Quote: "America gets pointed out for a lot of crap that every single country in the world is or would be guilty of, but since we're bigger, we get the blame 90% of the time"
Not the biggest, but you sort of have a point:
Actually the largest film industry is in India, and lets look at India's war record from the second world war.
Declared war on Germany soon after Great Britain. The 4th and 5th Indian Divisions fought against heavy odds in Africa and achieved sucess beyong their numbers and remained part of the African war right up until Rommel was eventually expunged. Then Indian armies fought mostly without credit in the liberation of Europe alongside British forces.
Their massive film industry, the worlds largest, does them a total injustice by not bragging about it at all and as far as I am aware it has never miss-interpreted events of the war.
Now whilst I agree with some of what you are saying Mouse I think this perhaps throws a little light on the cultural divide between America and Europe/Asia as I feel that there is a definite and distinct difference in the way America promotes itself (U571 / Memphis Belle etc) in film & pop culture and the way European & Asian countries go about the same thing (History Channel - with stuffy 'English Gentleman' commentary).
However, just what is in that History Channel documentary?
One of the most climatic and desperate moments of World War 2 is the Battle of Britain. Germany was just 1 days bombing away from total victory in the war of Europe. That would have been it, air supremacy would have been achieved by the Luftwaffe and Operation Sealion could commense (I actually feel Operation Sealion would have failed but that is a seperate issue).
We'd all be walking around with our right arm raised but in the end we won, what is interesting about this is that although Great Britain triumphed, history is written by the victor:
We know what prompted the Luftwaffe to switch strategic targets from airfields to London, it was Bomber Commands raid on Berlin the night before. History tells us that the RAF launched that raid in response to stray bombs landing on London - allegedly a German bomber crew now credited with "mistakenly" dropping bombs on London's civilian population.
Did that really happen? If it did than does a single instance of bombs scoring "collateral damage" justify a full strength bombing blitz in retaliation? If that is true surely Baghdad deserves some pay pack?
So on this point Mouse, you are right and wrong. History is written by the victor, but what annoys the rest of the world is American propaganda often forgets that they where not victorious alone.
Quote: "And every other country makes their men be the true heroes who really won the war"
In this I have to agree, it does my national pride a world of good to think about how Operation Torch was used as a glorification of American involvement in the war when the blood spilt was British & ANZAC, but in reality I have to cede that without American support the war would never have been won. A dead matyr is only good whilst the cause is alive.
Quote: "And if you'll actually pay attention, a good deal of those films do not give credit to only US troops for the heroic deeds they center on."
A briefly displayed text disclaimer after or before a botched dramatisation of history begins is hardly doing justice to the 50 million soldiers and 30 million civilians who died in the Second World War.
In conclusion I feel that American propaganda does do an injustice to history that it could easily avoid doing, but I cede that it is only natural for them to do so.
God created the world in 7 days, but we're still waiting for the patch.
