Who or what are your most--and least--favorite...

-Heroes, generals, and other public figures? - Well, that's a tough one. While I don't like Patton on a personal level I recognize that he was the right man for the job he did and was excellent at it, and it was precisely what we needed. I greatly admire Admiral Nimitz, especially considering he started the war with only a handful of carriers and scraps left over from Pearl Harbor and managed to really hammer it home to the Japanese. While I don't agree with his politics I have to greatly admire the piloting skill of German Stuka pilot Hans Rudel, who was a terror in his outdated plane. Saburu Sakai, a noted Japanese fighter ace, was definitely one of the more fascinating pilots on the other side. The man flew over Guadalcanal, got his right eye shot out of his head by the tailgunner of an SBD Dauntless dive bomber, and still flew several hundred miles back to Rabaul and landed successfully. That is a feat few people could accomplish. He made a vow never to harm a living thing again after the war. I read he eventually met the tailgunner later in life that had hit his plane (and his eye) and there's a picture around the web somewhere I saw of it. Fascinating stuff...

-Battles and events? - I have always loved studying the early Pacific Theater portion of the war when the Allies were on particularly treacherous footing but still managed to hold out and win the big ones. If I had to pick a "favorite" battle it would be Midway. It was an incredible string of good Fortune that favored the US in that battle and Providence was definitely looking over our shoulder. The German's initial war push (Poland, the low countries, France, etc.) has always fascinated me, especially that Hitler was able to absorb so much before anyone even fired a shot. Quite a bit to learn from that's still applicable today and well into the future.

-Songs? The big band music of the day was good stuff. And of course the Andrews Sisters.

-Books? - That's a huge category in and of itself. Cornelius Ryan's "trilogy" were fantastic (The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, and The Last Battle). Stephen Ambrose wrote some great books on the topic (Band of Brothers is particularly good). Somewhere I have a copy of Schirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich that I've always meant to dig into but have never gotten around to doing. Mayhap I should slide that one up on the priority scale, eh? I've been looking to get my mitts on Hans Rudel's Stuka Pilot. The Stuka was an excellent dive bomber, although easy prey for enemy fighters, and Rudel racked up an impressive list of kills despite his plane being so antiquated.

-Movies? - If you've never seen it I would strongly recommend watching the HBO produced miniseries Band of Brothers. It has top notch acting and pulls no punches on what it was like for paratroopers in the Airborne. Saving Private Ryan was also an excellent production, although one I can't watch very often (it's just too much). I've long been a fan of the film Tora, Tora, Tora as well...much better than Pearl Harbor was. Also one to watch for is Battle of Britain starring Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer, as well as Sink the Bismarck and The Battle of the Bulge. The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far were both adaptations of Cornelius Ryan's books and were both excellent films (definitely top 10) which had all-star ensemble casts. They don't make movies like those anymore!

If you can find a copy you'll definitely want to get or rent a copy of Frank Capra's classic Why We Fight series. There were 7 films in all and Capra took his gifted approach to movies and used it to show how Hitler and Mussolini came to power seemingly under the free worlds noses. Most people know Capra better for the film he made immediately after the war; It's a Wonderful Life.

Yesterday my 3 years old little sister asked me to explain WWII to her

I wasn't quite sure what to say, eventually I basically told her the Adolf Hitler was a "bad man" (a concept she understands) who wanted to hurts lots of people and tell everybody what to do, America didn't want a bad man telling them what to do so a lot of the Daddies went of to fight Adolf Hitler and they were very brave and protected their little girls (also a concept she understands).

Then she wanted to know if our Dad (who is in his early 50's)fought Adolf "Hateler" as she called him.

If it's possible to "like" anything about a war, for me, the fact that a 3 year can understand why we went to war is comforting it's really a simple concept: A bad man wanted to hurt people and tell us what to do, so all the brave men went off and stopped him.

World War Two in a nutshell.

If I had to pick a "favorite" battle it would be Midway. It was an incredible string of good Fortune that favored the US in that battle and Providence was definitely looking over our shoulder.

Ditto that. The role of the intelligence community, especially the cryptologists who had to crack an extremely difficult code (and make some lucky guesses Providentially-provided knowledge) in order to catch the Japanese by surprise is something of particular interest to me. (Don't forget that they had to train/recruit people who could translate the Japanese language, too!)

Speaking of codes, a huge Bravo Zulu has to go out to the Navajo Code Talkers, who modified the Navajo language to create a communication code that frustrated the intelligence efforts of the enemy.

Overall, though, the Pacific Theater events are all cool, especially Coral Sea and Midway, since the battles so heavily involved aircraft carriers, which were still fairly new at the time. Figures that they are now pretty much the core fighting unit of our Navy.

This is an interesting war for my family. My mom's Dad was in the US Army while my Dad's grandpa was a Nazi in Augsburg, Germany.
My Dad's dad was only a little kid at the time, but he remembers the two bombings of Augsburg very vividly. He remembers having to leave the classroom at school during religion hour because his family were Nazis.
And one time when his Dad came home on furlough (my grandpa was kind of afraid of him), he overheard him telling his mom to use a pistol on herself and the kids if the Russians came (he knew the Germans weren't gonna win).
Later my great grandpa was the only survivor when an ammuntion depot exploded and he was taken by the Russians and was a POW for 5 years. At the end of the war, Americans came through Augsburg and were kind to my grandpa, something he never forgot.
I grew up hearing these stories from my grandpa, so WW2 has always been of interest to me.
Favorite heroes/gernals? Definitely Douglas McArthur, and all the men who participated in D-Day.
Battles/events? Stalingrad, battle of the bulge, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, (I could go on for awhile, there's too many..)
Songs? Lost Heroes by Andre Rieo
Books? too many to list
Movies? Saving Private Ryan hands down

books:
The Rising Tide and the Steel Wave by Jeff Shaara, best historical fiction work i've EVER seen. absolutely great
Movies:
well, actually its a mini-series, but Band of Brothers. FANTASTIC!!! so realistic, so funny, so just purely awesome. Saving Private Ryan is up there two though, i am yet to see it but i know it will be amazing. i also want to see Letters From Iwo Jima
EDIT:
best historical fiction work i've ever read not seen

TheGeneral, that is really something. And given the Soviets degree of animosity towards the Germans in that war I'm amazed he was released at all. There were some German officers who were stuck in Russia for the rest of their lives (I've read some officers and all enlisted men were never released).

And Amen, Tirian12. Band of Brothers is a fantastic miniseries. I'm told that the Hanks/Spielberg "cartel" are making another Band of Brothers type of miniseries, this one based out of the Pacific Theater, although my info is quite old.

It's fun to hear these stories straight from the source, isn't it?

My father (who will be 85 tomorrow!) served in the US Navy in the Pacific Theatre. He's told some good stories but I really should convince him to write them down or record them. One involves his ship rescuing several sailors twice in the same day, as other ships were destroyed or damaged.

He would have been in the Battle of Midway except that his ship had to put into port for repairs. At times, if I'm feeling philosophical, I'll contemplate on how different things might be today if he'd been in that battle...

That's nifty, stargazer! Which ship was he on? I know Saratoga was supposed to take part in the battle but was shored up for repairs and got there a couple of days too late. Or I might be getting it mixed up with North Carolina...

It always made me sad that Yorktown didn't make it. She wasn't technically sunk by enemy planes but by a Japanese submarine a day or two after the battle while en route back to Pearl. For a time the Enterprise was the only carrier the US had in the Pacific.

Thanks for posting your thoughts, favs, and experiences!

-Heroes, generals, and other public figures? General Eisenhower, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, survivors of Hitler's death camps and the Bataan death march
-Battles and events? D-day! Evacuation at Dunkirk! [miracles]
-Songs? “I’ll be seeing you," anything by the Andrews Sisters
-Books? The Last Jew of Rotterdam, The Hiding Place
-Movies? oh boy... War and Remembrance, Empire of the Sun, In Love and War [Hallmark Hall of Fame movie about an American in Italy], Anne Frank: The Whole Story, The Pianist, The Hiding Place, Shining Through ... these are just the ones I can remember.

What I really love about World War II is that no matter how long ago it seems, new stories of heroism keep surfacing! People overcame through God's miraculous intervention and help!

TheGeneral, that is really something. And given the Soviets degree of animosity towards the Germans in that war I'm amazed he was released at all. There were some German officers who were stuck in Russia for the rest of their lives (I've read some officers and all enlisted men were never released).

Yeah I think it's a miracle. And what's really ironic, my grandma's dad was also their prisoner for awhile and then later released. My grandma told me he prayed every day to see his family again.
Interesting how they were required to be atheist as Nazis but when it got bad, they went back to what they were taught was true growing up.

I bought a copy of the excellent miniseries Band of Brothers early in the year from the local Circuit City that was closing down and got it for an excellent price. I've seen it several times but this SF prompted me to watch it again and reflect on the whole what was a truly great generation of folks it was that served in WW2. If you've never seen the series I highly recommend it. The production values are extremely good, as is the storyline, and it follows E Company ("Easy Company") of the 506th Parachute Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division from basic training, through D-Day, Market-Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, finding concentration camps in Germany, and finally taking Hitler's "Eagle's Nest". The show has a large cast and you get to know its members and enjoy their moments of peace and grieve when troopers are killed.

Here is a link showing scenes of the D-Day airdrop portion of the show, which does contain a little language and some unpleasant scenes, but which shows the pure terror that day must have been for all participants involved. It provides a taste of what the show is about, for the curious.

In related news there is an additional program in production by Spielberg/Hanks portraying in the same fashion the exploits of a USMC outfit in the Pacific theater due out in March of this coming year, and I'm very much looking forward to it!

My grandma told me he prayed every day to see his family again. Interesting how they were required to be atheist as Nazis but when it got bad, they went back to what they were taught was true growing up.

This reminds me of the old adage, "there's no atheists in foxholes". I've read before that many of the churches in Nazi-occupied Europe had to replace their steeple crosses with swastikas.

That's nifty, stargazer! Which ship was he on?

I'm embarrassed - it's slipped my mind. I'll check with him when we gather for Christmas later this week.

...but this SF prompted me to watch it again and reflect on the whole what was a truly great generation of folks it was that served in WW2.

I'm reminded of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation for those who grew up in the Great Depression and served in WWII. Whilst traveling cross-country a few years ago we listened to the audio version of this production. It really is something impressive.

Maybe I should get a copy of Band of Brothers...

I find it interesting how the "mad bomber hats" that the Kamikazi wore during World War 2 are coming back into style. I can definitely see why they would wear them because they're so warm.

It's hard to beat Ambrose's collected nonfiction on World War II. It's harder still to beat D-Day's account of how the Frankford (sometimes spelled "Frankfort") stormed the beach at Normandy along with the troops. It's too good to spoil here, but the book is easy enough to find. You can even Google the chapter "I am a destroyer man" with the quotemarks around it and find it, I think. And anyway some of your grandparents would remember that ship.

In another of Ambrose's books, he describes how the English-speaking Allies had a very limited understanding of what they were jumping into when they crossed from England into Normandy. They had been told they were going into "hedgerow country" and assumed that it meant English-styled, Bilbo-Baggins-styled hedges, all trim and prim and tidy, maybe with flowers and butterflies on it too. What they got was Norman-styled hedgerows, Brandybuck "High Hay" hedgerows, made of trees that had been deliberately planted together so that they couldn't be got over, couldn't be burrowed under (the roots were interconnected), and couldn't be got around. Norman hedges were used as fences.

However, once the soldiers finally got past a Norman hedge into a field, they had a great advantage: cows. The Allies knew whether the Germans were hiding in the field based on the behavior of the cows. When the farmers went into hiding or fled, the cows often had to be left behind. If there were enemies nearby, the cows would follow them to be milked. Strange how such little things change the course of events.