This all-star WWII epic depicts the Allied defeat at Arnhem, Holland, in September 1944 and concentrates on those assigned to capture the strategically important bridge, despite insurmountable odds... It was planned to airdrop 35,000 U.S. and British paratroopers into Eastern Holland to secure six bridges leading to the German border, while a British ground force sped through Belgium to the bridge at Arnhem on the Rhine River. Converging, the two armies were to smash the already-damaged war-production factories of the Third Reich in the Ruhr section of Germany. But...everything went wrong: weather, bad judgment, panic, pure bad luck. The operation, which lasted nine days and had been code-named 'Market Garden,' was a total disaster... Based on the book by Cornelius Ryan.
789
Stephen Putnick
Stephen Putnick
8 months ago (edited)
The actor who played Bill Guarnere did such an amazing job. Like I believe that was him as a younger man from these interviews.
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Will Andrews
Will Andrews
2 months ago
This should be required watching at least once in high school. I’d prefer twice.
140
Don Layton
Don Layton
4 years ago
Today our heroes are rock stars, sports stars and movie stars. They are nothing. These guys are the real heroes. I salute every single one of them.
2.3K
Bob Kline
Bob Kline
2 years ago
156 dislikes? That's fine. That's your opinion. Remember this though: "If not for the these men and the greatest generation you wouldn't be able to voice your opinion." You don't have to like it but I certainly hope that you respect these men.
621
moserr11
moserr11
2 years ago
These are some MEN. I live right outside Hershey Pennsylvania. Dick Winters did indeed come back and lived in a quiet little corner of Hershey. He died not that long ago. And we miss him.
129
Collin McCullough
Collin McCullough
2 years ago
It's so rare to hear soldiers talk about war. This is treasure.
131
Nick Leonarczyk
Nick Leonarczyk
7 months ago
When “Wild Bill” says the true heroes are buried in the cemeteries and he’s says “not us”, I always smile because my grandfather was the same way: tough, humble and didn’t think of himself as a hero. But to me, he was my hero!
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OGSpaceCadet
OGSpaceCadet
1 year ago
Most of these men were hardened before they ever went into the army, they just learned to be soldiers. The Depression had raged in America for over a decade leading up to the war, during their most formative years. Hard times make tough men, they had very likely dealt with things like cold and hunger even as children. If there was any small silver lining to the Depression, maybe it was that it prepared American men for war in a way nothing else could have.
125
LeadCounsel
LeadCounsel
1 year ago
I'm a modern combat vet and served in the modern 101st, and I'm a paratrooper as well. I stand in total AWE of these brave pioneers and men of the WWII airborne paratroopers. Seems my service is so insignificant as to what they endured. The casualty list of E Company is staggering. Simply staggering.
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Benjamin Holmes
Benjamin Holmes
1 month ago
Some of the greatest men who ever walked the Earth. The marvelous aspect of their mortal greatness is how average they were in life. They were not kings or tycoons, they did not hail from the establishment families. They were farmers, laborers, salt of the Earth. Their nation called upon them to save the world, and they accomplished the mission.
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kzelmer
kzelmer
1 year ago
They grew up on the Depression, they fought for his country and for the entire world... truly a great generation,
I am not american, but I would like to thank these men for his sacrifice.
48
Mike Chavepeyer
Mike Chavepeyer
3 years ago
1:07:26 "We've never become wealthy in life but we have a lot of wealth that means more than that."
- Donald Malarkey
Today's folk should listen closely to Don's words...
32
Benny Costello
Benny Costello
1 year ago (edited)
If you are having trouble understanding just how horrific World War 2, and war in general really was. These men went through battles 50 years before these interviews, and they still are tearing up. My Grandfather was in the Pacific Campaign and when it would thunder he would get really shakey and anxious because it reminded of him of shelling.
103
Mike
Mike
1 year ago
I could listen to Shifty speak for ever.
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Alxoholiker
Alxoholiker
7 months ago
"this pistole never had been fired. so there was no blood on it." - i actually started crying about that sweet words.... RIP dear Sir Winters
66
Whicker Friesian
Whicker Friesian
3 weeks ago
Even though I am a Marine, I have always held this movie, and every single man who fought in the European Theater, in the highest regard.
"Band of Brothers" does such an outstanding job portraying real life training, combat, and camaraderie, I know of nothing to equal it on film. I wish I could say the same regarding "The Pacific", and mine-own modern historical roots with the Corps. Sadly, that series lacked the excellent writing/production/direction skills 'BoB' had.
All gave some. Some gave all.
Never forget!
9
zer0 95
zer0 95
2 years ago
this needs to be played at schools, i remember recommending this to my teacher back in high school, she she told it was too long, i'm 23 and i appreciate the hell out of these men, every single young man needs to watch this documentary(TV show too at least once) and other documentaries about wars, i see it and i feel it that a manhood in people my age is slowly decreasing, they are becoming soft and easy triggered by the simplest things, i'm not saying send every young man to war but every single young man needs a decent 3-6 month army training, to have more respect
44
Sim Deck
Sim Deck
1 year ago
I'm an ex British Army Infantryman. I recently had the pleasure of going to the Eagles nest with some good friends of mine. We drank a bottle of wine in honour of these troops as close as we could get to the same spot that they did back in the day. It was one of the most wonderful and deeply moving experiences I have ever felt in my life.
29
Night Prowler
Night Prowler
1 year ago
The point at 1:17 tears me up everytime! Hes talking about my Gt. Uncle "Popeye" RIP Uncle Robert
32
Kristian Kristensen
Kristian Kristensen
4 years ago
What he say in the end... "grandpa, where you a hero in the war?" - "no, but grandpa served in a company of heroes."
Now THAT is a true man and hero in my heart. All the respect to those people.
- from Denmark.
389
John Travolto
John Travolto
1 year ago (edited)
I had the privilege of talking to a ww2 veteran by chance.
His furnace was broken. I stopped over around 11pm and after I fixed it we talked for quite a bit surprisingly. Awesome person he had a bronze star (usually after it's fixed people just pay and kick me out which is fine that's what I want)
It was AMAZING the stories he told me. After our chat I told him dont worry no charge I'll pay my boss. Thanks for making my night and for your service sir.
I sure hope he is still doing ok. This was around December 2015.
14
bloodsling
bloodsling
4 weeks ago
23:08 landed behind enemy lines on D-Day with his knife a canteen and 6 candy bars,and lived to talk about it...what a badass.
Operation Market Garden was the subject of the 1946 film Theirs Is the Glory. This film mixed original footage from the battle with reenactments, shot on location in Arnhem. Many of the actors portraying the paratroopers were soldiers who fought in the battle. Some played themselves, including Kate ter Horst, Frederick Gough, John Frost, and Stanley Maxted, the Canadian journalist who posted gripping reports from the front at Arnhem.[208]
A Bridge Too Far is a 1977 epic war film, based on the 1974 book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan. It was adapted by William Goldman, was directed by Richard Attenborough, and had an all-star cast. Unlike the earlier film, it covered the entire operation from all sides: British, American, German, Polish, and Dutch.
Dramatizations of the actions of the 101st Airborne Division, 506th PIR during the battle (with cameo scenes also of XXX Corps, British paratroopers and Canadian engineers) formed part of the HBO television miniseries Band of Brothers.
Dive into the bitterly contested, racial, furious battles of the Eastern Front, where more combatants were killed than in all other theaters combined.
Primary image: map showing the advance of the Allied armies from both the east and west at the end of World War II. (Image: The National WWII Museum.)
The US involvement in the European theater of operations was mainly confined to western Europe and Italy, but some of the war’s most savage fighting occurred on the Eastern Front, where the Axis powers had set out to conquer the Balkan Peninsula and the immense reaches of the Soviet Union. More combatants were killed on the Eastern Front than in all other theaters of World War II combined. These bitterly contested, racial battles (Adolf Hitler had vowed to exterminate the eastern Slavs) prevented Germany from mounting a more resolute defense against Allied armies in Normandy, and later, on the Reich’s western borders.
As early as 1923, when Hitler authored Mein Kampf, he believed Germany’s destiny lay in defeating its historic enemy, France, and pushing eastward into the Soviet Union, exterminating both communism and the Slavic peoples. But he didn’t want to fight both countries at the same time, especially if Great Britain came to the defense of France.
Accordingly, in August 1939, Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. The treaty also included a secret agreement to divide Poland, the Baltic States (Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania), Finland, and Romania into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Neither country fully trusted the other, but the agreement achieved short-term goals for both parties. Germany was free to attack Poland and France without worrying about a Soviet invasion, and the Soviets could take control over parts of eastern Europe without fear of German retaliation.
After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Soviet troops moved into parts of eastern Europe, occupying 286,000 square miles of territory containing 20 million people. This action was permitted under the terms of the nonaggression pact, but it endangered Hitler’s plans for expansion eastward. “The sooner Russia is smashed the better,” he told his generals.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler took his greatest gamble, unleashing Operation Barbarossa, a three million-man invasion of the Soviet Union. The invasion was spectacularly effective in its early stages. By September, the Red Army had sustained some 2.5 million casualties. But it turned out to be a fatal mistake. The Soviet Union was one of only two countries (the other was the United States) Germany could not defeat. The Red Army was the largest in the world, comprising over 250 divisions, and the Soviet Union was the world’s largest country by area, with vast natural resources. Undaunted, Hitler was confident the Soviet Union would fall to his armies in a matter of months. Its military equipment was outmoded, its generals were inept, and it had great difficulty defeating tiny Finland the previous year. There was also strong opposition to Joseph Stalin’s repressive regime in the Ukraine and other Soviet provinces. “We have only to kick in the door,” Hitler said, “and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
The United States and Great Britain were barely on speaking terms with Stalin’s communist regime but both eventually joined forces with the “Reds” because they shared a common enemy. “Any man or state who fights on against Nazism will have our aid,” Winston Churchill told the British people in a radio address.
The fighting on the Eastern Front was terrible and incessant, brutal beyond belief. Both sides fought with demonic fury—the Germans to crush the hated Slavs, and the Soviets to defend the sacred soil of Mother Russia. Atrocities including beheadings and mass rapes occurred daily. Millions of captured soldiers died of exposure and maltreatment. The Germans besieged Leningrad and tried to subdue it by starving its entrapped people.
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At Stalingrad, the pivotal battle of World War II, Hitler had ordered that the entire male population of the city of one million be killed and that all females be deported. No battle in history was more ferociously waged. In house-to-house, factory-to-factory fighting, snipers were used to great effect by both sides, and the butcher’s bill ran high. The Axis forces suffered 850,000 casualties and the Soviets 750,000. Stalin considered his losses necessary. The surrender of the city would have been an irreversible victory for the Nazis.
Millions of victims of the German invasion were noncombatants. Jews and Slavic peasants were killed by the German army—the Jews by rifle squads that followed the army. Hitler’s racial crusade against the Slavs would backfire, however, driving potential Nazi collaborators back into the arms of the tyrannical dictator Stalin.
After the Red Army prevented the Wehrmacht from taking Moscow in 1941 and prevailed at Stalingrad—one of the most decisive battles in history—it began a counteroffensive that drove the enemy all the way back to Berlin in 1945. In one of the final stages of the Red offensive, Soviet advances in the summer of 1944 drew away German forces that could have blunted the Allied offensive in Normandy.