Generation War on Netflix - Exceptional

I almost watched it last night. I'll definitely watch it now.

Yeah, I need to re-watch this.

Always interesting to see things from the German perspective, especially the reluctant "everyday" German. I'm reading Ken Follett's 20th century trilogy which includes a good dose of that... albeit from German nobility mostly.

It is my favorite film piece of any kind done on WWII, and that includes Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, The Pianist, Patton, Memphis Belle, U-571, Tora, Band of Brothers, etc.

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I love alternative perspective pieces. One of my favorite books, Shattered Sword, is a Japanese account of Midway. It's fantastic and really shows a different side of the conflict.

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Shattered Sword really showed you how unprepared and unrealistic the Japanese were for a sustained war with the US.

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Shattered Sword really showed you how unprepared and unrealistic the Japanese were for a sustained war with the US.

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Agree and disagree.

Could Japan ever win a sustained encounter against the US? Absolutely not, as you saw in Shattered Sword. However, the book also showed just how incredibly close they came to truly crippling our Navy. Had that happened, could I imagine a world where conceid some territory like the Philippines? Maybe. If nothing else it could have taken us years to catchup.

If Japan had adhered to their core principles of combined attacks and all-out aggression, we could have been in deep shite. Their plan was solid they just failed two execute in two incredibly glaring areas:

1. The failed third strike on Pearl Harbor. It's been brought up a thousand times, but Yamamoto cursed until his dying day the decision not the send the third wave. This wave was designed to hit our sub stations and fuel depots. This was a critical failure.

WWII was a turning point for so many aspects of war, none other than Naval tactics. Pre-WWII, battleships and heavy guns were the true mark of a fleet. As WWII began, there was a division between the future balance of power. Japan failed to recognize the importance of strike forces and submarines' part in these units, and it cost them dearly.

There are (somewhat unsubstantiated) reports of Nimitz getting to Pearl Harbor to inspect the damage and saying to those close to him that it really wasn't that bad. He couldn't say this publicly, but he was a man who understand the changes in Naval warfare. He knew Halsey had our carriers at sea, and our subs were fine so the battleships were more ceremonial in nature.

2. Failure to delay their definitive battle at sea until they had the combined resources of the Kido Butai. Every Japanese text stressed the importance of combined engagements and numerical superiority and in one of their country's most pivotal moments they go to war with less than their full strength? This is to this day one of the most baffling things in military history IMO.

I can understand the thought process behind haunting the third wave. I'd like to think I would have gone for it, but they had lost the element of surprise. The US did have fighters in the air. It was atleast a defensible decision. Not delaying the encounter at Midway is the most absurd undiscussed move in military history.

The Japanese are very smart individuals. They scripted all these encounters. They scripted the Midway encounter and one of their captains flipped the script and engaged in a tactic very similar to what the US did. This lead to overwhelming losses in their simulation yet they still moved forward. There was no time specific reason to do so. It's one of the greatest mysteries in history. They simply bought hook line and sinker into their own superiority, and it bit them in the arse.

Lastly, one of the most interesting aspects of the book (IMO) was when they talked about vectoring their search patrol. I think this is such a hard concept for people nowadays to grasp as we're so used to GPS and being able to locate anything at a moment's notice. It's so hard to explain how vast an ocean conflict is. These battle units were so intimately linked to something as essentially random as hide and seek and who can find who first. Fighter squadrons would lose ships. They'd attack the same ship multiple times instead of spreading out the damage. It was such random madness that I think it's hard for us to appreciate that these days. Shattered Sword did a great job of depicting that.

Excellent gut-wrenching series

Really excellent series. Finished it last night and one of those show I wish didn't have to end. Probably the best war movie or series I've seen.

It's awesome!!

It was well done from a production standpoint, but I didn't love it.

To me, it felt a bit maudlin.