In the contemporary sense, perhaps the wall we Americans have erected is there to avoid hearing the screams of the allies we’ve abandoned being murdered.
That’s a silly comment.
Movies have always been made for lots of reasons,a component of necessity naturally is their appeal for people to watch them,as the technology and the standard of the technicians from cameraman’s work to researchers has improved dramatically it has become possible to give the impression of revisiting history,however as we move further to this goal and the outcome becomes more convincing all the more will it be that in say 20 years time the same movies that impress now will look contrived
I don’t think it’s a silly comment. Movies like Oppenheimer are incredibly self-important, the movie (the cinematography, the acting, the scary sound effects, the sex scenes that are supposed to shock the viewer, the suffering of the characters getting hammered into your head by the bombastic style) becomes more important than the message. And it was all done before, the juxtaposition that is supposed to grab us all in here, deep down… And, of course, all women are beautiful, and the breasts have to be perfectly shaped.
Standard by your memories of youth, perhaps? And mine! I always prefer balance between said glands and the rest of the figure. Some of today’s enhancements just look stupid.
MJ
Martin Johnson
1 month ago
It will be many more decades, if not centuries of experience, before we can make a conclusive judgment about nuclear bombs. But at the time, their limited use saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives (far more Asian than American, though Truman’s main motivation was Americans). The A-bomb was available because Americans and Britons feared the consequence of Hitler getting it first, but once it existed, it was a tool in the arsenal, as it were. In the shadows of Saipan, Peleliu, Manila, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and the intel on what invading the Japanese Home Islands would entail, their use was inevitable. The alternative to the A-bombs and invasion, continued blockade and “conventional” bombing, would have cost millions, perhaps tens of millions, of Japanese lives starved in the winter of 1945-46, and such was the ruling mentality in Tokyo that even that catastrophe may not have led to surrender. Arguments to the contrary are either misinformed or dishonest.
In the decades since, the existence of nuclear weapons created a terrible psychological burden, and may as the author suggests have made small-scale wars more likely, but they have certainly helped avoid full scale wars between great powers, including the effects of those on smaller powers caught in the crossfire. Even today, their existence has likely kept the Russo-Ukraine War contained, as they did in Korea and Vietnam, and perhaps Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and elsewhere. World War I killed about 15 million people, 20 million if you include its immediate aftermath in the Russian Civil War and Turkish-Greek conflict. World War II more like 70 million. What would a non-nuclear World War III have cost in the late 20th Century? It is speculation, but not unreasonable to think that such a conflict would have dwarfed the cost in lives and treasure of all the wars that did occur in that period.
I should also note that Oppenheimer’s biggest regret was less the A-bomb than that it enabled the far more powerful and terrifying H-bomb. His political and security problems were not because of the Manhattan Project, but his opposing developing Teller’s dream of “The Super,” especially after it was learned that the USSR had developed the A-bomb.
It is possible to be horrified by the carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and still understand that this appeared at the time, and may actually have bene, the least bad of the terrible choices available.
Odd how the Soviets developed the BOMB so quickly even with the help of Fuchs, the Rosenbergs etc.
The US certainly needed a credible enemy and before 1949 the Soviet Union didn’t “cut the mustard”.
Perhaps the answer lies with the newly (1947) formed CIA?
Nukes are the reason my father’s generation didn’t have to fight the Russians and the reason my son won’t have to fight the Chinese. Thank God for the Manhattan Project.
Oppenheimer’s biggest regret was less the A-bomb than that it enabled the far more powerful and terrifying H-bomb. His political and security problems were not because of the Manhattan Project, but his opposing developing Teller’s dream of “The Super,” especially after it was learned that the USSR had developed the A-bomb.
Yes, the USSR developed the A-bomb, and the USSR developed the H-bomb, and the decision not to develop the H-bomb in order to be on the right side of history is the ultimate idiocy, which has become so popular in our delicate times.
TT
Tony Taylor
1 month ago
Nolan’s films: beautiful to look at; sumptuous to listen to; boring.
I
Ian_S
1 month ago
Well ok. But I’m currently in the downtown of a moderately large Western city, on a Sunday afternoon with large crowds of pink-haired Palestine kaffiyeh poseurs shouting and stomping around, angrily yelling “genocide” while attempting to bully everyone within earshot into nodding along for an *actual* genocide. With all the LGBTQI kit, they don’t look like movie-screen fascists, but they’re certainly behaving like fascists. That’s where we’re at now. Where’s the movie about that?
I
Ian_S
1 month ago
As often happens, my comment here was suppressed for unclear reasons, no matter how benign. Not sure what word crime I committed this time, but I suspect it was the word “gen***de”. This is getting tedious. I’m paying money to waste my time.
I
Ian_S
1 month ago
Well ok. But I’m currently in the downtown of a moderately large Western city, on a Sunday afternoon with large crowds of p*nk-haired Pal*stine k*ffiyeh poseurs shouting and stomping around, angrily yelling “ge**cide” while attempting to b*lly everyone within earshot into nodding along for an *actual* ge**cide. With all the LGBTQI kit, they don’t look like movie-screen f*sc*sts, but they’re certainly behaving like f*sc*sts. That’s where we’re at now. Where’s the movie about that?
PS: reposted with asterisks to placate UnHerd’s w*ke cens*rbot. H*pe it w*rks. F*ngers cr*ssed. This is getting st*p*d.
Ian, Well said, or rather well written, astricks included, which add a more explosive and therefore accurate picture of what we are suffering here in London at the moment. Couldn’t have put it better.
” suffering in London” I think the suffering in Sudan and Gaza may be even worse.
AL
Alex Lekas
1 month ago
So, more self hating white European angst from the filmmakers, none of whom is giving back the proceeds. Yes, bad things have happened. No, they’re not all the work of white folks.
Anyone recall The Killing Fields? Somehow, that failed to spark ritual self recrimination among Asians. Perhaps I can look forward to a movie about Mao’s atrocities, those of the Aztecs, or Africans selling other Africans into bondage. Or will that spoil the narrative?
I am a child of a twice-wounded soldier who was slated to be among the assault landing troops conducting the invasion of the Japanese home islands in WW2. Had that invasion gone ahead, I would not be writing this comment.
Once again the topic of the atomic bombing elicits a righteous progressive condemnation from a member of the leftist victimocracy in the form of Spike Lee.
What’s ignored in all this tiresome indignation are two facts:
Firstly, the alternatives to using the bomb included blockades or land invasion. Both would’ve resulted in millions of Japanese deaths from starvation and disease, or the horrors of conventional bombing and invasion shelling, or both. And the length of time taken to resolve the conflict would thereby extend well into 1946, or even 1947. The awful toll of about 200,000 Japanese citizens who perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki pales in comparison.
Secondly, the advent of nuclear weapons, whatever their terrible power, succeeded in ending major conflicts between nations. The fact that it’s taken almost eight decades for war to erupt between two European nations is the direct result of the appearance of nuclear weapons that were, essentially, too destructive to use.
For the author to include Oppenheimer in a list of genocidal films is a vile calumny on the men and women who worked to end a terrible conflict with the least loss of life. Had they succeeded in developing the bomb in time to use it against Germany would there still be people declaring its use genocidal? The impression left by the statements of people like Spike Lee that the Japanese people–whose armed forces were directly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of East Asian people–were somehow innocent victims of white murderers I find also unjust and utterly reprehensible.
It’s remarkable to me that history can be distorted so greatly within the living memory of those who experienced the actual events.
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Fascinating essay.
In the contemporary sense, perhaps the wall we Americans have erected is there to avoid hearing the screams of the allies we’ve abandoned being murdered.
Be specific. Are you referring to Israel and Ukraine or just one of the two?
I had no Scorsese had become so pathetic and self-hating. These people have been hanging around Hollywood for too long. It has driven them mad.
I thought movies were for entertainment. What happened? Have I been asleep??
That’s a silly comment.
Movies have always been made for lots of reasons,a component of necessity naturally is their appeal for people to watch them,as the technology and the standard of the technicians from cameraman’s work to researchers has improved dramatically it has become possible to give the impression of revisiting history,however as we move further to this goal and the outcome becomes more convincing all the more will it be that in say 20 years time the same movies that impress now will look contrived
I don’t think it’s a silly comment. Movies like Oppenheimer are incredibly self-important, the movie (the cinematography, the acting, the scary sound effects, the sex scenes that are supposed to shock the viewer, the suffering of the characters getting hammered into your head by the bombastic style) becomes more important than the message. And it was all done before, the juxtaposition that is supposed to grab us all in here, deep down… And, of course, all women are beautiful, and the breasts have to be perfectly shaped.
I thought the mammary glands on display somewhat diminutive by today’s standards, otherwise I completely agree with you.
Standard by your memories of youth, perhaps? And mine! I always prefer balance between said glands and the rest of the figure. Some of today’s enhancements just look stupid.
It will be many more decades, if not centuries of experience, before we can make a conclusive judgment about nuclear bombs. But at the time, their limited use saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives (far more Asian than American, though Truman’s main motivation was Americans). The A-bomb was available because Americans and Britons feared the consequence of Hitler getting it first, but once it existed, it was a tool in the arsenal, as it were. In the shadows of Saipan, Peleliu, Manila, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and the intel on what invading the Japanese Home Islands would entail, their use was inevitable. The alternative to the A-bombs and invasion, continued blockade and “conventional” bombing, would have cost millions, perhaps tens of millions, of Japanese lives starved in the winter of 1945-46, and such was the ruling mentality in Tokyo that even that catastrophe may not have led to surrender. Arguments to the contrary are either misinformed or dishonest.
In the decades since, the existence of nuclear weapons created a terrible psychological burden, and may as the author suggests have made small-scale wars more likely, but they have certainly helped avoid full scale wars between great powers, including the effects of those on smaller powers caught in the crossfire. Even today, their existence has likely kept the Russo-Ukraine War contained, as they did in Korea and Vietnam, and perhaps Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and elsewhere. World War I killed about 15 million people, 20 million if you include its immediate aftermath in the Russian Civil War and Turkish-Greek conflict. World War II more like 70 million. What would a non-nuclear World War III have cost in the late 20th Century? It is speculation, but not unreasonable to think that such a conflict would have dwarfed the cost in lives and treasure of all the wars that did occur in that period.
I should also note that Oppenheimer’s biggest regret was less the A-bomb than that it enabled the far more powerful and terrifying H-bomb. His political and security problems were not because of the Manhattan Project, but his opposing developing Teller’s dream of “The Super,” especially after it was learned that the USSR had developed the A-bomb.
It is possible to be horrified by the carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and still understand that this appeared at the time, and may actually have bene, the least bad of the terrible choices available.
It could be argued that the A bombs were used as a caveat to the Soviets.
Odd how the Soviets developed the BOMB so quickly even with the help of Fuchs, the Rosenbergs etc.
The US certainly needed a credible enemy and before 1949 the Soviet Union didn’t “cut the mustard”.
Perhaps the answer lies with the newly (1947) formed CIA?
Stalin knew more about the atomic bomb than Truman did when he took office. All the secrets had been betrayed by spies.
Nukes are the reason my father’s generation didn’t have to fight the Russians and the reason my son won’t have to fight the Chinese. Thank God for the Manhattan Project.
Of course dropping only two was a great mistake.
The whole of the Far East was waiting for the white man to ‘save face’ after the debacles of Singapore, Pearl Harbour and the Philippines.
Two just wasn’t enough, eight to ten and the virtual destruction of Japan would have been better in the long run, but sadly Truman was a weakling.
Oppenheimer’s biggest regret was less the A-bomb than that it enabled the far more powerful and terrifying H-bomb. His political and security problems were not because of the Manhattan Project, but his opposing developing Teller’s dream of “The Super,” especially after it was learned that the USSR had developed the A-bomb.
Yes, the USSR developed the A-bomb, and the USSR developed the H-bomb, and the decision not to develop the H-bomb in order to be on the right side of history is the ultimate idiocy, which has become so popular in our delicate times.
Nolan’s films: beautiful to look at; sumptuous to listen to; boring.
Well ok. But I’m currently in the downtown of a moderately large Western city, on a Sunday afternoon with large crowds of pink-haired Palestine kaffiyeh poseurs shouting and stomping around, angrily yelling “genocide” while attempting to bully everyone within earshot into nodding along for an *actual* genocide. With all the LGBTQI kit, they don’t look like movie-screen fascists, but they’re certainly behaving like fascists. That’s where we’re at now. Where’s the movie about that?
As often happens, my comment here was suppressed for unclear reasons, no matter how benign. Not sure what word crime I committed this time, but I suspect it was the word “gen***de”. This is getting tedious. I’m paying money to waste my time.
Well ok. But I’m currently in the downtown of a moderately large Western city, on a Sunday afternoon with large crowds of p*nk-haired Pal*stine k*ffiyeh poseurs shouting and stomping around, angrily yelling “ge**cide” while attempting to b*lly everyone within earshot into nodding along for an *actual* ge**cide. With all the LGBTQI kit, they don’t look like movie-screen f*sc*sts, but they’re certainly behaving like f*sc*sts. That’s where we’re at now. Where’s the movie about that?
PS: reposted with asterisks to placate UnHerd’s w*ke cens*rbot. H*pe it w*rks. F*ngers cr*ssed. This is getting st*p*d.
Ian, Well said, or rather well written, astricks included, which add a more explosive and therefore accurate picture of what we are suffering here in London at the moment. Couldn’t have put it better.
” suffering in London” I think the suffering in Sudan and Gaza may be even worse.
So, more self hating white European angst from the filmmakers, none of whom is giving back the proceeds. Yes, bad things have happened. No, they’re not all the work of white folks.
Anyone recall The Killing Fields? Somehow, that failed to spark ritual self recrimination among Asians. Perhaps I can look forward to a movie about Mao’s atrocities, those of the Aztecs, or Africans selling other Africans into bondage. Or will that spoil the narrative?
Constant diversions to deflect our eyes and ears from the explosions and screams coming from Gaza and Sudan even if we have to cast back almost a century to when 75 million, mostly Russians and Chinese were slaughtered.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/casualties-of-world-war-ii/#:~:text=Some%2075%20million%20people%20died,bombings%2C%20disease%2C%20and%20starvation.
I am a child of a twice-wounded soldier who was slated to be among the assault landing troops conducting the invasion of the Japanese home islands in WW2. Had that invasion gone ahead, I would not be writing this comment.
Once again the topic of the atomic bombing elicits a righteous progressive condemnation from a member of the leftist victimocracy in the form of Spike Lee.
What’s ignored in all this tiresome indignation are two facts:
Firstly, the alternatives to using the bomb included blockades or land invasion. Both would’ve resulted in millions of Japanese deaths from starvation and disease, or the horrors of conventional bombing and invasion shelling, or both. And the length of time taken to resolve the conflict would thereby extend well into 1946, or even 1947. The awful toll of about 200,000 Japanese citizens who perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki pales in comparison.
Secondly, the advent of nuclear weapons, whatever their terrible power, succeeded in ending major conflicts between nations. The fact that it’s taken almost eight decades for war to erupt between two European nations is the direct result of the appearance of nuclear weapons that were, essentially, too destructive to use.
For the author to include Oppenheimer in a list of genocidal films is a vile calumny on the men and women who worked to end a terrible conflict with the least loss of life. Had they succeeded in developing the bomb in time to use it against Germany would there still be people declaring its use genocidal? The impression left by the statements of people like Spike Lee that the Japanese people–whose armed forces were directly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of East Asian people–were somehow innocent victims of white murderers I find also unjust and utterly reprehensible.
It’s remarkable to me that history can be distorted so greatly within the living memory of those who experienced the actual events.