...follow up with a mini-series on Korea 1950-53 based on
Theodore Reed Fehrenbach's 1963 "This Kind Of War"
and Robert Leckie's 1962"Conflict" ?
After all, this sacrifice again by the GIs less than 5 years after WW2 saved the Taehan Minkuk' s Freedom.
There just isn't an audience for a mini-series about the Korean War. The horrible truth is that both the South Korean and North Korean armies perpetrated atrocities against the Korean people, and the US Army fought rather ineptly for too much of the war. If you told the truth about the war you'd have to depict the battles where American troops retreated or surrendered en masse. Even the US Air Force, with a massive advantage in strategic bombing capability, fought the war rather poorly.
Most Korean War vets seem to want to forget the war.
If you told the truth about the war you'd have to depict the battles where American troops retreated or surrendered en masse
In the fall-back on Pusan large Army units surrendered. Even the Marines did not fight all that well in Korea. They love to talk about "Frozen Chosin" but not the many other times they retreated.
Many Korean War vets just don't have tales of great heroism to tell. Two-thirds of the war was bloody stalemate fighting that turned out to be pointless. Nobody is going to hail you as the "Greatest Generation" for fighting a war like that, especially if you don't do it particularly well.
It was, as five-star General Brad said, "...the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." Who wants to see a mini-series about that?
What LARGE Units surrendered? Regiments? Divisions? Corps? Not talking about 'The Gauntlet' battles in the North, where unimaginative Army units drove down mountain roads & stayed truckbound while the Chinese were in the hills, shooting down at them. Also, I know the first battalions in country got overwhelmed by the Nork T34s and artillery due to lack of sufficient supplies & numbers of heavy weapons-and followup units had problems until proper A/T weapons made it to Korea. It was a bit like the Italians in Libya trying to stop the Matildas; as for 'retreating', no arguments there, especially early on--fat, soft, poorly trained garrison troops from Japan did especially poorly but also if you wanna trade 'space for time' & let the Chicoms & Norks run into Ridgeway's "operation ripper", 'retreating' is a pretty good tactic too. In fact, it seems the main problem was not having Ridgeway running the show to begin with.
Anyway, the 'Greatest Generation' got the crap knocked out of it in the first year or so of the war until it got adequately 'blooded' & supplied.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?
The long and the short of it is that the sacrifice of those young Americans allowed the prosperous
Taehan Minkuk (The Republic of Korea) to be alive and well today.
The American troops panickly thrown into the slaughter of the early days of the war were ultra-green troops yanked from occupation duty in Japan and issued defective weapons. Since they were hastily transported by air, no armor was available to them.
The 500-strong Task Force Smith pitted against tanks, was destroyed to gain
a little time for the Marines to dry-foot land in Fusan about one month later.
Much was however left unsaid about the brave Taehan Minkuk' s ill-equipped troops and police(the 1st NKPA tank that clanked arrogantly into Seoul was destroyed by the police) who delayed the NKs at every inch of their irresistible armored drive south, despite the morale-numbing fall of Seoul barely 3 days after the invasion.
Tragedy piled upon tragedy when the Han River bridges south of Seoul were
blown up, still packed with refugees and retreating troops.
The sacrifice of Task Force Smith nonetheless gave heart to the ROK troops
and population in keeping them in the fight against overwhelming odds.
Hitler often said that "Americans are just bankers disguised as soldiers".
That was before his much-vaunted SS met them in the Ardennes(The Battle of The Bulge)
The unjustly much-vilified Defense Secretary Johnson was only giving the American
John Q. Public what he was raucously clamoring for : massive demobilization.
So that June 25th 1950 caught the US Armed Forces, saved for the A-bomb,
at skeleton strength.
The reduced-to-one-fifth Marines dynamically held the Fusan perimeter while the 25th Infantry Division manned the fixed positions with the ROKs.
Drawers had to be bottom-scraped to again put together the Marine 1st Division for the masterful stroke at Inchon.
In May 1951, the Chicom offensive had its back-broken and its forces were in full flight after the Ridgway-Van-Fleet Team taught them the meaning of US Army.
And then they were saved by the bell from DC.
But despite all the failings, and one must say the treason by many a DC rat,
the Republic of Korea was saved.
Were the young Americans of 1950 to refuse to fight and die, the whole of Korea would be Northkoreanized. And we know what it means.
______________________________________________________________________________
I repeat my challenge to Messrs Spielberg-Hanks.
OK, you dispute my assessment and then agree with me on the facts...which means you actually agree with my assessment. It wasn't just the early on campaigns, fought with green garrison troops, in which the Army fought poorly. All through the war the USA field-grade cadre had only mixed tactical success when pitted against seasoned Chinese battlefield commanders. Oh sure, the front line American soldiers toughed up and fought adequately--eventually--but the Army never really got their officer corps sorted out at the division level and below. They had a huge advantage in airpower but the Army never could figure out better tactics than to slug it out head-on with the Chinese.
As Band of Brothers showed, the US Army continued to field poorly trained company-grade officers. It was even worse in Korea. BoB managed to finesse that less-than-heroic aspect of the history of the 506th by focusing on the truly great cadre of NCO's the regiment had. Well, in Korea they didn't have Dick Winters and a crew of seasoned sergeants. What they had was, overall, good-to-mediocre troops dying pointlessly in a campaign of bloody stalemate in a war no one cared about. Who wants to watch that instead of football?
And by the way, much-vaunted 5-star general Bradley didn't fight in Korea.
5-Star General Douglas McArthur (as would Patton too were he not taken out)
did and was victorious before being disavowed by an ungrateful DC regime hell-bent on appeasement.
And Americans are never known to shy away from the tell-it-all-like-it-is
about the Shame and the Glory of war.
Like it or not, the American Soldier is still the best warrior in the world
because he is The Child Of Freedom.
Actually, Americans have shied away from films about unpopular wars. For every Platoon there were 3-4 films about the Vietnam war that tanked at the box office. Hell, Oliver Stone almost couldn't get Platoon made because films about Vietnam were considered poison.
General Bradley was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he made that famous statement about Korea being an unwinnable war. Every reputable historian since has agreed with Bradley's assessment.
Get it through your head: there isn't going to be a Band of Brothers about Korea.
Bradley was part of the cabal during the Korean war that included George C. Marshall, J.Lawton Collins and even Matthew B. Ridgway on the military side;
and Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson and Eisenhower himself, on the political
side to make the war unwinnable.
After General McArthur was stabbed in the back.
Btw, the movie "McArthur" with Gregory Peck is mute on the General's achievements in Korea (saving South Korea), and the movie "Ike" with Tom Selleck is an odious slandering of Patton.
Bradley was part of the cabal since before the beginning of WW2, which explains his baffling rise in grade : in Tunisia he was Patton's subordinate, in Sicily he was Patton's superior.
During the battle of the Bulge he was on the sidelines as a good-for-nothing while Patton dissected the Nazi tumor.
J. Lawton Collins suddenly was promoted JCS of US Armed Forces over the heads
of many more deserving generals.
And if Messrs. S & H don't make anything about Korea, it 's 1st of all due to their leftist convictions.
You're nuttier than a fruitcake, you know that? Eisenhower was MacArthur's aide in Manilla for many years. Why would he engage in a conspiracy against him? When Ike saw the move afoot to rebuild the US Army in the late 30's he got MacArthur to transfer him back to work under Marshall as Army CoS. So did Bradley. No conspiracy, just smart career planning. MacArthur couldn't do that because he'd already served as CoS and effectively outranked Marshall. Plus he'd retired from the Army. And because he was a vain and arrogant preener who could not work with anyone unless he was in sole command.
The Joint Chiefs voted unanimously that Truman should relieve MacArthur of command. Are you suggesting that the four other service chiefs were in on the "conspiracy" too? In fact, it is the opinion of most military historians that MacArthur was guilty of unseemly electioneering--trying to position himself for draft to the '52 GOP nomination--insubordination and disobeying orders. Only his five stars, MoH and fame protected MacArthur from being court-martialed. Read American Caesar for the whole story.
And leftist conspiracies have nothing to do with why no one wants to do as mini-series about the Korean War. It's just bad business. Nobody would watch it. That's how capitalism works, remember?
But if the Koch Brothers want to put up $100 million to finance a mini-series about Korea, I'm sure they can hire a team of very good writer/producers to make one. They could probably hire most of the production team who did the grunt work of making BoB and The Pacific if they wrote such a check, just not Hanks and Spielberg.
oh oh, having recourse to name-calling is symptomatic of bad faith.
Your earlier posts made unequivocally clear that you view a movie' s success uniquely from its box office succe$$ regardless of its artistic and historical values.
Your rage against the Korean War's Real Victory of a free Taehan Minkuk(that you refuse to acknowledge anyway) is indicative enough of your slant.
That Victory which allowed also more than 22,000 Chinese and thousands of North Korean POWs to chose Freedom, was bought with untold American sacrifices and blood.
It was American Refusal of the forced repatriation of the POWs back to their unwanted side, that prolonged the fighting on the static front.
But suddenly the Chicoms and their NK minions, upon hearing of the tactical 9-inch(280mm)nuclear-round firing gun going Far-Easternian, asked for a new Pan-Mun-Jom meeting where they quickly agreed to terms for cease-fire.
It's pure bad faith to view both sides as equal.
is indicative enough of your slant.
I didn't see the pun comming, and it was purely unintentional.
And if anyone should have seen the punch coming on June 25th 1950,
it 's the fat cats in DC.
On June 8th 1950, all the NK newspapers(not many,I concede)printed what would soon become known
as "The Pyongyang Manifesto" calling for general elections (held at gunpoint as it would turn out, were Americans not shed their blood) throughout Korea (N & S) ignoring completely the Taehan Minkuk's existence.
A translated copy was available to the US Congress who chose to ignore it.
General MacArthur was an absolutely loyal military servant of The American Republic,
not a militaristic Ceasar as William Manchester would have us believe.
Besides, Mr. Manchester's monumental "Death Of A President" while recounting
the adulterated Camelot's 1,000 days made only one scant line in mentioning
Otto Otepka, whose for-being-loyal-ordeal behind the scenes, began even before January 20th 1961,
the official beginning of JFK's mandate.
If you can get hold of William G. GILL's 1969"The Ordeal Of Otto Otepka",
its 500 pages will suck you in as a tornado in one reading.
You can read too an article by the author in the August 1965 issue of the Reader's Digest.
Google also "Clark Mollenhoff articles".
Good read.
Also allow me to 'wax sarcastic' in that in regards to the Korean War, many H'wood leftists probably felt the 'Good Guys' didn't win, which is probably why they don't want to make movies about a lost cause.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?
nickm2,
you are welcome,
I love sarcasms,
and also bad books for the good reasons,
like Armand Mattelart's & Ariel Dorfman's
1991"How to read Donald Duck - Imperialism in the Disney Comics" !
1991"How to read Donald Duck - Imperialism in the Disney Comics" ! []
Eisenhower was never better than the best of bureaucrats,
as General MacArthur saw him.
And he was also the aide to General MacArthur during the 1932 Bonus March Repression.
General Bradley was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he made that famous statement about Korea being an unwinnable war. Every reputable historian since has agreed with Bradley's assessment.
That's not what Bradley was talking about. The Chinese were not going to let MacArthur establish a far-right client state on their doorstep, which is what MacArthur was doing by trying to install Rhee as the leader of a united Korea. Doing that would have caused a massive land war halfway around the world against the then-united Sino-Soviet bloc, which would have been unwinnable.
Frankly, MacArthur didn't even care about Korean politics. He cared too much about American politics and not enough about Korean politics. That's why he was relieved of command.
The Inchon landing was one of the most brilliant amphibious assaults in history, and if the Chinese hadn't intervened it would have been the decisive event of the Korean War. You could certainly make a film about that.
shareGood point
shareI would think that the greater challenge, if you wish to call it that, is to make a mini-series about the Great War. It is after all the centennial from 2014-2018. What better time to come out with a series on that subject?
shareThe First World War is too "European", not enough American involvement.
share