy company did lose it's fair share of soldiers, some of those deaths are shown in the series.

One could make the argument that since the 101st airborne was the elite soldiers of it's time, they would have had a better kill/death - ratio then the US line units.

You read too much into it & you ain't paying attention; anyway, it's a real unit. I don't care what the 'statistics' say--unless you're asking for the film makers to kill off people who did not in fact get killed;

anyway the men of Easy did knock off that artillery battery at Brecourt Manor with minimal casualties; they & the rest of the 101st had a hard time at Carentant as the film showed. The fight at Neunen went badly but in return the patrol at 'The crossroads' did very well indeed.

Anyway, it's a TV movie, it won't have the 'sweep' of 'Bridge Too Far' or 'Longest Day;






Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

The miniseries shows Germans killing Van Klinken, Miller, Dukeman, Julian, Herron, Webb, Mellett, Sawosko, Muck, Penkala and Kiehn; they're also shown shooting down a C-47 full of Easy Company paratroopers on D-Day, killing everyone on board. So I'm not sure what your point is.

Do you think the miniseries should have killed off Easy Company soldiers who actually survived?

Ok, let me try to help. The show was based on the book. The book was based on interviews. It hard to interview dead people. So most of the "characters" are the guys who survived the war, hence they did not die in the show.

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It's also a matter of the limitations of a visual medium for entertainment purposes. In most movies, the named characters you get to know require an investment of your limited on-screen time getting to know them, so they are a bit precious (you can't kill them off easily, yet you have to portray action in which you risk their lives).

You're effectively watching a zoom of the main characters (that's why most movies and TV-Shows compound many people into a few characters). They are surrounded by a large number of unseen soldiers that are dropping like flies around them, the director just can't dwell on filming that because it would turn into a documentary of the dead. In the case of BoB, we're focused on the main characters that made it alive (and the deaths more significant to them), but that doesn't preclude many other deaths (many of which are mentioned, which other films wouldn't bother to do). And also as a side effect, when you see the enemy attacking said characters, most will miss (again, a limitation of the medium).

While in the case of BoB, there are documented cases in which they faced a larger/more powerful force with less casualties (or at least, survivable casualty rates), one thing that makes BoB different is that they don't act as being impervious (which IMO is part of your underlying chief complaint). They bleed on screen, and you get a real sense of dread and fear for their lives (that they felt). While honoring their actions and bravery (in an entertaining fashion), the series doesn't glorify War. If anything, it tries to give value the peace they hard-fought to achieve.

WWII was arguably won in the Easter Front (likely in Stalingrad, if Germany had gained access to the Caucasus oil fields at that time, the war would likely have gone the other way, or ended in a stalemate). The sheer scale of the battles and casualty figures for both Russians and Germans is staggering (and there is no way that D-Day would have succeeded w/o the German forces tied up and 3 year of losses on the Russian Front). And it it's even more incomprehensible when you consider the enormity of all other war theaters.

But unfortunately, American audiences have little interest on watching such a comprehensive mini-series sometimes focused on other nations. And even when there have been such mini-series, we are so far removed, that most wouldn't get a fraction of the enormity of the worldwide price paid by this generation unless you concentrate on the rank and file soldiers.

BoB manages to grab its intended audience by focusing on a small group of soldiers in a manageable sized portion of the war and focuses on their relationships, on their camaraderie, and the price they paid as individuals (while the last of them were still around to tell their stories - it is almost a documentary in that regard). It is up to the viewer to realize that this is but a spec of dust (in the scope of the events happening around them), and realize a fraction of the human cost of the overall war.

Understand that while WWII changed the world and brought about the general prosperity most of us enjoy, it was a species-level shattering and reshaping event. It wasn't a war for glory or gain, like many of the conflicts that came before. Newer generations are quickly forgetting this, going back to the behaviors that caused so much suffering in the XX century. Easily accessible reminders are welcome.

I think you answered your own complaint. It's an American TV show and we here in America love to romanticize WWII as that one time we saved the whole world. It's literally one of the only wars where the moral high ground is extremely obvious, so the Nazis really can be categorized as the genuine BAD GUYS and be killed at greater numbers or with greater ease.

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I checked Western Front casualties and it was more of a 2:3 ratio in favor of US.

4 years ago, on a now-extinct message board, a user named ahmadsallar007 got a savage beatdown and rightfully so. I'm glad things like this got archived.