Band Of Brothers Full Reaction | Part Nine: Why We Fight
Added 2024-11-28 16:00:09 +0000 UTCThe comments section on YouTube since I began my Band Of Brothers journey has been lit up with "watch out for episode 9". I don't mind the semi-spoiler about episode 9, but I don't think any amount of preparing could have helped me with this one. I had no idea that soldiers fought until nearly the end of WWII without knowing the full scope of horrible things the Nazi's were capable of..
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Link: https://youtu.be/9dyjSm0sqw4
I watched this on HBO Max
Comments
I'm writing this post a little late, as you watched the episode quite a while ago. I found this episode in particular difficult to watch. The extent of the horror surrounding those concentration camps is only briefly touched upon, but it's still very well done. Unfortunately, it was much, much worse. I'm German, born in 1972, and yet I often feel ashamed of the terrible past, especially after such scenes in films. You're constantly reminded that it happened right here on your doorstep. I've been dealing with this topic for a long time. In our schools, great importance is placed on covering it in great detail. After the war, people tried to suppress it and forget it for quite a while. I live with my family near Cologne. Every time I'm in the city, I walk down the streets and stop at the so-called "stumbling blocks." They're always in front of the entrances to some houses. Many people walk on them and don't even look down. But they're special stones. It contains the names of Jewish families who lived here at the time and were deported. Most never returned. I visited several concentration camps with my wife and son. Today they are memorials. The horror of what happened here can only be imagined, and it was very terrible to be there, seeing the gas chambers and crematoriums. You never get that out of your mind. You always ask yourself, how did it come to this? Your reaction was very emotional and very difficult for me to watch. I admire you very much for that. I think it's very important that this topic is repeatedly addressed so that we don't forget. 80 years have passed since these events and today. Unfortunately, for many people, memories are fading. I am happy to live in a Germany today where everyone is welcome, regardless of their nationality or religious beliefs. I don't want to make this a historical understatement; I just felt the need to write about it briefly. ``` There are some very good and important films that address this topic: SCHINDLER'S LIST THE PIANIST ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS just to name a few. Please excuse me for bringing up this terrible topic again. I think all your reactions are very good, keep it up. I wish you and your family all the best. I apologize again for my English. See you then...
Eddie
2025-06-22 09:53:27 +0000 UTCEverybody was looting, but Spiers was the ultimate loot goblin. To the point where it was noteworthy to other soldiers in the unit. The man in the photograph was a German officer, and very likely the commandant of the camp they found.
PP82
2025-02-15 05:26:50 +0000 UTCi joined your patreon just to watch these. My hubby and I rewatch this and rewatch reactions to this all the time. We binged yours this weekend and I have to say, your reactions to all episodes has become my favorite. We cried right along with you. We were so touched by these stories that when we went to WV we actually went to Carwood Lipton's grave to pay our respects. These men were true heros all the way around. Beautiful reaction. Thank you. edit meant to comment this under 10. oops
Midgey_M
2025-01-28 01:11:33 +0000 UTCWell do you wanna hurt his feelings when he is home and safe or do you wanna hurt his feelings, while he could sit in a foxhole, thinking about why the fuck am i here, and dies cause he does something reckless because of it.
Tax2er
2025-01-02 14:25:33 +0000 UTCI'm super thankful for this community and I love getting to know you all! It makes me really happy to hear you've been enjoying the content over here. Also thank you hahaha. So far it hasn't been bad at all! Definitely better than the rural area I was in before back in Maryland. And Happy New Year!
Kali Wali
2025-01-01 23:54:09 +0000 UTCGenuinely shocked you're reading comments on month old posts, so I'll take the chance to say I love the way you carefully analyze your reactions, and also welcome you to Ohio. We're not ALL bad here :)
Chris Truex
2025-01-01 23:50:28 +0000 UTCSomehow this missed my notifications and I'm just now seeing it! Happy New Year! ✨ Thank you so much for this kind and thoughtful message. I'm so glad you found your way here through RDR2! I still miss playing that on the channel lol. I also still think about this series and how it impacted me in so many ways! You're absolutely right- combat is something most of us can only try to understand from the outside, and even then, it's so much more than words or images can convey. I hope you enjoyed this series here! And hopefully find more you can enjoy, too :)
Kali Wali
2025-01-01 23:08:57 +0000 UTCI feel you. It's such a heartbreaking but vital reminder of how complex moral decisions and awareness were in those times. Your point about Allies' debate over bombing Auschwitz and the rail lines was interesting to think more about. Balancing military strategy with moral imperatives must have been agonizing. Also what you said about the German civilians' awareness and how they knew something bad was happening but chose not to look to far into it speaks to how much fear and propaganda can shape silence. And wow if that isn't a theme that still echoes in many contexts beyond just this moment in history. Thank you so much for sharing this :)
Kali Wali
2025-01-01 23:05:35 +0000 UTCThe allies absolutely knew about the concentration camps. Photos and accounts had been smuggled out of Auschwitz for years, for instance, and Polish and Jewish resistance groups had been requesting that the allies bomb Auschwitz, or at least the rail lines leaning towards it. The allies decided that it wasn't worth risking the men and planes for long range bombing, and that ending the war was a faster route to ending things. This is still highly debated, and it's hard to say who's right. The Russians had already liberated others, by this point. Majdanek, a true death camp, was liberated by the Red Army in July 1944. And as mentioned here, Auschwitz had been liberated by the Red Army in January 1945. That said, while everyone down to the privates would have known about concentration camps as a general concept (Jews being arrested, etc), the lower ranks were not generally aware of the true conditions within them. And did the German civilians know? It's hard to say. Yes and no. They knew Something Bad was happening. Even if they didn't actively support it, they knew it was better to not know. And the German government went to great lengths to hide the true extent from the civilian population. "Resettled in the East" was a common phrase, and German propaganda put in effort pretending that they were just on a farm or something. There was also the Theresienstadt camp, which was a "model" concentration camp kept as a front to show the Red Cross, and for propaganda films. I think the truth is that most Germans simply chose not to draw obvious conclusions, because the implications were so monstrous.
Chris Truex
2025-01-01 07:18:21 +0000 UTCI will say, that Nix was also, it seems, pretty openly cheating on his wife. He mentions going to "look up a certain young woman" or something like that, in another episode.
Chris Truex
2025-01-01 06:16:35 +0000 UTCThis episode is what brought me to your Patreon. I've enjoyed your content from Red Dead Redemption 2 and wanted to support you. I've seen all the Band of Brothers and own the DVD set. I'm glad others warned you about "Why We Fight". I don't think people really understand combat unless they have actually experienced it at some level. Can't wait to see your reaction to the final episode. Oh and Speirs taking all the silver and things, spoils of war. Not saying I agree or disagree but hard to hold it against them given all they had been through.
Mike
2024-12-08 00:02:51 +0000 UTCAnd that’s why they fight.
Robert Durant
2024-12-03 21:55:06 +0000 UTCYes, I think the end note says a lot about the state of things for the soldiers and people back at home. While the soldiers are still out here fighting and dying, people back in America are told "It's fine now!" and entertainment is coming back into full swing to help people cope with the extremely hard years they have had. I guess I understand the divorce letter from this outlook, but I still can't help to feel sad and angry about it. But yes even in present day, soldiers are sent out for months at a time and especially with how media his now it's so easy to just 'forget' about them... It is so sad to think about.
Kali Wali
2024-11-29 14:08:53 +0000 UTCThank you so much for sharing all of this. You're right that this episode deserves it. It's really hard to learn more about everything that happened in WWII, but the concentration camps just hit a whole new level of difficulty for me. I couldn't imagine visiting a camp, but now that I've been learning more about it all I can see myself possibly visiting one in the future.
Kali Wali
2024-11-29 14:04:18 +0000 UTCWow.. That is a very interesting and intense way to film this scene. I feel like the look of shock on the soldier's faces was shown very well and that could be why. I was also wondering how the actors during this were filmed. It was definitely a hard episode and scene to watch. I've had my own thoughts and imagination about what happened in these camps, but this scene brought all of that horror to life for me. Very sad.
Kali Wali
2024-11-29 14:00:16 +0000 UTCThis is so true. Like I said in the outro, I never really dove too deep into the victims of WWII because it hurt too much when I was being taught in school to pay attention. I feel like now I'm more interested in WWII and what actually happened because it's so important to learn and know what we can't let happen again.
Kali Wali
2024-11-29 13:55:38 +0000 UTCThis episode put a lot of things in perspective, for a lot of different people. Us viewers included The actions of Nixon’s wife unfortunately isn’t the first time we’ve seen a breakup / divorce sent via letter in this show, and it’s just so sad to see. Because I have to imagine that for as much as the soldiers here were starting to question “what are we fighting for?”, it has to be 100x worse for a lot of people back home in America. With how long the war is going on, and with how out of touch they are with what’s really happening on the front lines, I could see wives getting furious at their partners for leaving them to go fight in a war that, in their mind, they don’t see the point of. And it speaks to a bigger problem of how under-appreciated so many veterans are, both during deployment, and when they come back home. Even in present day
M1 Maz
2024-11-29 13:01:50 +0000 UTCSadly, many of the prisoners actors never got to see the show.
DarthChef
2024-11-29 08:16:15 +0000 UTCThis is probably going to be my longest comment yet, but I think this episode deserves it. Reconstruction: Especially many of the larger cities in Germany were heavily damaged if not completely destroyed over the course of the war. And since most of the production capacity was also either destroyed or had been repurposed for war production, there was no good way to replace a lot of what had been lost. For that reason, many of those that had not been drafted, largely women, old men and children, went through the rubble and collected everything that could be reused. Even after the war, this task was largely left to women, called "Trümmerfrauen" (literal translation: rubble women) in German who helped massively in rebuilding those cities, as many of the men had either been killed or were POWs. Denial / Ignorance: The NSDAP rose to power partially due to the economic crisis in the 1920s and 1930s, which hit Germany pretty hard, especially after their loss in World War I. The democratically elected governments in the Weimar Republic, the democratic state established after the German emperor was exiled at the end of World War I, were extremely unstable and failed to improve conditions, leading more and more people to choose the NSDAP who promised real change. They improved the economic situation, in many cases through projects that were already geared towards war, reducing unemployment. In addition, they relied on something that had a long history in Europe at that point, blaming the Jews for economic hardship, something that had been well-established at least since the Middle Ages. The NSDAP exploited this heavily in their propaganda, which led to little resistance and sympathy when more and more laws against the Jewish population were enacted and they were attacked, disowned and later banished to ghettos, often to the benefit of those considered part of the Aryan race. When the NSDAP took full control, they also made sure that people hiding or protecting Jews were ostracized and punished, leading most people to just not get involved out of fear. This was assisted by their paramilitary arm, the SA (Sturmabteilung, storm detachment) as well as the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, secret police), who helped with censorship and suppressing dissent. During this time, the NSDAP also rewarded people for joining the party and supporting their causes, leading many to support them without really thinking about the consequences too much, just hoping to improve their lives. When the Wannseekonferenz was held on January 20, 1942, the NSDAP established a plan to exterminate all Jews, the "Final solution to the Jewish Question", either by working them to death or outright killing them. This plan was not widely publicized at the time, so neither the Allies nor the German population knew about it. When this plan was put into action and the number of concentration and extermination camps rose considerably, it was already well established for the German population to not ask or care about what happened to Jewish people who were deported and to stay away and ignore the camps, so while they noticed something was happening, many did not want to know about it. In addition, unlike with the ghettos which were usually established close to where the people lived before, they were often transported long distances to the camps, in many cases in cattle and freight train cars, so people rarely knew those imprisoned in the camps, giving them even less reason to care. So, all in all, most people knew that something was happening with the Jews and other minorities, but many decided to ignore it, both because they did not care about the people they had been made to believe were responsible for their economic hardship and out of fear of being prosecuted for questioning what was happening. Concentration / Extermination Camps: The representation of the conditions in the concentration camp in this episode is one of the most realistic I've seen. The camp the 101st liberated was called Kaufering IV. Like most other cases, it was not planned because the allies did not know much about the camps or their exact locations. The camp was established in September 1944 and was part of the Kaufering concentration camp complex, which in turn was part of the concentration camp Dachau. While Dachau was one of the earlier concentration camps and was organized more like a prison while other camps like Auschwitz or Treblinka were specifically designed for killing, the many external locations that became part of Dachau, especially after the Wannseekonferenz, were intended to replicate those camps, aiming for extermination through forced labor. Kaufering IV housed about 3000 prisoners for forced labor and was later converted into a sick camp. Most of the prisoners were transported to other camps while about 270 were burned in the barracks. When the prisoner said the women's camp was at the next railroad station, I think this might have been a reference to what happened at Auschwitz, where the families were separated and the men sent into the main camp for hard labor while most women and children were taken to the next station, Auschwitz II Birkenau, an extermination camp. I have visited two concentration camps, Bergen-Belsen and Neuengamme, both in the winter. It was freezing even with proper clothing, but I couldn't even start to imagine how cold it must have been for the prisoners, who had at most thin clothing, often torn due to the hard work, especially during the extremely cold winter in 1944/45 that Easy Company experienced in Bastogne.
Pascal Vorwerk
2024-11-28 21:14:41 +0000 UTCThis is a very tough episode to get through. I believe it is an important inclusion to remind people how "evil" the Nazi Party (especially the fanatics) were. An interesting fact about this episode is the reveal of the concentration camp was kept from the actors playing the men in Easy Co. They wanted to portray as best as possible the horror and shock of what coming up on a camp like this would do to a person so none of them were able to see the set until the day of shooting. I'm not sure of this fact so someone else can chime in but I had heard they hired cancer patients and emaciated people to play the prisoners. It is a tough watch but I'm proud of you for getting through it. I have seen this series many times and it still hits hard no matter how many times I have watched it.
Lastboyscout73
2024-11-28 19:01:44 +0000 UTCAlso, why would a woman write that letter while her man is fighting at war? This question has long vexed me as well. I have given it a lot of thought. Giving her some credit, think about this. What is the man gonna wanna do the second he gets home? He'll want to be in the arms of the one he loves most. He'll never admit it, but he'll want the kind of comfort only she can bring. Then of course, he'll wanna get a little...ya know. But while he was away she fell out of love with him. Probably means she never really loved him in the first place, but hey, love is hard to figure out. It happens. What is she supposed to do? Wait until she sees him. Welcome home. Thanks for fighting for us. BTW, I'm breaking up with you. Of course, not, right. So now she has to pretend. Well, how long is long enough to pretend? But don't worry, he'll figure out she doesn't feel it because that comfort he needs is not really there. I'm sure that will feel devastating. Or she can send that letter and he'll be too distracted by that to properly focus on just staying alive. I don't know what the right answer is. I've never been in that situation. But I can understand the dilemma.
Aaron Chandler
2024-11-28 17:56:04 +0000 UTCYour tears represent precisely why shows like this need to exist. We must never forget these people and what happened or they will have died in vain. The survivors will have suffered in vain. Sometimes you need to be confronted by the ultimate expression of evil to finally understand the devastating consequences of allowing hate to take root in your heart. This lesson must be passed down through generations. Otherwise it's only a matter of time before this happens again. The only questions are when and who.
Aaron Chandler
2024-11-28 17:39:18 +0000 UTC
