BAND OF BROTHERS Reaction Episode 9 "Why We Fight" First Time Watching 

The person I most admire in this episode is the camp survivor who pulls himself together and more or less calmly explains to the Americans what the situation is. He's very collected until he tells them about the women's camp, at which point he starts sobbing and wandering off. But I love the idea of this guy thinking, "Someone's got to try and explain about all this," and then stepping up to do it.

I had the honor to have met Dick Winters some years ago at a base cafe, and we shared a table. He asked, so I told him about my dad's wartime service as a Senior Navigational Instructor in the USAAF (he never saw combat). He trained probably a few thousand air crew and fliers how to find their targets and get home. Winters said that was heroic--and that I should be very proud to have been his son. I'll never forget that gracious encouragement.

Very telling that two dudes who have been utterly unbotherable before (Bull Randleman, sat outside the gate and Ronald Spiers, just standing there slackjawed. The man, the myth, the murdermachine) have no words for this.

" ... and the trees aren't FUCKING exploding from German artillery .. "

The portrait of the German officer in the old woman's house is one of a man in the Army, not the SS, though he very well could have still adhered to the Nazi beliefs. The black ribbon on the corner of the frame indicates the man is deceased. The main cast was kept away from the Jewish work camp and its extras until they were ready to film these scenes, so when the soldiers first get off the trucks, the look of disbelief on their faces is very genuine. These extras were for the most part men suffering from severe cancers, or undergoing chemo. Many of them didn't live long enough to see the show air on tv. ----- I saw you already watched E10 on your Patreon, but I don't know if anyone there explained to you the points system, or if you looked it up, but if you didn't, here's how they were earned: - 1pt per month of military service - 1pt per month of military service overseas (cumulative with the previous one, so if you were in the army 12 months and spent 6 of those months in France, this earned you 18 points) - 5pts per combat award (Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Silver Star Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross, Soldier's Medal, Bronze Star Medal, Air Medal, Purple Heart) - 12pts per dependent child under the age of 18 (up to a max of 3 children) - 5pts per campaign they participated in (Egypt-Libya / Air Offensive, Europe Algeria-French Morocco / Tunisia / Sicily / Naples-Foggia / Anzio / Rome-Arno / Normandy / Northern France / Southern France / North Apennines / Rhineland / Ardennes-Alsace / Central Europe / Po Valley ) So someone who had been in the army for 3 years (+36), spent a year and a half overseas (+18), had one child under 18, (+12), participated in the Normandy and Rhineland campaigns (+10), and earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart (+10), this man would have 86 pts and could be discharged and go back home once the war ended.

Many of the campa survivors were portrayed by terminal stage cancer patients, all of whom volunteered to get out of their hospital beds to be a part of it. My Uncle Jimmy (actually my dad's uncle, my grandmother's older brother) was one of the happiest people I've ever met. Always a smile and a kind word. He was the fun older relative who always carried peppermints to hand out to the kids, and was always willing to play cards or checkers with us. The only time I ever saw him angry was when dealing with anything German, and then he was angry like a white hot star. I never knew why until after he died back in 1989. Turns out he served with the 11th Armored Division during World War II and during that time participated in the liberation of the Mauthausen Camp. He never went into detail about it to anyone, but any mention of Germany and the Germans -- even German food -- would cause him to rage for hours. As you say, it lived rent free in his head until the day he died.

So, I want to add a few things here that, as a Jewish kid, I grew up learning about the holocaust. 1. You all mention the waste of resources to do this while fighting a war. That would be true except that most were labor camps utilizing slave labor to help keep Germany in the fight. 2. You mentioned the children. Sadly 1.5 of the 6 million Jews killed in the holocaust were children. They could not work and could someday help restart a Jewish population and so they were especially susceptible to being killed quickly. 3. The United States largely was unaware at least of the scope of the concentration camps. However, there was knowledge to a degree of what was going on. Allied command was well aware even before the US got directly involved. Sadly, antisemitism was not an isolated German problem and Americans fought in the war based on Pearl Harbor and to defeat the Nazis based largely on other ideologies. Thank you all for watching this episode. It’s a hard one for sure. I met one of the men of easy co. In high school and this was the one thing we were told to not ask him about.

Nixon might not have fired a weapon but was an intelligence officer so rather than being on the front lines was helping to plan strategy, mapping, and other aspects that are essential for success.

A movie with an amazing cast and very scary is Kenneth Branagh's Conspiracy. The script was based on the ONLY surviving notes from the meeting the Nazis had for The Final Solution. I wish more people would watch or even review it.

Thank you for your after-show discussion.

A lot of people tend to miss the hidden significance of the opening/closing scene. The guys thought the music was written by Mozart. Nixon corrects them and informs them it’s Beethoven. The upfront and obvious meaning is to show that Nixon was well educated. But actually if you know about the artists it’s much deeper than that. You see, just like Adolf Hitler…. Mozart was actually Austrian(they just lived in Germany in their adult lives.). Beethoven however, is a True German. It helps signify the end of outside influences in Germany, and a return to true German values. It’s a really well thought out little Easter egg.

Imperial Japan was actually worse than Nazi Germany. To the Japanese, pretty much everyone else was inferior. Korea and China still have strained relations with Japan over what happened, exacerbated by the fact that Japan has been very slow to fully accept the atrocities they perpetrated. Something else of which to be wary is casually calling people Nazis and Fascists. For a while, "worse than Hitler" was a popular phrase. We really shouldn't lose sight of what they actually did.

If I remember correctly, the higher up higher up commanders in the allied forces did receive reports about the camps even before D day but they were not completely believed because they thought the reports were over exaggerated on how bad the conditions were.

No, or little therapy in those days. They lived w/it. Therapy, literally waa living, working, making a family& raising kids, building the modern U.S. (everything frm Space prgm to Interstate Highwy Sys from scratch)

Truman served almost 8 years, most of FDR's last term, and then one he was elected to.

If you guys somehow haven't seen Schindler's List, it would make for a great reaction.

It's great to hear your insights after the episode. Well done.

A long time ago I read the book "Treblinka". A book about a camp where the inmates rose up against the SS. One of the survivors said that , for him one of the things that he found most horrifying, was the industrial/mechanical aspect of it. When the Germans decided they needed to erase the evidence. They sent in a team to disinter the bodies, they had formulae to build self sustaining pyres. And as you so rightly pointed out, we have the Germans own documentation of what happened. Holocaust deniers are being deliberately ignorant.

Brutal episode.

Winters' reference to Nix being demoted, is about Nix's job, not his rank. Nix stayed a Captain, had the same rank, pay, and responsibilities, but he was sent down to a lower echelon unit (His previous unit).

wait until you watch The Pacific... it gets really darker than Band Of Brothers

Just in case it wasn't mentioned yet... I really appreciate your commentary on how systematic the evil was and 'how could you go along with this?' If you're interested, the concept of how/why is called 'the banality of evil'. For further reading, I recommend the works on Hanna Arendt, as well as Stanley Milgram's 'Obedience to Authority'...all of which goes to illustrate why one of the most horrifying phrases in any language is "it's not my fault, I was just following orders."

We were always playing word games on our coms during a mission in Afghanistan. Famous people you pick one from the last letter.

At the end of WW2 the world said NEVER AGAIN Except for : Rwanda, PRC cultural revolution, Serbia, Tibet, Cambodia, Sudan, etc So much for NEVER AGAIN

A great film is "Conspiracy"(2001) starring Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci about the development of the "Final Solution" and creation of the massive death camps

You guys should check out the book, "Ordinary Men." It talks about how people were able to carry out this level of atrocity. A very rough breakdown of it goes, "If I don't do this, then my fellow countryman does. I don't want them to go through this, so it might as well be me." There were three types of soldiers; those who happy participated in murder, those who followed through but were scarred by it, and those who refused and were given jobs to support the other two groups (cooking, cleaning, etc.) There's also a Netflix documentary on the book that's worth a watch.

The ongoing guessing continues to be wrong. The man in the photo was not a threat: he’s dead. Hence the black ribbon on the corner. And he’s not SS. That’s just a normal Wehrmacht (army) uniform. Also, Truman served out FDR’s term and then was elected only once; not twice. Oh, and if you think this slaughter was unmatchable, you need to bone up on Stalin’s use of intentional starvation of the Ukrainians and his gulags, Mao’s political purging that rival the numbers you saw at the end and the Killing Fields of Cambodia by Pol Pot. Hitler did not have the market cornered on atrocity.

The violin case at the end. Looks like a small coffin.

They didn't talk about it. Men didn't generally didn't. An uncle struggled some yrs after the war. Still worked everyday but never spoke of it.

Watch The Zone of Interest. To see how one would live a "normal" life surrounded by horrors unseen. A true psychological horror movie

Wonderful reaction. THANKS

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 that's killed (spoiler alert) showing but sides of the Holocaust. 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. Never forget.

When the one officer or NCO says to get all the prisoners as much food and rations as they can, who else was like "NOOO!!! You can't do that!"

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.

To your point about spending resources on the Final Solution while waging a two-front war. The sad fact is that the Holocaust took almost no effort at all for the Nazi state to undertake. The camps were, for the most part, rather ramshackle and easily constructed, with very few SS personnel required for them to function. What's worse, is that with the money and valuablea expropriated from the victims, the Holocaust paid for itself 10x over. If you are interested, Prof. Peter Hayes has several lectures on RU-vid that go into detail about just how easy and inexpensive in terms of resources and manpower the Holocaust really was for the Nazis.

Young children (and older people) usually went to the gas.

@14:00 "Does this remind you of Bastogne?" Well it should, its the same set used for the Bastogne forest. Perhaps an inside joke on the set?

I assume (and I don't like to do that) but if you are talking about Vietnam, as a Vietnam veteran I can tell you that we dealt with the South Vietnamese people on the daily and were happy to be defending them. It was people at home that didn't understand South Vietnam was under attack.

There's no shame in not firing a shot in anger. 90% of the military never fires a shot in anger. They're clerks, supply, mechanics, cooks, etc. As to yelling at the Germans and calling them names. I understand his anger but the Germans were drafted just like he was and didn't have a choice. The average German troop was just a pawn and they had been lied to almost their entire lives. Their country was being invaded, what would you expect them to do? P.S. I met one of division back in the 1980's when I painted his house. He showed me Hitler's scrap book that he "liberated" from the Eagles Nest. He had really good taste in art. He had a original Fredrick Remington on the wall.

my father was in WWll he also helped liberate a huge concentration camp it haunted him his whole life

First time watching you guys but the way homie on the left said, "did they bust him down?" makes me think he could be prior military or his dad is, great reaction guys! We used to watch movies in high school where they're bulldozing the bodies into open graves, I'm sure they don't show those movies anymore. You guys do Schindler yet? That'll make you cry.

I believe the purpose of showing Luz in the beginning with the young girl was all just part of the juxtaposition they were going with. The same thing with Nixon struggling with his drinking problem, Ronald Spiers and the looting, & Perconte having a short fuse with the replacement O’Keefe. They were taking time in the beginning of the episode to show some of the imperfections of these heroes. Some of the more human aspects of these heroes but once you reach the point in the episode where they find the concentration camp, it makes all of these minor imperfections seem minuscule in comparison. It’s really excellent writing honestly. It’s why this is one of my favorite episodes. And I believe Beethoven was German if I’m correct so that little part in the beginning was cool too how Nixon corrected Liebgott. I think it’s symbolizes the Germans maintaining their culture in defeat.

The song is "Blood on the Risers," and there are several versions scattered across RU-vid. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VWgsdexkv18.htmlsi=wSNcSElPcZcMD2gg

I believe that "Why We Fight" was a series of American documentary / propaganda films produced in Hollywood, aimed at explaining aspects of the war to soldiers and civilians alike. Which raises a question about whether those films or similar content at the time referred to Holocaust events, if so, how. That I don't know. The idea here seems to be that most people didn't know about the extermination camps. But people absolutely knew, or had common exposure to, that fact that violent anti-Semitism was a key component of Naziism, which had been in power in Germany for over ten years at this point. And my sense is that at least some in the Allied countries knew on some level that Germany was doing a lot more than just discriminating against Jews.

On kids in concentration camps: I had a class mate in high school who visited the Auschwitz museum. There were entire rooms with the belongings of Jews piled together. My class mate said he was able to hold it all together until he came across a room with a large heap of what was obviously the shoes of little children..

The German officer photo had a black ribbon, he's dead. I couldn't see his rank but seems to be a general.

I've been to a few of the camp sites over the years (Dachau, Auschwitz, and one in the Czech Republic that I forget the name of) and they all scared the shit out of me. I've been to some of the killing fields sites in Cambodia too. In fact, if you guys want to watch a great movie, check out The Killing Fields (1984), a biographical drama based on real events.

The song they were singing is titled "Blood on the Risers", if you want to see a real 101st Airborne Paratrooper from WW II sing it, look up Vince Speranza he and the song are classic

"Why We Fight" was a series of "propaganda" (for lack of a better word) films put out by the US or maybe even the allied governments about the war. That's where that title comes from.

Almost everyone volunteered to fight in world war 2, Korea and Vietnam almost everyone one was drafted, average age in world war 2 was 23, Vietnam was 19

I implore you to see "The Fallen of WW2." As horrible as this is, it is a drop of blood in the bucket in the scale of this horrendous mess. There is no amazing acting, writing or cinematography. It's just absolutely mind blowing.

Nixon's portrayal was criticized but not for the reason you may think. He was only a member of easy company for a short time before D Day, he is present in the show because he was Dick Winters best friend. He served honorably but his drinking and tendency to oversleep and do his own thing was true.

why we fight is still prevalent today there is still plenty of evil in the world

People at the top of the chain knew what was going on but for people like Easy who were in front line so long, communication was limited as it was so they wouldn't have heard about all of this

Nix did get shot in the head ;-(

The funniest part about Webster's reference to General Motors is that the Germans went to war in Opal trucks. Historians agree that without Opal trucks Hitler would have never been able to go to war. The Opal truck factory was never bombed till just before the end of the war. After the war the US government had to pay a settlement to General Motors after they sued the US government for bombing the factory because Opal trucks was a subsidiary of the General Motors Corporation. The war was good for GM, they made money off the US and Germany all through the war years and ever since. Also related to this episode, IBM corporation invented their computer punch card system (which became a worldwide standard computer record keeping system in later years) for the Nazis as a system for keeping track of the Jews in the concentration camps. I used the IBM punch card system in the Navy in the early 70s for keeping track of onboard service personnel, so they made big bucks off both sides as well.

The Greatest Generation gave up their lives to make this kind of inhuman blackness be removed from the earth. My generation taught those coming up about it, and why it should never be forgotten or allowed to happen again. Sadly, too many young folks haven't learned about The Holocaust yet. Moreover, there are those who embrace the philosophy that allowed it to happen in the first place.

The opening date on this was wrong. Hitler didn't kill himself on April 11th, he shot himself on April 30, 1945. Easy Company didn't actually liberate that camp. They went in the following day. The 12th Armored Division did. Easy company helped with it then. Still, Spielberg thought it was something that needed to be told. Hitler was crazy. He halted supplies to the fronts because he wouldn't stop the trains to the death camps. This was a work camp. There were 26,000 camps in the system. While all would kill Jews, the death camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka were all in Poland. The higher ups in government knew. It was incomprehensible. The Jews wanted the Allies to bomb the camps. Which the Allies couldn't see doing. Bombing civilians? They really didn't understand the magnitude of what was happening. Doing regular bombing runs would have put so many airmen at risk. The Allies thought the best thing they could do to free the Jews was win the war. In the meantime, HItler stopped supplies to make sure they were able to transport the Hungarian Jews.

Their evil was banal. There is a book about Eichmann that spells that out. I watch this episode and the movie Conspiracy every year as a reminder. As to the children, they wouldn't have been sent to the mens work camp. They would have been sent with the women, or more likely, sent east to the other camps.

The German civilians were instructed to wear “respectable” clothing and they were not allowed to cover their noses.

A little constructive criticism. You both have made a LOT of mistakes on history and WW2. If you do another historical film or series do some background. It really hurts your films when you are saying something is definitively blue when it could be red or grey. Watch the movie Conspiracy. It goes into how treating the Jews, gays, political prisoners, etc...... changed from abuse to liquidation. Many Germans did not know what was going on. Many Germans died in hiding Jews, attempting to assassinate Hitler and high level Nazis and serving in the resistance. The thing people don't realize is Mao in China and Stalin in the Soviet Union killed dramatically more people than the Nazis. We made the enemy of our enemy our friend in Stalin but he made Hitler look like an amateur.

You guys talked way too much during this one. Some of the discussions you had could've been done afterwards.