Friday, April 25, 2008

Olivier Wieviorka's Objection to Ken Burns' "The War": "A great part of [France's] territory was liberated without much fighting"

For Arte's broadcast of Ken Burns' The War, the French-German TV station has published the testimonials of some of its viewers.

Needless to say (see Arte: Casting Uncle Sam in the Most Negative Light Imaginable), French TV cannot let the occasion go by without having to publish Olivier Wieviorka's "nuanced" grumblings, tut-tuts, and facile post-facto criticism ("A great part of [France's] territory was liberated without much fighting", America's "troops sometimes take part in some dubious trafficking (gasoline and cigarettes, for example)", "there were 208 rapes in the Manche département alone", etc, etc, etc)…

Update: Read more about a systematic will to find negative information about the Americans in WWII or to minimize their contribution (the 60th anniversary of America's bloodiest battle on the European front, six months after D-Day, was basically ignored in France) while extolling the contribution of the French

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