For my Propaganda & War class I had to watch a couple of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series. Threaded throughout this book was the story of the making of those films and the how and why added to what I saw by watching them.
Mark Harris does an amazing job of telling the story of WWII from the view point of five Hollywood men who were too old to fight the war but each of whom wanted to, for very different sets of reasons, contribute to the war effort. The best way they could was to use their gifts in the art of making movies. Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, and George Stevens entered the military as powerful Hollywood film makers. They left their big paychecks, their careers places on hold, said goodbye to their families and went out to film the war. Five Came Back tells the stories of their years of service and then tells what kind of men they came back as. They were all to some degree changed, some more drastically and deeply than others, but all changed none the less.
George Stevens was at Dachau when it was liberated. He was forever changed and scarred but what he saw their. He filmed hours of footage and put together two films that were used as evidence at the trial of . When I read the chapter on the liberation and the graphic description of just some of what Stevens saw I was sobbing. I can't even begin to imagine how much worse it was being their, seeing what was done there, the sights and smells.... Stevens wrote in his journal how he was feeling so guilty because while they wanted to help the walking dead they discovered there was a repulsion at being touched by these skeletal, louse covered people grabbing at them begging for food or even death.
With each passing day there are less eyewitnesses to the events of the WWII which makes well done books like this all the more important.
(Finished May 9, 2014)
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