Absolutely love them! And yes the actors got to meet the men they were portraying, at least those who were still alive, and for those who had sadly passed away, family and friends would step in to provide information. Ron Livingston met with Nixon's widow for instance. Though sometimes, frustratingly, the vets were not too eager to talk about their own deeds, the conversation inevitably drifting toward what their buddies had done in this or that situation. I remember watching a video of James Madio (Perconte) having a hard time gleaning information from the real Frank because he'd keep talking about Compton or Lipton or whatever, so James had to go talk to Compton and Lipton to learn stuff about Perconte. And, it added another touch of veracity to the show. One instance I remember hearing was Madio saying how the script had him smoking a cigarette in Ep1 in the scene where Joe Toye is listing all the equipment he's carrying, but through talking with Frank Perconte, Madio learned that he had never touched a cigarette his entire life, so he was very glad to have learned that bit of information, and it was nixed from the script. Michael Cudlitz was another one who had some issues, Randleman not being the loquacious type, answering his questions with grunts and hmms, so it ended up being Randleman's wife who talked with Cudlitz for hours telling him about her husband. And Elie, here's a couple vids you totally should watch (they're all on youtube), beyond the one that was suggested to you a thousand times already. Though you can just watch them for your own entertainment, no need for more reactions, though they'd be great too :) There's an actor boot camp the main cast went through, it's titled "Band of Brothers: Ron Livingston's Complete Bootcamp Video Diary" . HBO gave a camera to Ron Livingston and told him to record as much of the boot camp as he could. Another great one is called (similar title but different from the documentary everyone tells you to watch) "“WE STAND ALONE TOGETHER”: ACTORS' REMINISCENCES ROUNDTABLE" This one is about (some of the) cast talking about their experiences on the show, both before they filmed and during they filmed.
Much of Band of Brothers is fictionalized and this episode is no exception. The camp liberation scenes are completely fictional...Easy Company never liberated a concentration camp. The camp depicted in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV which was actually liberated on April 27, 1945 by the 12th Armored Division with some units of the 101st arriving on April 28 and Easy Company arriving for a few hours on April 29.
The juxtaposition of Nix and the woman in this episode is a master class by both actors and director of conveying so much without one word said. The physical acting is just exceptional.
Many of the concentration camp prisoners were played by late-stage cancer patients. Many died between the filming of the episode and its broadcast. The actor playing the "helpful prisoner", was played by Anglo-Swiss actor Anatole Taubman. He's a guy to keep an eye out for. He's won multiple awards and speaks eight languages, some of which with enough fluency he can pretend to be a native. He's also Jewish, and jumped at the chance to play this role because he lost family to the Holocaust, Lewis Nixon was a hardcore alcoholic by the end of the war.
It’s a masterpiece of an episode. The first half of the episode everyone is(rightfully so) thinking of all they have personally sacrificed and kind of feeling sorry for themselves a little(again, rightfully so) and wondering why they have had to sacrifice so much. The second half comes and shows them all exactly why they all have sacrificed so much. Great reaction my friend.
Check out Ron Livingston's video diary of the boot camp the actors were put through. It was one of the main reasons, besides being skilled at their craft, they were so believable in their rolls. In addition, they did get to meet the surviving Easy Company vets and learn about the soldiers they were portraying.
"I wonder if that's a nod to 'Schindler's List' right there... with the woman wearing the red top, and that's a nod to the young girl... wearing red." I'm pretty sure it must be, and I think it's a great catch on your part. I've watched literally dozens of RUclips reactions to this particular Band of Brothers episode and have never seen another reactor comment on this. Moreover you did so even before the reveal that the episode would focus on the Holocaust. Well done sir.
There are various interviews available on RUclips of the actors talking about their experiences preparing for the production, and their experiences afterward. Some of the actors were able to meet the individuals they would be portraying, and some of the actors had to draw strongly on the recollections of family and friends because the person they were portraying had died, either during the war or in the years afterward. Consistently, the actors express deep respect for the servicemen portrayed in the production, and the actors express gratitude at the opportunity and at how their lives were changed afterward.
@@dondumitru7093 What was interesting is that the actors got more information from the comrades of the people that they played. The individuals never blew their own trumpets.
You missed Michael Fassbender at 11:16 in your video teasing O'Keefe for sitting on his bayonet. The most amazing thing of this show is ALL the now known but at the time unknown actors in this series. Their American accents are all really good for each region they are from. Damian Lewis (Winters) has such a good American accent that when he did an American tv show in the States they all thought he was doing a bad English accent.
Yes! And the actor playing Liebgott is Scottish. Since the series was shot in England, and it was about a 9 month time commitment, many of the cast were English, Irish or Scottish. Every one of them has a fantastic American accent.
I'm quite certain that the town folk in most of these towns next to these camps had to have some idea of what was going on there. The question is what do you do about it. If you're going to speak out against your government you may end up in one of those camps yourself or worse, simply shot. And then I'm sure there are some individuals who were okay with the camps because they had been told that the Jews were responsible for the downfall of Germany during and after the first World War. And then there's probably another segment that knew that there was this military camp on the outskirts of the town and simply didn't want to know, it's better simply to ignore what goes on out there and go on with your daily life. Personally speaking I think the chance of anyone not knowing that the camp existed at all is probably zero. It's just the length of your personal knowledge as to what goes on there and whether you're willing to be comfortable with that or whether you just choose to ignore it. The camp depicted here is part of Kaufering complex in Landsberg (Kaufering IV I think to be exact). These were laborers for the Messerschmitt company that I believe we're being tasked to provide labor for the building of the Messerschmitt 262 fighter at the end of the war. Prisoners were forced to work at the Lagerlechfeld airfield, in road construction, and on the bunker Walnuss II until Kaufering IV was converted into a "sick camp", where prisoners were sent to die after they could no longer work anymore. My apologies if I don't have this all absolutely correct but I believe this is accurate and I do know that this camp was very small compared with some of the outs and out death camps.
When even Speirs looks shocked, you know sh*t is BAD! And Perconte wasn't forgetting O'Keefe's name, he was just messing with him, but once they got to the camp, he knew the time for joking around was over.
You have to watch the videos of the 20th Anniversary symposium they held at the WWII museum in 2022. Some of the writers, directors, producers, and actors from BoB held some panels. And you learn so much from them. They talk about the Easy men, what they did to really bring the series to life. And the surviving family members of some of the men also sit with the actors who played their fathers or grandfathers. It’s really powerful and really really brings a whole new dimension and appreciation for the show. I highly recommend for all fans of BoB.
The picture of the German officer that Nixon broke had a black ribbon on it, probably a sign of mourning. The Woman is probably his widow. I'm sure there were people who knew about nearby camps. There were also a lot of people who made an effort not to know too much about what was being done for fear of being caught up in the machinery of oppression. People on the allied side also knew there was such a thing as concentration camps, but few understood how horrific the camps had become. Even those in positions of authority who received fairly complete and accurate reports about the extermination camps couldn't believe the reports were true.
There are podcast per episode for the 20th anniversary with cast - they speak of their interaction with some of the veterans , esp . John Hughes and Damien Lewis and some who didn’t have interactions like Nixon and Liebgott
There's some confusion over whether or not Liebgott was actually Jewish. Liebgott's parents were both Austrian immigrants and were both Catholic. Liebgott's mother may or may not have been Jewish, because her maiden name was Zimmerman, but if she was Jewish, she had converted to Catholicism at some point. Liebgott himself was raised Catholic, and his children are all Catholic (they were contacted after the series was released). The Liebgott is Jewish thing started because some of the Easy Company veterans had believed that Liebgott was Jewish, for whatever reason. So their recollections of him being Jewish made it into the book, and then ultimately into the miniseries. He passed away in 1992, so he wasn't around to set the record straight when Ambrose was writing the book. And Ambrose apparently never found or contacted Liebgott's family. Anyway, just figured I'd pass that bit of trivia along.
A memoir from a survivor mentions how she and other prisoners would be marched out to do digging near a town - the townspeople saw them and looked away.
Many of the actors were able to meet the men and families they played but they found the men rarely willing to talk about their war. They found out going to Wild Bill and he had a thousand Toye and Babe stories but he was redisent to talk about his own war. You want to know about Bill? Check with Babe or Malarkey. Don't ask Malarkey about what he did, but Lipton or Swifty would gladly tell you everything! Lots of time their own families knew less than anybody. As was it was with lots of soldiers they just didn’t want to talk about the war.
Elie is like Buscemi in Sopranos - working long hours delivering laundry, then working on his own stuff in the evening. Hoping it turns out better than it did for Tony B! :)
When the prisoner carrying the corpse speaks the subtitles say "Speaking German" He is speaking a Slavic language, probably Serbian or Bosnian. The actor playing this part is Bosnian.
As far as townspeople "knowing what was going on". They certainly would have known the camp was there - soldiers from the camp coming into town, the camp buying supplies from townspeople, the railroad having a stop for the camp, etc. But the camp would not have been giving tours to explain to the locals all of the things that the camp was doing, so the types of prisoners in the camp and the why and the how of the camp would have been more rumors for the townspeople as opposed to known facts. And "willful ignorance" of course.
When I watch this episode, the women’s camp thing gets me every time. And the acting is so good: you can see all the guys go cold. They don’t need to say a word.
FYI music pre 1930 is in the public domain. No copyright issues. Directors like Stanley Kubrick have used classical music in films since it’s free use (saves money)
The compositions themselves are in the public domain, but the recording of any particular performance might very well still be covered by copyright based on when the performance happened.
Elie, the WWII Museum in New Orleans did a 20th anniversary symposium (delayed two years by Covid) with actors, writers, family members and Dale Dye and his cadre who trained the actors in boot camp. It’s all on RUclips and will answer pretty much all of your questions about the making of the show. Cheers matey!
What strikes me is how Web shouts at the baker for not smelling the camp, when it is obvious that he nor any others from Easy smelled the camp from the town.
It makes sense that the guards would flee (retreat?) to the south. Many German soldiers and units tried to surrender to the Americans, Brits, French, Canadians, Australians, etc. rather than the Soviets. I suspect camp guards would try to surrender individually with no obvious connection to cams and war crimes.
I love the interaction with the woman in the red dress. That LOOK that she gives -- daggers. Her body language was like "How DARE you disrespect my home and the memory of my late husband, you filthy animal!" Lol
For anyone who enjoyed Band of Brothers, I recommend the Ken Burns documentary, The War. The War draws from a lot of the same source material as Band of Brothers and The Pacific, so you will hear some of the same names of individual servicemen. But The War gives a much stronger context for the overall American involvement in WWII, and it includes the recollections of civilians and includes portrayals of life back in the States during the period.
Why are we here? Why do we fight? Because as it turns out, there really is evil in the world. More monstrous evil than anyone had previously imagined, that must be defeated even at great cost. A reveal that's an absolutely essential part of the telling of Easy Company's story, and you instantly and totally understood the setup as well as the payoff. Again, kudos to you.
Still pissed it had to be my country that was abused to do it... why tf did hitler need to have daddy issues man (The main reason he preferred Germany over Austria).
We have come to it at last. Imagine seeing all of the horrors of War that these people have witnessed...Then being speechless seeing this. "Why We Fight" is a nod to the epic Frank Capra WW2 series that was being shown during the War back home. I really believe Spielberg intentionally has the Nazi woman in the vivid red coat as a direct reference and connection to the little Jewish girl in Schindler's List. I don't think there are coincidences in his films...The actors weren't even allowed to see the set until the day of shooting, they wanted to get a genuine reaction from them. While the prisoners were some actual cancer patients who wanted to be a part of this. What shocks me is how surprised most people are reacting to this, having no idea what they were about to see...I think we get so immersed in the characters and immediacy we lose track of the big picture and tragedy. Implore you to see "The Fallen of WW2" for perspective. Never forget.
Great episode and series and now ya got rewatching this series. Also I didn’t know until recently that America has Japanese concentration camps during the pacific war, but I’m sure they werent executing or killing Japanese like that nazis did with the Jews
No, the US did not have death camps. The sole reason why the Nazis created death camps (like Auschwitz) was to "process" thousands of Jews and others every day. A concentration/forced labor camp like the one we see here is disgusting enough, but not designed solely to commit mass executions. BTW, not that it forgives the miserable reality of the Japanese Internment camps, but do you have any idea what the Japanese military did to both Allied POW's and civilians they captured?
In The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel that he enlisted in the army to "kill many Japanese". His wife died in the internment camp while giving birth. It's tragic how Japanese Americans had to do the most to prove their loyalty to the U.S. while their people were kept in camps "as a precaution".
How many Germans knew? How much did they know? Those questions have been debated since the end of the war. Certainly more knew than are willing to admit it!
I show this episode (along with episodes 1&2) to my classes when we’re covering the war. I talk to them about a lot of stuff regarding the rise of the Nazis to power and to spot similarities from then to today, because there has been a dramatic rise in far right regimes in power around the world bordering on fascism again. Hell, Italy voted a fascist in power AGAIN, like they didn’t learn the first time either Mussolini. Trump has directly quoted Hitler in his campaign speeches back in February or March this year. It’s a wild time…regardless, some other points I bring up with the episode. 1) the men in the first half are as you said, so ready for the war to be over, but are angry it’s not. They are sick of it and are completely off-center from their laser focus when they jumped into France. The camp brings them right back into alignment. 2) O’Keefe’s innocence throughout the beginning of the episode is meant to reflect the viewer. We can watch the episodes and empathize with them to a degree, but watching them smile at the summary executions of German soldiers is a bridge too far for most people. Finding the camp really shows O’Keefe in one moment what the rest of the men have been through, and STILL this camp is beyond anything they expected. 3) Perconte not remembering his name was because they hadn’t been through anything together and both survived, so he was giving him shit to rib him on purpose. But the moment they shared a form of trauma, they had that bond and he was one of them worthy of being remembered. 4) Much of the Holocaust happened pre-death camps, which started in 1942. Prior to that, the Nazis had mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen who would follow their armies East. They would round up the Jews in towns throughout Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc., have them dig their own mass grave, then shoot them and have the bodies fall into it. Many of those graves have been found in the last 20-30 years by a priest who took up searching for them after hearing some of the stories. So many mass graves have been found that the number of victims has risen to around 13 million, most of them Jewish victims.
Please be sure to react to the accompanying HBO documentary “We Stand Alone Together,” as it’s a perfect capstone to the miniseries. Lots more interviews from many of the vets (all names revealed) about all the events in the miniseries plus archival footage. They talk about their feelings about looting, commandeering homes, the holocaust, Bastogne including Toye and Guarnere losing their legs. Etc.
this episode recently got even harder for me to watch. I had assumed that the conditions of the inmates was a CG trick. I learned that the inmates were actually cancer patients.
If his mother was Jewish he is Jewish. He may be practicing a different religion but he is still a Jew. Furthermore, the Nazis considered him a Jew and would have considered his kids Jews even if they weren't considered Jewish by Jews (ie mother was not a Jew).
Every single Westerner should have to read the book called Ordinary Men. It's about how nornal every day police officers slowly went to be able to do the atrocities in the concentration camps. Very important book
The actors were deliberately kept away from the concentration camp set until the day they were actually due to film there so their reactions to what they were seeing were more honest.
So the Allies had some awareness of the concentration camps but it was limited and it wasn't really at the forefront of the people's minds as they were more focused on the war in general. The Nazis also did everything they could to hid the true nature of the camps. The existence of the camps was not a secret in German, many Germans would have seen the purges or watched boxcars full of "undesirables" being move across the country. What many did not know was what happened in the camps, most were pretty sure the people in the camps were treated harshly but only a hand fully of the Nazi government knew the true extent of what was being done. That woman in the red coat, she was the widowed wife of a German general(note the black band on the picture). While I'm not sure if he was SS there is a decent chance he was aware of what was going on and likely she knew as well. When the Allied started liberating the camps and when General Eisenhower saw them himself he ordered that the camps be thoroughly recorded and documented so that "no one will ever doubt what had happened here". --- Regarding Nixon's wife divorcing him, it was not an uncommon thing to happen to soldiers during the war. Most of these men were recently married just before getting called up and then spending 2+ years away with letters being the only way to communicate with their loved ones. Because communication was so limited rumors started flying that the men were having affairs overseas or visiting brothels (and many were). This along with that fact that many of these women had to take on full time jobs to provide for their young families and that they might one day receive a letter that their husband was killed, possibly months ago, lead many women to either have affairs themselves or look for new partners outright. This lead to what were known as "Dear John Letters" basically code for I'm leaving you or I'm getting a divorce. These letters were dreaded by soldiers and whenever one was received it caused the soldier to lose morale and become much less effective. It got so bad at one point the US government forbade the wives of soldiers to file for divorce until after the war ended. Now Nixon was one of the cases where he absolutely deserved it as he actually was having an affair with a woman in England.
At this point in the war most German soldiers were looking to surrender to the Americans and British, they knew the Soviets would be out for retribution. The Western Allies already knew Berlin would be in the Soviet sphere of influence after the war, so they saw no need to race to the city and suffer heavy casualties assaulting it. The Soviets suffered over 360,000 casualties capturing Berlin.
I was an Army officer. America takes alot of trash talk and we're not perfect but the Army spends a ridiculous amount of time trying to improve things where we go. It's almost criminal against our Soldiers.
Exactly who knew what about the Holocaust before the liberation of the camps is the subject of some debate and discussion. Generally, Europeans could not fail to notice that the Jewish population was disappearing all over the place. Americans were of course more insulated from that reality, although Hitler’s hatred of the Jews was extremely public and there were certainly rumors of this and that swirling around. In towns closer to the camps, certainly people would have known more or less what was happening, although the exact details may not have been widely known. But it is also important to note that before the engineering of the “final solution,” Hitler and the other Nazi leaders tested the willingness of ordinary people to kill Jews. Hundreds were slaughtered, simply shot in the woods and buried in mass graves. It was not a sustainable method, for various reasons, but it told Hitler that he had a population which was perfectly willing to allow Jews to die and even to do some of the killing. There had already been a culture of antisemitism in Europe for centuries before this, so to some extent people were conditioned to look down on Jews. One of the most sinister things about the Holocaust is the way it was engineered, to maximize the efficiency of murder.
I'll preface this by saying that I absolutely love this show, but I get a tad annoyed by the whole 'Winters talks while eating' bit. It's in Episodes 3, 7 and 9 and I'm not convinced that Mr. Lewis needed to deliver lines while chewing or slurping. It makes Winters seem uncouth and unmannered and doesn't seem to fit with the rest of his portrayal.
Ordinary soldiers didn’t know but the generals knew and Roosevelt and Churchill knew. Did the townspeople know? They must have. Or did they think it’s only the Jews?
Hope you guys are enjoying the uploads! ❤
Absolutely love them! And yes the actors got to meet the men they were portraying, at least those who were still alive, and for those who had sadly passed away, family and friends would step in to provide information. Ron Livingston met with Nixon's widow for instance. Though sometimes, frustratingly, the vets were not too eager to talk about their own deeds, the conversation inevitably drifting toward what their buddies had done in this or that situation. I remember watching a video of James Madio (Perconte) having a hard time gleaning information from the real Frank because he'd keep talking about Compton or Lipton or whatever, so James had to go talk to Compton and Lipton to learn stuff about Perconte. And, it added another touch of veracity to the show. One instance I remember hearing was Madio saying how the script had him smoking a cigarette in Ep1 in the scene where Joe Toye is listing all the equipment he's carrying, but through talking with Frank Perconte, Madio learned that he had never touched a cigarette his entire life, so he was very glad to have learned that bit of information, and it was nixed from the script.
Michael Cudlitz was another one who had some issues, Randleman not being the loquacious type, answering his questions with grunts and hmms, so it ended up being Randleman's wife who talked with Cudlitz for hours telling him about her husband.
And Elie, here's a couple vids you totally should watch (they're all on youtube), beyond the one that was suggested to you a thousand times already. Though you can just watch them for your own entertainment, no need for more reactions, though they'd be great too :)
There's an actor boot camp the main cast went through, it's titled "Band of Brothers: Ron Livingston's Complete Bootcamp Video Diary" . HBO gave a camera to Ron Livingston and told him to record as much of the boot camp as he could.
Another great one is called (similar title but different from the documentary everyone tells you to watch) "“WE STAND ALONE TOGETHER”: ACTORS' REMINISCENCES ROUNDTABLE"
This one is about (some of the) cast talking about their experiences on the show, both before they filmed and during they filmed.
Much of Band of Brothers is fictionalized and this episode is no exception. The camp liberation scenes are completely fictional...Easy Company never liberated a concentration camp. The camp depicted in Band of Brothers is Kaufering IV which was actually liberated on April 27, 1945 by the 12th Armored Division with some units of the 101st arriving on April 28 and Easy Company arriving for a few hours on April 29.
The juxtaposition of Nix and the woman in this episode is a master class by both actors and director of conveying so much without one word said. The physical acting is just exceptional.
“It’s not even a show, it’s an experience….”….tremendous line (thanks for sharing)
Many of the concentration camp prisoners were played by late-stage cancer patients. Many died between the filming of the episode and its broadcast.
The actor playing the "helpful prisoner", was played by Anglo-Swiss actor Anatole Taubman. He's a guy to keep an eye out for. He's won multiple awards and speaks eight languages, some of which with enough fluency he can pretend to be a native. He's also Jewish, and jumped at the chance to play this role because he lost family to the Holocaust,
Lewis Nixon was a hardcore alcoholic by the end of the war.
It’s a masterpiece of an episode. The first half of the episode everyone is(rightfully so) thinking of all they have personally sacrificed and kind of feeling sorry for themselves a little(again, rightfully so) and wondering why they have had to sacrifice so much. The second half comes and shows them all exactly why they all have sacrificed so much.
Great reaction my friend.
No matter how many times I see this episode it never gets any easier
Tom Hardy (Janovic) was giving Spiers a double salute.😼
Check out Ron Livingston's video diary of the boot camp the actors were put through. It was one of the main reasons, besides being skilled at their craft, they were so believable in their rolls. In addition, they did get to meet the surviving Easy Company vets and learn about the soldiers they were portraying.
"I wonder if that's a nod to 'Schindler's List' right there... with the woman wearing the red top, and that's a nod to the young girl... wearing red." I'm pretty sure it must be, and I think it's a great catch on your part. I've watched literally dozens of RUclips reactions to this particular Band of Brothers episode and have never seen another reactor comment on this. Moreover you did so even before the reveal that the episode would focus on the Holocaust. Well done sir.
Yes, the actors did get to meet the men they were portraying.
There are various interviews available on RUclips of the actors talking about their experiences preparing for the production, and their experiences afterward. Some of the actors were able to meet the individuals they would be portraying, and some of the actors had to draw strongly on the recollections of family and friends because the person they were portraying had died, either during the war or in the years afterward.
Consistently, the actors express deep respect for the servicemen portrayed in the production, and the actors express gratitude at the opportunity and at how their lives were changed afterward.
@@dondumitru7093 What was interesting is that the actors got more information from the comrades of the people that they played. The individuals never blew their own trumpets.
You missed Michael Fassbender at 11:16 in your video teasing O'Keefe for sitting on his bayonet.
The most amazing thing of this show is ALL the now known but at the time unknown actors in this series. Their American accents are all really good for each region they are from. Damian Lewis (Winters) has such a good American accent that when he did an American tv show in the States they all thought he was doing a bad English accent.
In fact over half the members of Easy Company were UK/Irish actors--fabulous vocal coaching.
Yes! And the actor playing Liebgott is Scottish. Since the series was shot in England, and it was about a 9 month time commitment, many of the cast were English, Irish or Scottish. Every one of them has a fantastic American accent.
I'm quite certain that the town folk in most of these towns next to these camps had to have some idea of what was going on there. The question is what do you do about it. If you're going to speak out against your government you may end up in one of those camps yourself or worse, simply shot. And then I'm sure there are some individuals who were okay with the camps because they had been told that the Jews were responsible for the downfall of Germany during and after the first World War. And then there's probably another segment that knew that there was this military camp on the outskirts of the town and simply didn't want to know, it's better simply to ignore what goes on out there and go on with your daily life. Personally speaking I think the chance of anyone not knowing that the camp existed at all is probably zero. It's just the length of your personal knowledge as to what goes on there and whether you're willing to be comfortable with that or whether you just choose to ignore it.
The camp depicted here is part of Kaufering complex in Landsberg (Kaufering IV I think to be exact). These were laborers for the Messerschmitt company that I believe we're being tasked to provide labor for the building of the Messerschmitt 262 fighter at the end of the war. Prisoners were forced to work at the Lagerlechfeld airfield, in road construction, and on the bunker Walnuss II until Kaufering IV was converted into a "sick camp", where prisoners were sent to die after they could no longer work anymore. My apologies if I don't have this all absolutely correct but I believe this is accurate and I do know that this camp was very small compared with some of the outs and out death camps.
When even Speirs looks shocked, you know sh*t is BAD!
And Perconte wasn't forgetting O'Keefe's name, he was just messing with him, but once they got to the camp, he knew the time for joking around was over.
You have to watch the videos of the 20th Anniversary symposium they held at the WWII museum in 2022. Some of the writers, directors, producers, and actors from BoB held some panels. And you learn so much from them. They talk about the Easy men, what they did to really bring the series to life. And the surviving family members of some of the men also sit with the actors who played their fathers or grandfathers. It’s really powerful and really really brings a whole new dimension and appreciation for the show. I highly recommend for all fans of BoB.
The picture of the German officer that Nixon broke had a black ribbon on it, probably a sign of mourning. The Woman is probably his widow.
I'm sure there were people who knew about nearby camps. There were also a lot of people who made an effort not to know too much about what was being done for fear of being caught up in the machinery of oppression. People on the allied side also knew there was such a thing as concentration camps, but few understood how horrific the camps had become. Even those in positions of authority who received fairly complete and accurate reports about the extermination camps couldn't believe the reports were true.
Yes, the black ribbon on the photo of the German officer means that the person has died.
In the credits she is billed as the "German Widow" The actress's name is suzanne roquette. She passed away in 2020 age about 78
I've always thought the final shot of the musician closing the violin case was akin to the shutting of a coffin.
There are podcast per episode for the 20th anniversary with cast - they speak of their interaction with some of the veterans , esp . John Hughes and Damien Lewis and some who didn’t have interactions like Nixon and Liebgott
There's some confusion over whether or not Liebgott was actually Jewish. Liebgott's parents were both Austrian immigrants and were both Catholic. Liebgott's mother may or may not have been Jewish, because her maiden name was Zimmerman, but if she was Jewish, she had converted to Catholicism at some point. Liebgott himself was raised Catholic, and his children are all Catholic (they were contacted after the series was released). The Liebgott is Jewish thing started because some of the Easy Company veterans had believed that Liebgott was Jewish, for whatever reason. So their recollections of him being Jewish made it into the book, and then ultimately into the miniseries. He passed away in 1992, so he wasn't around to set the record straight when Ambrose was writing the book. And Ambrose apparently never found or contacted Liebgott's family. Anyway, just figured I'd pass that bit of trivia along.
A memoir from a survivor mentions how she and other prisoners would be marched out to do digging near a town - the townspeople saw them and looked away.
Many of the actors were able to meet the men and families they played but they found the men rarely willing to talk about their war. They found out going to Wild Bill and he had a thousand Toye and Babe stories but he was redisent to talk about his own war. You want to know about Bill? Check with Babe or Malarkey. Don't ask Malarkey about what he did, but Lipton or Swifty would gladly tell you everything! Lots of time their own families knew less than anybody. As was it was with lots of soldiers they just didn’t want to talk about the war.
Elie is like Buscemi in Sopranos - working long hours delivering laundry, then working on his own stuff in the evening. Hoping it turns out better than it did for Tony B! :)
When the prisoner carrying the corpse speaks the subtitles say "Speaking German" He is speaking a Slavic language, probably Serbian or Bosnian. The actor playing this part is Bosnian.
As far as townspeople "knowing what was going on". They certainly would have known the camp was there - soldiers from the camp coming into town, the camp buying supplies from townspeople, the railroad having a stop for the camp, etc. But the camp would not have been giving tours to explain to the locals all of the things that the camp was doing, so the types of prisoners in the camp and the why and the how of the camp would have been more rumors for the townspeople as opposed to known facts. And "willful ignorance" of course.
Don't forget the straight up order most people were given NOT to investigate and to ignore.
When I watch this episode, the women’s camp thing gets me every time. And the acting is so good: you can see all the guys go cold. They don’t need to say a word.
FYI music pre 1930 is in the public domain. No copyright issues. Directors like Stanley Kubrick have used classical music in films since it’s free use (saves money)
The compositions themselves are in the public domain, but the recording of any particular performance might very well still be covered by copyright based on when the performance happened.
Elie, the WWII Museum in New Orleans did a 20th anniversary symposium (delayed two years by Covid) with actors, writers, family members and Dale Dye and his cadre who trained the actors in boot camp. It’s all on RUclips and will answer pretty much all of your questions about the making of the show. Cheers matey!
What strikes me is how Web shouts at the baker for not smelling the camp, when it is obvious that he nor any others from Easy smelled the camp from the town.
Easy Company probably thought that's just how the locals stank. Lol jk jk
I always put this into two parts. The whoa to me and the why was I whining.
It makes sense that the guards would flee (retreat?) to the south. Many German soldiers and units tried to surrender to the Americans, Brits, French, Canadians, Australians, etc. rather than the Soviets. I suspect camp guards would try to surrender individually with no obvious connection to cams and war crimes.
I love the interaction with the woman in the red dress. That LOOK that she gives -- daggers. Her body language was like "How DARE you disrespect my home and the memory of my late husband, you filthy animal!" Lol
Yea great facial acting from both. Nixon was not having any of it
Was it just two weeks ago?
Getting ready for Episode 1,
“”Let’s have some fun with this…””
“This will be interesting.”
Hello, after Episode ten, be sure to watch both of the documentaries.
For anyone who enjoyed Band of Brothers, I recommend the Ken Burns documentary, The War. The War draws from a lot of the same source material as Band of Brothers and The Pacific, so you will hear some of the same names of individual servicemen. But The War gives a much stronger context for the overall American involvement in WWII, and it includes the recollections of civilians and includes portrayals of life back in the States during the period.
Why are we here? Why do we fight? Because as it turns out, there really is evil in the world. More monstrous evil than anyone had previously imagined, that must be defeated even at great cost. A reveal that's an absolutely essential part of the telling of Easy Company's story, and you instantly and totally understood the setup as well as the payoff. Again, kudos to you.
Still pissed it had to be my country that was abused to do it... why tf did hitler need to have daddy issues man (The main reason he preferred Germany over Austria).
Bless your work. The Pacific has more family time but the combat is more disjoint and grittier.
If you want to react to a different side of Nixon, do Office Space...hilarious😂
I'm pretty sure Beethoven doesn't care about copyrights anymore :)
We have come to it at last. Imagine seeing all of the horrors of War that these people have witnessed...Then being speechless seeing this. "Why We Fight" is a nod to the epic Frank Capra WW2 series that was being shown during the War back home. I really believe Spielberg intentionally has the Nazi woman in the vivid red coat as a direct reference and connection to the little Jewish girl in Schindler's List. I don't think there are coincidences in his films...The actors weren't even allowed to see the set until the day of shooting, they wanted to get a genuine reaction from them. While the prisoners were some actual cancer patients who wanted to be a part of this. What shocks me is how surprised most people are reacting to this, having no idea what they were about to see...I think we get so immersed in the characters and immediacy we lose track of the big picture and tragedy. Implore you to see "The Fallen of WW2" for perspective. Never forget.
Great episode and series and now ya got rewatching this series.
Also I didn’t know until recently that America has Japanese concentration camps during the pacific war, but I’m sure they werent executing or killing Japanese like that nazis did with the Jews
No, the US did not have death camps. The sole reason why the Nazis created death camps (like Auschwitz) was to "process" thousands of Jews and others every day. A concentration/forced labor camp like the one we see here is disgusting enough, but not designed solely to commit mass executions. BTW, not that it forgives the miserable reality of the Japanese Internment camps, but do you have any idea what the Japanese military did to both Allied POW's and civilians they captured?
In The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel that he enlisted in the army to "kill many Japanese". His wife died in the internment camp while giving birth. It's tragic how Japanese Americans had to do the most to prove their loyalty to the U.S. while their people were kept in camps "as a precaution".
IIRC the Ken Burns documentary The War does include information on the concentration camps operated by the US to hold Americans of Japanese decent.
How many Germans knew? How much did they know? Those questions have been debated since the end of the war. Certainly more knew than are willing to admit it!
The actor who plays Winters was in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Not a big part, but a good movie.
love that movie! Have the 4K steelbook!
@@eliemoses He plays Steve McQueen at the Playboy Mansion party.
He was great in Homeland and as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall. And some HP trivia...he was married to Mrs Malfoy (RIP Helen McCrory😢)
I show this episode (along with episodes 1&2) to my classes when we’re covering the war. I talk to them about a lot of stuff regarding the rise of the Nazis to power and to spot similarities from then to today, because there has been a dramatic rise in far right regimes in power around the world bordering on fascism again. Hell, Italy voted a fascist in power AGAIN, like they didn’t learn the first time either Mussolini. Trump has directly quoted Hitler in his campaign speeches back in February or March this year. It’s a wild time…regardless, some other points I bring up with the episode.
1) the men in the first half are as you said, so ready for the war to be over, but are angry it’s not. They are sick of it and are completely off-center from their laser focus when they jumped into France. The camp brings them right back into alignment.
2) O’Keefe’s innocence throughout the beginning of the episode is meant to reflect the viewer. We can watch the episodes and empathize with them to a degree, but watching them smile at the summary executions of German soldiers is a bridge too far for most people. Finding the camp really shows O’Keefe in one moment what the rest of the men have been through, and STILL this camp is beyond anything they expected.
3) Perconte not remembering his name was because they hadn’t been through anything together and both survived, so he was giving him shit to rib him on purpose. But the moment they shared a form of trauma, they had that bond and he was one of them worthy of being remembered.
4) Much of the Holocaust happened pre-death camps, which started in 1942. Prior to that, the Nazis had mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen who would follow their armies East. They would round up the Jews in towns throughout Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc., have them dig their own mass grave, then shoot them and have the bodies fall into it.
Many of those graves have been found in the last 20-30 years by a priest who took up searching for them after hearing some of the stories. So many mass graves have been found that the number of victims has risen to around 13 million, most of them Jewish victims.
Please be sure to react to the accompanying HBO documentary “We Stand Alone Together,” as it’s a perfect capstone to the miniseries. Lots more interviews from many of the vets (all names revealed) about all the events in the miniseries plus archival footage. They talk about their feelings about looting, commandeering homes, the holocaust, Bastogne including Toye and Guarnere losing their legs. Etc.
this episode recently got even harder for me to watch. I had assumed that the conditions of the inmates was a CG trick. I learned that the inmates were actually cancer patients.
Another thing they got wrong was Leibgott was not Jewish. His mother was Jewish but he was raised Roman Catholic like his father.
Even during training they thought Leibgott was Jewish and he wasn't above letting others think so as it got him Saturday off.
If his mother was Jewish he is Jewish. He may be practicing a different religion but he is still a Jew. Furthermore, the Nazis considered him a Jew and would have considered his kids Jews even if they weren't considered Jewish by Jews (ie mother was not a Jew).
Every single Westerner should have to read the book called Ordinary Men. It's about how nornal every day police officers slowly went to be able to do the atrocities in the concentration camps. Very important book
The actors were deliberately kept away from the concentration camp set until the day they were actually due to film there so their reactions to what they were seeing were more honest.
I always feel so fuckin awful for Liebgot having to tell those poor people they couldn't leave.
Even though I know that in reality, Easy was not one of the companies that liberated a camp.
If anyone questioned what the military was doing they would have been shot . We had no idea this was going on
So the Allies had some awareness of the concentration camps but it was limited and it wasn't really at the forefront of the people's minds as they were more focused on the war in general. The Nazis also did everything they could to hid the true nature of the camps. The existence of the camps was not a secret in German, many Germans would have seen the purges or watched boxcars full of "undesirables" being move across the country. What many did not know was what happened in the camps, most were pretty sure the people in the camps were treated harshly but only a hand fully of the Nazi government knew the true extent of what was being done.
That woman in the red coat, she was the widowed wife of a German general(note the black band on the picture). While I'm not sure if he was SS there is a decent chance he was aware of what was going on and likely she knew as well.
When the Allied started liberating the camps and when General Eisenhower saw them himself he ordered that the camps be thoroughly recorded and documented so that "no one will ever doubt what had happened here".
---
Regarding Nixon's wife divorcing him, it was not an uncommon thing to happen to soldiers during the war. Most of these men were recently married just before getting called up and then spending 2+ years away with letters being the only way to communicate with their loved ones. Because communication was so limited rumors started flying that the men were having affairs overseas or visiting brothels (and many were).
This along with that fact that many of these women had to take on full time jobs to provide for their young families and that they might one day receive a letter that their husband was killed, possibly months ago, lead many women to either have affairs themselves or look for new partners outright.
This lead to what were known as "Dear John Letters" basically code for I'm leaving you or I'm getting a divorce. These letters were dreaded by soldiers and whenever one was received it caused the soldier to lose morale and become much less effective. It got so bad at one point the US government forbade the wives of soldiers to file for divorce until after the war ended.
Now Nixon was one of the cases where he absolutely deserved it as he actually was having an affair with a woman in England.
At this point in the war most German soldiers were looking to surrender to the Americans and British, they knew the Soviets would be out for retribution. The Western Allies already knew Berlin would be in the Soviet sphere of influence after the war, so they saw no need to race to the city and suffer heavy casualties assaulting it. The Soviets suffered over 360,000 casualties capturing Berlin.
Just a little work camp. The healthy prisoners.
Music by Beethoven and other classical composers is public domain so you're good.
I was an Army officer. America takes alot of trash talk and we're not perfect but the Army spends a ridiculous amount of time trying to improve things where we go. It's almost criminal against our Soldiers.
Exactly who knew what about the Holocaust before the liberation of the camps is the subject of some debate and discussion. Generally, Europeans could not fail to notice that the Jewish population was disappearing all over the place. Americans were of course more insulated from that reality, although Hitler’s hatred of the Jews was extremely public and there were certainly rumors of this and that swirling around.
In towns closer to the camps, certainly people would have known more or less what was happening, although the exact details may not have been widely known.
But it is also important to note that before the engineering of the “final solution,” Hitler and the other Nazi leaders tested the willingness of ordinary people to kill Jews. Hundreds were slaughtered, simply shot in the woods and buried in mass graves. It was not a sustainable method, for various reasons, but it told Hitler that he had a population which was perfectly willing to allow Jews to die and even to do some of the killing. There had already been a culture of antisemitism in Europe for centuries before this, so to some extent people were conditioned to look down on Jews.
One of the most sinister things about the Holocaust is the way it was engineered, to maximize the efficiency of murder.
The fella in the photo was Wehrmacht, not SS, regular German army
Look upon Socialism and remember the Nazis for who they are
Wait what? Laboring? I thought you were a lawyer. Didnt you show us a diploma or somethin?
He was just sitting around at the work site with Patsy, Vito, and Little Paulie. Lol
Side quests
@@joseortega7815 hahaha
@@eliemoses lol I'm not sure what that means but hell yea man! Nothing wrong with physically hard work!
I'll preface this by saying that I absolutely love this show, but I get a tad annoyed by the whole 'Winters talks while eating' bit. It's in Episodes 3, 7 and 9 and I'm not convinced that Mr. Lewis needed to deliver lines while chewing or slurping. It makes Winters seem uncouth and unmannered and doesn't seem to fit with the rest of his portrayal.
Can we please watch “The Blacklist “???? At least try episode 1…. Please help us out homie!!! We need it in our lives!!!
Ordinary soldiers didn’t know but the generals knew and Roosevelt and Churchill knew.
Did the townspeople know? They must have.
Or did they think it’s only the Jews?
Not exactly!
The woman had a framed picture of her husband, whom we see in episode 10.
The picture is of her deceased husband, as denoted by the black ribbon.
I thought that but there was a black ribbon on his picture frame denoting he was dead so now I am just confused as to exactly who was who.
No, we never see him. He's a Wehrmacht colonel (regular German Army, not SS) and the black ribbon indicates he already died.
my bad; I thought I'd found this in imdb once, but imdb does not mention the model for the photo.
Yessss broooo!