Something about all those red flags at those Berlin ministries bothers me. By the summer of 1944, those would be obvious BOMB ME markers for the Eighth Air Force.

What IS needed is a lot more stories about conditions in the USSR from 1920 to 1990.

Try Burnt by the Sun.

> I cannot agree that no further World War II movies are needed

What IS needed is a lot more stories about conditions in the USSR from 1920 to 1990. For such a large nation, and such a long span, and one in which both the nation and the events transpiring around the world have had such far reaching effects, it’s nothing less than absurd that so very few movies have been made. I’m sure there are others, but the only ones coming to mind are “Dr. Zhivago”, “Citizen X”, and “The Inner Circle”, and few have seen or heard about the last two.

Yeah, there’s “Enemy at the Gates”, but that’s hardly the kind of information I’m talking about — that’s a war picture which could have taken place anywhere.

There should also be a lot more about China’s transgressions against civil rights, too. The media could care less about what is happening in Tibet. But they’ll do all manner of fluff pieces decrying the awful events at Gitmo. Hollywood can make dozens of movies about the inequities inflicted on the poor black man by whites in the US and South Africa, but nothing about barbaric practices of blacks in South Africa (e.g., “necklacing”) or about what yellow men inflict on other yellow men.

> Has anybody ever done a serious alt-history treatment (either fiction or essay) of what the world would be like if Valkyrie had worked? I am not aware of any. I have tried to think it out many times, and the answer is always “Fascinating. Needs more research. Got to write something on this some time.”

Not that I know of, but the obvious person to do so would be Harry Turtledove.

What, no Iron Man? C’mon, that’s the fun movie from this summer. Damn, I want one of those suits, and the means for upkeep of it.

:oP

Every movie Cruise is in has something like that. If that’s acting and making historical movies, sign me up for the propaganda subscription.

It’s not as if the fact that Hitler had killed millions of Russians would have been some kind of problem for Soso.

They all got killed before the could write much of anything down. “Make peace with the Anglo-Saxons” was probably the main thing.

“My guess is Stalin would — he’d expect the Allies to do it to him …”

People use words like “shocked” and “stunned” pretty easily. But I was truly shocked and stunned when I read, buried in the footnotes of Gerhard Weinberg’s most recent book that there has been some recenty discovered documentary evidence that Molotov met with German representatives in Finland in 1943 to discuss an armistace. I do not have the exact language in front of me. This had long been rumored, but it was always dismissed as a fantasy. So, the prospect of a German-Soviet armistace was possible.

Is anybody aware of a serious work that lays out the plans of the Valkyrie conspirators in detail? I know they wanted to round up the Nazis and negotiate an end to the war, but I wonder what they would have done with the concentration camps and the survivors, what would have happened to the collaborationist governments, what would have happened in the East, etc. etc. It’s a huge topic.

I agree with Lex. We haven’t even begun t scratch the surface of the effects of WW1 and WW2 on history, and each generation will make their own take on it, artistically and politically, for centuries to come.

I said “…when Reagan was actually working as an actor, he was a down-the-line New Deal liberal.” By the time he was working for the union his acting career was pretty much over.

“How many prominent people in the modern entertainment industry have a comparable record in opposing the malign influence of today’s Hollywood Left?” I don’t know. I try to pay no attention to Hollywood and its antics, and I watch very few of its movies and none of its TV shows. Note, however, that in Reagan’s day the communists would literally make death threats and use violence against people who took them on. The current crop are not as tough.

“…trouble with Ron Howard movies?” I don’t know if I have seen any, other than Apollo 13, which was pretty good. Ed Harris is reliable. Is Ron Howard a Leftist shill? If so, I did not know it because, as I say, I resolutely ignore political pronouncements, or in fact any non-professional pronouncement, from musicians, chanteuses, painters, actors, jugglers, mimes, etc. Ignoring academics when they talk about anything outside nejcessarily the narrow scope of their expertise is usually a good idea, too. Repudiating the idea that a Ph.D. in anything is a generic “smart person” badge is a practice that needs to be spread more widely.

Helen, actually, when Reagan was actually working as an actor, he was a down-the-line New Deal liberal. Later, he did some reading, got out and saw the world, and woke up. So, the rule still holds. Tom Cruised did a solid acting job as von Stauffenberg. As I mentioned, I have not seen him in anything in over twenty years, so I had no preconceptions. “…the Otto John conundrum?” Never heard of him, until now, and read this. Sounds intriguing, but I have no basis for an opinion about any conundrum. I cannot agree that no further World War II movies are needed. Too many great stories have not yet been told, too many excellent books could be made into movies. Plus every actor knows that if looks good now, he will look even better in a German World War II-era uniform. Most actors at some point play a Nazi or wear a Wehrmacht uniform on screen. Off the top of my head: Michael Caine, Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Robert Shaw, Frank Sinatra … . It is the great epic of the last century, and it will be a long time before people “get over it”.

Having said that I must support Lex in his assertions that actors’ opinions must be ignored. Unless they happen to be Ronald Reagan or John Wayne. Tom Cruise probably has no connecting brain cells. So what? Can he act? The jury is largely out but he may well make a good Stauffenberg. Mind you, how much do we really, really know about Stauffenberg?

More to the point Lex, how do they deal with the Otto John conundrum?

Point two, also low-minded: A former colleague of mine, supposedly adequately educated, and an upper level manager in federal service, watched “Pearl Harbor” and closed out the lease on her Lexus. She told her husband she did not want any more Japanese goods in their home. She did not know, you see, until she saw that film…

I’ve known about Stauffenberg since I was in the fourth grade in 1961. Will the new knowledge of the “Good Nazis” result in an epiphany on the part of those who get their history only from current films? And–to raise my sights a notch–what will be the nature of that epiphany? You could scare yourself with that question.