Steerpike

You are splitting hairs and ignoring the more fundamental point. What if I needed to walk to school, or work in the fields; would taking boots from a dead body be unreasonable?

petitefrancaise

Of course it wouldn't be unreasonable. It would be the most sensible thing to do in the middle of a war and may mean the difference between life and death in the years to come.

It was inflammatory to put that scene in the film. I'm not sure what the point was other than to show how desperate things were. Did anyone else notice that it was "the enemy" in the wording at the beginning of the film? Not "The Germans"

caretaker

Don't spoil it, this is going to come out on video some day. There was a man in my home town who was in WW1, all I remember about him was that he had a wooden leg. The people who have been there tell you don't go, it's the worst thing ever That's why we respect those that did.

johnwoo

Respect is a double edged sword though isn't it, we don't respect those that did on the opposing side, and in many cases even those that were our allies.

caretaker

I had family on a few sides, so my view isn't as biased.

dc koop

Saw the movie this afternoon and thought it was excellent in depicting the hell they went through.
The beach scenes looked a bit empty considering that over 350,000 troops were trapped on it. Either that or Dunkirk beach must stretch for literally miles.

A touch of Cecil B. De Mille was needed there

dc koop

That's little to do with my earlier post which was on the subject of French civilians looting the bodies of Allied soldiers of personal effects. They weren't shoeless or starving to death. My uncle who also landed in Normandy remembered being welcomed with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread as well as being informed of possible places where snipers were hiding out so the civilians obviously weren't all bad. Just the few bad apples amongst them

If executing the looters was wrong then it's only part of a whole lot of things that go wrong in a war zone.
After the Malmedy massacre of around 80 American POWs by the S.S very few if any S.S taken prisoner after that were spared. The Red Army shot S.S taken prisoner as a matter of course.

Combat screws up minds and rules of warfare go by the wayside occasionally.

scrubbedexpat099

Not that keen on Fury but that was covered.

scot47

On the question of collaboration and survivinbg in France (ie Vichy France) I recommend the film "Lacombe Lucien"., Ask yourselves, "What would I have done ?" Probably the same as in Jersey and Guernsey where the civilian authorities cooperated with the German Occupiers. (A more loaded word is "collaborated")

https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Collaboration

No easy answers - and it is not just black and white.

morpeth

While the numbers were not necessarily large by country, the SS had volunteers from all over Europe.

My point simply is there was widespread collaboration throughout Europe, mainly for practical reasons but yes some sympathized with aspects of Nazi ideology- or simply knowing what had been occurring in Russia since the revolution, fear of the Bolsheviks. If collaborators defined narrowly as you present, I don't know if there were that many in France.

morpeth

I admit I am usually sceptical of much of what Italians and the French say of their experiences during the war. And reading histories of the era hardly presents a spectacle of France suffering as much as the French may wish to make out. I guess difficult to balance different memories.

dc koop

Ironically enough one of the last remnants of the Waffen S.S to defend Hitler's bunker in the last few days of the war were members of the S.S Charlemagne Division made up of French volunteers.
The massacre of the entire population of Oradour sur Glane was carried out by S.S troops who were mostly from Alsace-Lorraine.

I'm not necessarily getting on the case of the French in particular. There were numbers of volunteers for the SS from other occupied countries. They even tried to recruit British POWs to join up.... a unit they called the St George Division. I don't think they had much success. The numbers who may have joined wouldn't have filled a telephone box.

dc koop

Well at least the film recognized that there Mexican-Americans as part of the WW2 US Army

Sarah

Mark Rylance's acting gets me every time. His vulnerability, his decency, the Britishness of going off to save a sea full of soldiers in a shirt and tie, it's so powerful to me. It feels like watching my family history. Such a beautiful performance. But then again I can get emotional looking at pictures of the Yorkshire Moors.