Excellent documentary about the American Gilded Age.  An age that is becoming all too familiar in the present. 

That seems fair.  

Continuing down the American Experience rabbit hole we get to the second episode aired...Radio Bikini.  The question then became...where do I put it?  Here.  In the Science thread?  In the classic movies thread, since it actually was released theatrically before it was picked up by PBS?  Well I put it here, where nobody will see it.  

Directed by very underrated documentarian Robert Stone, this was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film in 1988.  The film documents the atomic bomb tests by the United States conducted in the Bikini Atoll in 1946.  Stone uses primarily footage from 1946 leading up to and during the tests.  There are excerpts from two interviews with individuals affected by the tests.  Kilon Bauno lived on Bikini Atoll and was removed from the island along with all the other Bikinians.  It was clear that the inhabitants of the Atoll had absolutely no idea what was going on when they were removed.  Needless to say they were never able to return to their homes.  Just another native group ill-used by the U.S.   The other interviewee was John Smitherman, a sailor that was present during the testing.  At the time of the interview it had been close to 40 years since the tests.  Smitherman had lost both his legs to cancer and would, ultimately lose his life to the disease.  The sailors...and a plethora of observers from the media, the military and from foreign governments were assured that they were in no danger from the tests.  OY.  

Overall this is a good documentary and Stone, by and large, lets the events as they were reported at the time, speak for themselves.  I think the biggest problem is that there's just so much going on and the repercussions were, particularly for the Bikinians, were so severe, that it just couldn't be adequately covered in an hour.  But it's a quality documentary and well worth the limited time.  

I'm wrapping up Antony Beevor's book, The Battle of Arnhem, about Operation Market-Garden. I had read Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far and a few other reference books; but, I like Beevor's work more. He uses military and civilian diaries and other sources, from all sides; plus, he is an ex-armor officer, in the British Army and has a good grasp of the tactics in such engagements, as well as what good leaders can accomplish vs bad. Richard Attenborough's film version of A Bridge Too Far is pretty accurate, to its source material, but Beevor covers so much more and from wider perspectives. He also gives a better feel for the streetfighting, in Arnhem and a better look at the delays in XXX Corps reaching the outskirts of Oosterbeek. Unlike many British military historians, he is not a fan of Montgomery (he criticized his actions in the Battle of Normandy, quite heavily and his casualty rate for the ground he took, there, as well as the frustrations that SHAEF had with him) and he doesn't mince words with the fiasco and sell the line that it was a partial victory. He also gets into how the Dutch suffered, in the wake of the battle.
He starts out with the Allies capture of Antwerp, needed for its large port facilities, so that the Allies can relieve some of their supply issues. He then gets into how Montgomery failed to secure the estuary that leads into the port, preventing its use until well after Market-Garden. Montgomery was already on thin ice, after the fighting in Normandy and his constant attempts to undermine Eisenhower's authority. he paints a icture of Monty trying to re-establish his prestige, as even his supporters in the British government are starting to think he might have to go, and that Market-Garden was heavily influenced by that situation. He altered earlier aborted plans for Operation Comet, , an airborne attack to secure areas, in advance of an armored assault, made superfluous by armored forces getting there quicker than expected. He ordered a plan put together, with the aim of seizing a bridgehead into Germany, with the aim of getting priority in supplies, leaving Patton stalled. Eisenhower continuously fought such notions, until Market-Garden was presented, with pie-in-the-sky expectations. At no stage in the planning did Montgomery's staff consult with Dutch military liasons about the terrain and the difficulty of maneuvering armor through it. They also ignored intelligence from the Dutch Underground that the German withdrawal had eased, then halted, as senior commanders rounded up fleeing troops, from France and Belgium, and shifted them into adhoc groups, which were redeployed into defensive lines, backed by armor from SS II Panzer, as well as German airborne troops, under General Karl Student, their founder and pioneer of their attacks in Holland, in 1940.

The really damning part, is that the exercise of taking that same bridge in Arnhem was a routine war game exercise at the Dutch staff college. Attacking from Nijmegen, via the main road, as Montgomery's plan dictated, was an immediate failure. Tanks could only traverse a narrow highway, in a column, with little room to maneuver. the ground on the flanks was either too soft for tanks, or consisted of dikes and embankments that acted as worse barriers than the bocage country, in Normandy. The way to pass the exercise was to execute a river crossing on other flank of the Arnhem bridge and attack the defenders from the rear and secure the bridge, before moving troops in from the other direction. Montgomery's people would completely ignore those officers who had studied that problem and had conducted exercises over that ground, including fighting the German invasion, in 1940.

The film A Bridge Too Far kind of sells short how intense the fighting was all along the highway. It captures the destruction of the Son bridge, in one of the closest sector to the XXX Corps advance; but, it doesn't cover the German counter attacks on the Bailey Bridge, that was constructed to cross there. The 101st Airborne fought off several counter-attacks, along with detachments from XXX Corps. The 82nd Airborne sector, around Nijmegen, was under constant attack and General Gavin masterfully shifted forces back and forth to reinforce areas, with support from XXX Corps, while awaiting the remaining air landings of his division.

There were 3 waves of drops, due to transport issues and the third wave was delayed more than once, which was especially galling for the Polish Independent Parachute Brigade, under General Stanislaw Sosabowski. He had been the lone vocal critic of the plan, but followed his orders. His men were unable to reinforce the British 1st Airborne, because they couldn't get across the bridge, to the 1st Airborne positions. They were understrength, as their third wave had been held up by weather, in the UK. As it was, their initial landing was redirected to Driel, because the British couldn't hold their drop zone, because of German counter-attacks. Air controllers couldn't communicate with Allied aircraft, when they were flying. For the bulk of the operation, they had no air cover, due to weather over the UK, since the Allies hadn't moved bases to France for the operation. The Poles drop was cancelled 3 times, while they listened to news of the failure of the Warsaw uprising and German reprisals, plus the advance of the Red Army, which meant the Russians would liberate Poland and place it under a Communist regime.

Beevor talks about the civilian deaths, the lack of water and food, the casualties, the improvised hospitals and other facets of the battle. At the tail end, he gets into how General Browning, the commander of the Airborne forces, who brought along his headquarters staff, but really had no role for them, as he couldn't communicate with 1st Airborne, at Arnhem,; and Gen Hoorrocks, in command of XXX Corps, despite still recovering from wounds that kept him out of Normandy, until Monty was forced to relieve a British commander, teamed up to scapegoat the failure with General Sosabowski. They poisoned the well with claims that Sosabowski held back his men, instead of reinforcing the 1st Airborne, ignoring that they were provided no assault boats, that teh river was under heavy fire, day and night, and that at one point, they were to cross and the British commander took away the assault boats for another unit. At one point, Sosabowski was summoned to a conference, in Holland, with Browning and Horrocks, where they refused him the presence of any officer, though he forced them to keep a junior officer, as translator, so there could be no misunderstandings and Browning relented. They then proceeded to treat Sosabowski, who commanded a rousing defense of Warsaw, during the German invasion, before being ordered to evacuate, like the lowest lieutenant fresh from the academy. Both Browning and Horrocks later ignored any mention of the meeting, but the Polish lieutenant kept a diary record of it and the orders given. After the war, Sosabowski and his men could not return to Poland, as they had been branded traitors, by the Communist regime. Sosaboswski ended up working as a laborer, in a factory, and a barman, with most unaware of his military background and heroism (he helped set up the Polish underground army) and only that occasionally, Polish veterans would turn up at the bar and salute the barman.

I am just getting to the chapters about the aftermath of the battle. The Germans forced the residents of oosterbeek and Arnhem to abandon their homes and proceeded to loot them. This included the home of Kate ter Hprst, whose home was an aid station for the British 1st Airborne wounded, who helped calm wounded soldiers by reading the Bible to them. In ABTF, she is played by Liv Ullmann and is shown leaving her home, but you are led to believe because of the German advance, not because the Germans ordered the area to be evacuated. Beevor continues with discussion of the famine that afflicted the Dutch in the winter of 1944 and early 1945, as the Germans confiscated most of their food for themselves, plus they were cut off from other sources. The Allies arranged mercy missions to bring in supplies, with German consent, via narrow corridors, late in the suffering. There is a photo in the book of a young Dutch boy (teenager, I think), who is a skeleton with skin. He also lists statistics of birth defects in babies born to mothers who experienced the famine and suffered from malnutrition.

The waste of life, for a questionable military objective is just criminal, in hindsight, but was forseeable, from the start. Horrocks was affected by his wounds, which affected his command abilities. The Irish Guards, who did much of the fighting, for XXX Corps, had been fighting without relief, since D-Day. The American head of the Allied Airborne Army was skeptical of the plan, as were generals James Gavin, of the 82nd, and Maxwell Taylor, of the 101st. They felt that the British armor was aggressive enough and some have questioned whether the result would have been different if Patton had led the ground portion. As it was, he was against attacking the method they had, though in as much as he was denied supplies for his own advance, into the Sar, because of Market-Garden. Patton preached initiative to his subordinates and to atatck targets of opportunity, while the British model was far more cautious, which had dogged the slow advance of the 2nd Army, in Normandy.

The British losses were staggering. One brigade, of 2000 men had 8 officers and 260 soldiers left alive, by the end. The Americans used to cynically remark that Montgomery was prepared to fight to the last ally, meaning he was quick to use Canadian and other forces in the most hazardous areas, and mounted high casualties and tepid results. The Poles shared that view and they were sacrificed to cover the withdrawal from Oosterbeek, in Operation Berlin.

I don't know if Patton would have achieved better results, though I also don't believe he would have put together a plan like that. I do think that if it had been an American show, there would have been better coordination with the air transport and fighter coverage f the mission. Certainly, the American commanders would have staged their landings differently, in terms of bringing in their anti-tank guns. As it was, Gavin insisted on a larger portion in his initial drop, which helped his sector immensely.

Just a sad affair that ended up a meat grinder, for all involved, including the Dutch, caught in the middle, who saw liberation taken away from them.

Continuing down my American Experience rabbit-hole we have episode three of the first season.  Indians, Outlaws, and Angie Debo, directed by Martha Sandlin, looks at historian Angie Debo, who was one of the earlier historians to take a new look at Native American history and the interactions between natives and whites.  Debo got her PhD from University of Oklahoma, but was never on a university staff because teaching positions for women, particularly in history, were rare almost to the point of non-existence in the first half of the 20th century.  It probably didn't help that Debo's book, And Still the Waters Run, was an absolute bombshell, that was de facto banned in Oklahoma.  

This documentary is incredibly timely now as Killers of the Flower Moon has hit the big screen and gone back on to the best-seller charts.  Almost 100 years ago, Debo, in And Still the Waters Run, was exposing the same kind of fraud and outright murder to deprive natives of their allotment rights that Killers did.  Debo's work focused on the Five Civilized Tribes, rather than the Osage nation, but the corruption was the same.  She did get something of the last laugh as her book A History of the Indians of the United States, was a standard text in college classes on Native American history in the 70s and 80s. 

The documentary is good and certainly interesting.  It can be a bit slow.  But Debo is a hero of intellectual freedom and it's well worth a watch.