This looks good on Netflix
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@george-k said in This looks good on Netflix:
By the way, part 1 of the final season of Ozark is up....
Watched E1. It's reminding me a bit of SOA. It just goes on and on, deeper and deeper. But I do want to see how they wrap it up, whether the Byrdes get out or what it costs them.
"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@mik said in This looks good on Netflix:
@george-k said in This looks good on Netflix:
By the way, part 1 of the final season of Ozark is up....
Watched E1. It's reminding me a bit of SOA. It just goes on and on, deeper and deeper. But I do want to see how they wrap it up, whether the Byrdes get out or what it costs them.
The opening scene was a bit of a spoiler, no?
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@george-k said in This looks good on Netflix:
An afternoon well-spent.
Some unnecessary preaching in spots, but it's good historical fiction based on "what could have happened."
Irons, as usual is great as the feckless Chamberlain.
Who played the feckful Churchill?
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Along those lines, the opening chapter of Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers" deals with the meetings between Hitler and Chamberlain.
“Chamberlain’s negotiations with Hitler are widely regarded as one of the great follies of the Second World War. Chamberlain fell under Hitler’s spell. He was outmaneuvered at the bargaining table. He misread Hitler’s intentions, and failed to warn Hitler that if he reneged on his promises there would be serious consequences. History has not been kind to Neville Chamberlain.
But underneath those criticisms is a puzzle. Chamberlain flew back to Germany two more times. He sat with Hitler for hours. The two men talked, argued, ate together, walked around together. Chamberlain was the only Allied leader of that period to spend any significant time with Hitler. He made careful note of the man’s behavior. “Hitler’s appearance and manner when I saw him appeared to show that the storm signals were up,” Chamberlain told his sister Hilda after another of his visits to Germany. But then “he gave me the double handshake that he reserves for specially friendly demonstrations.” Back in London, he told his cabinet that he had seen in the Führer “no signs of insanity but many of excitement.” Hitler wasn’t crazy. He was rational, determined: “He had thought out what he wanted and he meant to get it and he would not brook opposition beyond a certain point.”Chamberlain was acting on the same assumption that we all follow in our efforts to make sense of strangers. We believe that the information gathered “from a personal interaction is uniquely valuable. You would never hire a babysitter for your children without meeting that person first. Companies don’t hire employees blind. They call them in and interview them closely, sometimes for hours at a stretch, on more than one occasion. They do what Chamberlain did: they look people in the eye, observe their demeanor and behavior, and draw conclusions. He gave me the double handshake. Yet all that extra information Chamberlain gathered from his personal interactions with Hitler didn’t help him see Hitler more clearly. It did the opposite.”
“Winston Churchill, for example, never believed for a moment that Hitler was anything more than a duplicitous thug. Churchill called Chamberlain’s visit “the stupidest thing that has ever been done.” But Hitler was someone he’d only ever read about. Duff Cooper, one of Chamberlain’s cabinet ministers, was equally clear-eyed. He listened with horror to Chamberlain’s account of his meeting with Hitler. Later, he would resign from Chamberlain’s government in protest. Did Cooper know Hitler? No. Only one person in the upper reaches of the British diplomatic service—Anthony Eden, who preceded Halifax as foreign secretary—had both met Hitler and saw the truth of him. But for everyone else? The people who were right about Hitler were those who knew the least about him personally. The people who were wrong about Hitler were the ones who had talked with him for hours.
This could all be a coincidence, of course. Perhaps Chamberlain and his cohort, for whatever private reason, were determined to see the Hitler they wanted to see, regardless of the evidence of their eyes and ears. Except that the same puzzling pattern crops up everywhere."Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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We watched it yesterday, too. I am not fond of fictional stories that are set in actual significant historical events. I’m okay if the event is in the background of the story, if it’s just the setting but when it’s right up front ant the story is integral to the event and the event is integral to the fiction? No thanks… A novelization about those two days and a film could easily have been made that would have been just as engaging, just as thought provoking, and not had people googling “did that really happen”…
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@george-k said in This looks good on Netflix:
Along those lines, the opening chapter of Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers" deals with the meetings between Hitler and Chamberlain.
“Chamberlain’s negotiations with Hitler are widely regarded as one of the great follies of the Second World War. Chamberlain fell under Hitler’s spell. He was outmaneuvered at the bargaining table. He misread Hitler’s intentions, and failed to warn Hitler that if he reneged on his promises there would be serious consequences. History has not been kind to Neville Chamberlain.
But underneath those criticisms is a puzzle. Chamberlain flew back to Germany two more times. He sat with Hitler for hours. The two men talked, argued, ate together, walked around together. Chamberlain was the only Allied leader of that period to spend any significant time with Hitler. He made careful note of the man’s behavior. “Hitler’s appearance and manner when I saw him appeared to show that the storm signals were up,” Chamberlain told his sister Hilda after another of his visits to Germany. But then “he gave me the double handshake that he reserves for specially friendly demonstrations.” Back in London, he told his cabinet that he had seen in the Führer “no signs of insanity but many of excitement.” Hitler wasn’t crazy. He was rational, determined: “He had thought out what he wanted and he meant to get it and he would not brook opposition beyond a certain point.”Chamberlain was acting on the same assumption that we all follow in our efforts to make sense of strangers. We believe that the information gathered “from a personal interaction is uniquely valuable. You would never hire a babysitter for your children without meeting that person first. Companies don’t hire employees blind. They call them in and interview them closely, sometimes for hours at a stretch, on more than one occasion. They do what Chamberlain did: they look people in the eye, observe their demeanor and behavior, and draw conclusions. He gave me the double handshake. Yet all that extra information Chamberlain gathered from his personal interactions with Hitler didn’t help him see Hitler more clearly. It did the opposite.”
“Winston Churchill, for example, never believed for a moment that Hitler was anything more than a duplicitous thug. Churchill called Chamberlain’s visit “the stupidest thing that has ever been done.” But Hitler was someone he’d only ever read about. Duff Cooper, one of Chamberlain’s cabinet ministers, was equally clear-eyed. He listened with horror to Chamberlain’s account of his meeting with Hitler. Later, he would resign from Chamberlain’s government in protest. Did Cooper know Hitler? No. Only one person in the upper reaches of the British diplomatic service—Anthony Eden, who preceded Halifax as foreign secretary—had both met Hitler and saw the truth of him. But for everyone else? The people who were right about Hitler were those who knew the least about him personally. The people who were wrong about Hitler were the ones who had talked with him for hours.
This could all be a coincidence, of course. Perhaps Chamberlain and his cohort, for whatever private reason, were determined to see the Hitler they wanted to see, regardless of the evidence of their eyes and ears. Except that the same puzzling pattern crops up everywhere.Hitler managed to literally fool millions of people, in many different ways.
Why be surprised that he fooled this one, too?
What I find slightly annoying about the retrospective treatment of Chamberlain is that a huge number of the people condemning him later were awfully quiet about it at the time. It's always easy to kick a guy when he's down, but it takes a lot of courage to question him when he's the one leading the way.
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
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@doctor-phibes said in This looks good on Netflix:
it takes a lot of courage to question him when he's the one leading the way.
I question Mr. Biden.
He is still leading the way, kind of, right?
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@doctor-phibes said in This looks good on Netflix:
it takes a lot of courage to question him when he's the one leading the way.
Peter Doocey laughed.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in This looks good on Netflix:
@doctor-phibes said in This looks good on Netflix:
it takes a lot of courage to question him when he's the one leading the way.
Peter Doocey laughed.
You laugh, but Chamberlain probably wouldn't have got away with all that "I have in my hand a piece of paper" nonsense in today's less obsequious environment.
People might think I'm unkind to the Daily Mail and its "read"ership, but take a look at this bit of fluff from the 1930's....
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In Gladwell's book, he makes the point that people are easily fooled by appearances, while ignoring the facts. He says that everyone (other than Eden) was impressed with Hitler. Churchill, who never met Hitler, saw him for what he was.
Gladwell goes on to make the same argument with respect to judges who say they can predict repeat offenders (They can't - a computer algorithm does it better), Bernie Madoff, Larry Nasser and others. This, he says, is because of our nature, as humans, to trust each other.
It's an interesting read. I don't know how accurate it is, but it's fun.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in This looks good on Netflix:
He says that everyone (other than Eden) was impressed with Hitler.
Eden was so massively impressed with himself that he simply didn't have the bandwidth.
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Andrew Roberts, biographer of Churchill offers a review:
Munich: The Edge of Nonsense
Andrew Roberts • February 21, 2022 5:01 am
The movie Munich is well-written (based on Robert Harris's bestselling 2017 thriller), lavishly produced (by Netflix), fast-paced—and an absolute historical travesty. Ever since the 1980s, Harris has been trying to rehabilitate the reputation of Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938, which destroyed the defensibility of Czechoslovakia overnight, and led to the Nazis occupying Prague in March 1939. Munich was an important step along the long via dolorosa of the 1930s towards World War Two, and an episode that greatly strengthened the Third Reich whilst enormously weakening Britain and France.
"There seems to be a general feeling that he couldn't have done much else," Harris has said of Chamberlain. "He bought us precious time." Jeremy Irons, who plays Chamberlain in the film, goes further, telling Variety magazine, "I believe Chamberlain followed the right path. He tried to prevent war. He tried to appease Hitler and got an agreement with Hitler that he would go no further. … I think Chamberlain should be praised for his pragmatic behaviour." Actors' views on politics often tend to be stupid, but even the normally sensible historian Ben Macintyre has called for Chamberlain's rehabilitation in the London Times.
So is something going on here? Is it time for Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasing dictators to be rehabilitated? Or was the British defence secretary Ben Wallace right when he said that there was "a whiff of Munich" about the French and German response to Vladimir Putin's threat to Ukraine, using the word "Munich" in the pejorative sense that it has had in international relations ever since 1938?
Certainly, the evidence of this movie—which is packed with blatant historical errors—does nothing to support the revisionists' case. One suspects that Robert Harris, in person a charming and good-natured soul, has presented his ideas in a novel and movie partly because if he did so in a serious history book it would be laughed out of court.
Chamberlain is presented as a modest man who was not in the least taken in by Hitler, whom he calls a "gangster." In reality, however, he was immensely vain and boasted to his sister Ida that one of his aides had "heard from various people who were with Hitler after my interview that he [Hitler] had been very favourably impressed. I have had a conversation with a man, he said, & one with who I can do business & he liked the rapidity with which I grasped the essentials. In short I had established a certain confidence. … I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word."
Yet Hitler's word could not be relied upon, as he ripped up every single treaty he ever signed. Czechoslovakia was stripped of its defensive frontiers by the Munich Treaty, so that when German tanks rolled into Prague five months later—a crucial event not mentioned in the movie—the only shots fired were by Jews committing suicide.
In the movie, Chamberlain is presented as having always known that there was a good chance of war taking place, but being ready to sacrifice his reputation to buy time for rearmament. Yet in reality on his return from Munich Chamberlain said that "This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time." So was he lying to the British people?
In the movie, Chamberlain bemoans the fact that "I can only play the game with the cards I've been dealt." But who dealt him those cards in the first place? Although it is true that many of the Hurricanes and Spitfires that were to win the Battle of Britain were indeed built in the twelve months between the Munich Agreement and the outbreak of war, it was the fault of the British Treasury that not enough money had been spent in the 1930s on a British army, navy and especially air force that might have deterred Hitler beforehand. Yet who was the chancellor of the Exchequer between November 1931 and May 1937, and thereafter prime minister? None other than Neville Chamberlain himself.
Nor would the Battle of Britain have even been fought if there had been no defeat in France in May and June 1940 at the hands of the German blitzkrieg. Three in ten of the panzer tanks that descended from the Ardennes forest during the German invasion had been built in the armaments factories of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
In the movie, Neville Chamberlain speculates hopefully about the Americans getting involved in the movement to contain the Third Reich. In fact, he did everything in his power to avoid bringing in the Roosevelt administration during the crisis. Similarly, Chamberlain is depicted as laughingly keeping Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, out of the Munich negotiations, saying, "Damn the foreign secretary!" As Lord Halifax's biographer, I can attest that he was Chamberlain's closest friend in politics during the period, far closer than the people depicted in the movie, such as the British ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson (who is addressed as "Mr. Henderson" for some reason).
Similarly, it is not pointed out in the movie that whereas the Soviet Union was prepared to support Czechoslovakia in 1938, after the Munich Agreement had proved the West's impotence Stalin instead instituted the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which gave Hitler a free hand to attack Poland the following month.
The movie depicts the German generals as having a well-advanced plan to arrest and possibly kill Hitler if Chamberlain refused to sign the Munich Agreement. This was sadly not the case. It also suggests there was high unemployment in Germany in 1938, which had not been the case since the Nazi rearmament programme of 1933/34. It also depicts, somewhat contradictorily, anti-appeasement crowds in Downing Street on one day and pro-appeasement ones (carrying "Peace Please" signs) there on the next, whereas in fact there were neither before Chamberlain's return. Nor were Jews forced to clean the streets of Berlin as shown in the film; that was Vienna. (There is no mention of the Anschluss by which Germany had seized Austria earlier in 1938.)
Chamberlain, as played by Irons, states that "My sole objective is to avoid war in the immediate term," but that is the opposite of what Chamberlain claimed to the Cabinet when he returned, when he made it clear that he believed he had delivered genuine peace and could now plan for a long-term settlement of all European disputes. It was not until Hitler invaded the rump of Czechoslovakia that this naïve dream died, yet even after Hitler invaded Poland at dawn on 1 September 1939 it took Chamberlain forty-eight hours before he finally, reluctantly, declared war.
The real Chamberlain described in a letter to another sister, Hilda, the "scenes in the streets" on his return from Heston Aerodrome to Buckingham Palace, where King George VI had (unconstitutionally) invited him onto the balcony to wave to the celebrating crowds: "They were lined from one end to the other with people of every class, shouting themselves hoarse, leaping onto the running board, banging on the windows and thrusting their hands into the car to be shaken. The scenes culminated in Downing Street when I spoke to the multitudes below from the same window I believe as that from which Dizzy [Benjamin Disraeli] announced peace with honour 60 years ago." Unlike Disraeli, however, who brought home a genuine peace with honour at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, there was nothing honourable about sacrificing a small country to the Nazis, as Chamberlain ought to have realised, even if he felt there was no alternative.
This movie which attempts to rehabilitate Chamberlain is historically illiterate, a farrago of nonsense. Yet in a sense, it performs a useful task because if—even with the bending of the facts and putting the best possible gloss on him—Chamberlain still emerges as a fool and a failure, which he does, it shows that the generally held view of him is the correct one. Although Chamberlain states in the movie, "If I'm to be made to look a fool, that's the price I must pay," he never said anything of the kind at the time, as he believed himself to be the greatest peacemaker since Disraeli.
Neville Chamberlain was such a poor wordsmith that this movie is reduced to quoting (without attribution) the words of Winston Churchill about people "falling below the level of events," a phenomenon of which Chamberlain was the primary exemplar. Churchill is not even mentioned in this movie despite its several scenes of the House of Commons, which was where he made the greatest critique of the Munich Agreement.
"Do not suppose that this is the end," Churchill prophetically said of Chamberlain's sacrifice of Czechoslovakia. "This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time." Churchill was proved totally right within a matter of months, whereas for all this movie's attempted advocacy, Chamberlain is still wrong eighty-four years later.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
