Military Historian Rates Classic World War Two Films

Comments · 1.5K

• HI

  @HistoryHit · 2 years ago (edited) · pinned

  We hope you are enjoying our Historical Movie Review series! We've got loads more on the way, including more focused deep dives with top historians! Please don't forget to like, subscribe and help us reach a million subs by the end of the year!

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• JO

  @johnmadden2421 · 2 years ago

  On the Guns of Navarone scene where a wounded man is left behind, my father's brother was severely injured by German shelling at El Alamein and left for dead by his mates. When the Germans overran the position my uncle was taken by the Germans to hospital and survived thanks to them, albeit as a POW.

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• CA

  @CAARaeed · 2 years ago (edited)

  This is appropriate cuz Dan Snow is the most Hollywood WWII British Officer looking historian there is

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• JP

  @jpotter2086 · 2 years ago

  &quot;Her back is broken&quot; = the ship&apos;s keel is broken. The ship <b>is</b> doomed, but it&apos;s a specific reference to specific damage.

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• FE

  @FelixstoweFoamForge · 2 years ago (edited)

  If you watch Das Boot, do yourself a favour and watch it in the original 6 hour, German language German version. &nbsp;Much, much more immersive. &nbsp;Arguably the best war movie ever. &nbsp;And I do so argue. &nbsp;Oh, and for what it&apos;s worth. my maternal Grandfather, a Norwegian Merchant Sailor, died in the Battle of the Atlantic, when the tanker he was on got torpedoed.

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• ST

  @steveparadis2978 · 2 years ago

  Percy Herbert had been one of the Burma railway men. Some mates of his in the crew got together with him and they went to tell David Lean that the script was all wrong, and that the camp in the movie was a holiday camp compared to the real thing. He thanked them and then went right on making his movie.<br><br>Omar Sharif, waiting for his Warsaw scene, walked a block away in the city to find a cafe. He went inside one, in full uniform, and saw the shocked looks he got, and apologized and &nbsp;left quickly.

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• KA

  @kathrynmcintosh2726 · 2 years ago

  Hello from Perth Western Australia. An family friend who served in WWII at the fall of Singapore and became an POW. He survived the horror of war and lived a long happy life dying over 100 years old. He kept most things about the war to himself for years and later told his story because it was important for overs to know.

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• MI

  @michaelconway8877 · 2 years ago

  &apos;The Guns of Navarone&apos; (along with &apos;Where Eagles Dare&apos;) &nbsp;is just a brilliant Alistair MacLean yarn spun into gloriously effective cinema. Story-telling at its finest. Do I need to say &apos;in my opinion&apos;?

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• 09

  @09nob · 2 years ago

  Das Boot is such a great and almost unbearably intense film.

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• SE

  @senseiheceta · 2 years ago (edited)

  I don&apos;t know if this has already been mentioned elsewhere among the comments, but in real life David Niven saw action in WW2 as one of the British Commandos. Another British actor who also appeared in Guns of Navarone, Anthony Quayle, was an operative of the Special Operations Executive. Throughout his life, Niven never talked about his experiences as a commando out of respect for those who did not make it back. For his part, Quayle&apos;s experiences behind enemy lines in Albania were so traumatic he refused to ever talk about his time in SOE. These two really fought in the war, in down and dirty missions. They knew firsthand what it was like.

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• JE

  @Jerry_Fried · 2 years ago

  David Niven actually was a commando in WWII.

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• TH

  @Thisandthat8908 · 2 years ago (edited)

  i remember the directors commentary on Das Boot. The director and some actors &nbsp;watched the premiere in the US. And in the beginning is that text &quot;x german sailors &nbsp;served on submarines, x never returned.. And the audience cheered loudly at that. They described how they then thought this premiere and the movie reception would be a complete disaster. &nbsp; But it ended in standing ovations.<br><br>despite the cruelly castrated cut that came into US cinemas.

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