Band of Brothers, Ep. 9: Why We Fight
Jan. 27th, 2023 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerWhen I browsed the list of episode titles in the Band of Brothers miniseries I noted Ep. 9, "Why We Fight" and figured it would be an upbeat morality lesson about fighting that is just. It's a morality lesson, all right, though it's anything but upbeat. It's about the evil we must oppose. It's about Allied troops discovering German concentration camps at the tail end of the war in Europe.
The Allies have captured the town of Landsberg, Germany. The German army is in retreat. Easy Company is sent to scout outside of town. Instead of units of the German army they stumble across a concentration camp. They don't know what it is. One soldier goes running back to town to fetch reinforcements— more soldiers, but also food, first aid, and ranking field officers.
This scene late in the episode opens as battalion commander Maj. Winters (he was promoted in the previous episode) arrives with reinforcements and supplies to figure out just what this barbed wire pen full of sickly men is.
Winters calls for Joseph Liebgott, a soldier who speaks German, to help him determine what the place is. Together they find a prisoner who's well enough to explain it. He's in ill health from starvation, though, and likely suffering shock from all the terrible things that have happened around him. In a halting conversation he reveals:
The fact that it's a concentration camp for murdering Jews (and Poles and Gypsies) only comes out at the end of the conversation, much to the Americans' horror. Of course, the term concentration camp didn't exist in English at that point. Until the end of the convo the Americans thought maybe this was a camp where criminals, deserters, or turncoats were being barbarously.
Easy Company heads back to town to commandeer supplies— more food and medical supplies. Leaders who'd been somewhat deferential to the local civilians are now pretty salty about their apparent involvement... or at least complete indifference.
"I didn't know! I didn't know!" protests a baker as they raid his store to feed the prisoners.
"How could you not know?" an officer asks. "You can smell it from here!"
The Allies have captured the town of Landsberg, Germany. The German army is in retreat. Easy Company is sent to scout outside of town. Instead of units of the German army they stumble across a concentration camp. They don't know what it is. One soldier goes running back to town to fetch reinforcements— more soldiers, but also food, first aid, and ranking field officers.
This scene late in the episode opens as battalion commander Maj. Winters (he was promoted in the previous episode) arrives with reinforcements and supplies to figure out just what this barbed wire pen full of sickly men is.
Winters calls for Joseph Liebgott, a soldier who speaks German, to help him determine what the place is. Together they find a prisoner who's well enough to explain it. He's in ill health from starvation, though, and likely suffering shock from all the terrible things that have happened around him. In a halting conversation he reveals:
- The people here are prisoners
- The conditions are absolutely squalid (actually he doesn't say this; it's obvious from the visuals as they're talking)
- When the German army called for retreat, guards here lit prisoners' sleeping quarters on fire, many with people to weak to flee still inside them
- The soldiers shot prisoners until they ran out of ammunition, then left and locked the gates behind them
- A women's camp this size (this one's all men) is at the next railroad station down the line.
The fact that it's a concentration camp for murdering Jews (and Poles and Gypsies) only comes out at the end of the conversation, much to the Americans' horror. Of course, the term concentration camp didn't exist in English at that point. Until the end of the convo the Americans thought maybe this was a camp where criminals, deserters, or turncoats were being barbarously.
Easy Company heads back to town to commandeer supplies— more food and medical supplies. Leaders who'd been somewhat deferential to the local civilians are now pretty salty about their apparent involvement... or at least complete indifference.
"I didn't know! I didn't know!" protests a baker as they raid his store to feed the prisoners.
"How could you not know?" an officer asks. "You can smell it from here!"
no subject
Date: 2023-01-28 11:09 am (UTC)Most colonial powers used similar methods. The American internment camps for Japanese-Americans might have been more humane, but the US policy towards Native Americans with continuous forced relocations and reservations? Not much different from the German concentration camps.
There has also been a lot of discussion here in Sweden about what was known, and frankly, there were well-reported instances of atrocities, forced relocations, and internment/concentration camps already in 1942. And what was known in Sweden would be available in the US and the UK too. It was not lack of knowledge that was the issue, it was willful disbelief and ignorance.