Can anyone honestly recommend the movie "Fury"?

Its a movie. Its not real life.

I think your sense of history is a little off -

US casualties in April 1945 were running 1,322 PER DAY - a total of 41,000 killed and wounded for the month.

So it was by no means smooth sailing into Berlin - this was fighting IN Germany - people fight very hard to defend invasion forces, and Germans were very very good fighters.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Supreme/USA-E-Supreme-E.html

As an aside - the scale of carnage in WW2 is amazing compared to now - we took around 27,000 casualites in 13 years in Afghanistan.

In Jan, 1945 that was about two weeks of US casualties. (Battle of the Bulge)

Fury is a Hollywood attempt to appeal to the young male audience that loves violent video games. The film's attempt at any kind of story line was pathetic. It starts as a blatant knock-off of Saving Private Ryan--with the Brad Pitt character being tough and saying his job is to get them back alive, but having private scenes of his emotional distress (exactly like the Tom Hanks character)--but then in Fury they wanted a violent end to make the video kids happy so they had Pitt do a compete 180 and say to his crew "hey, I changed my mind, I want you all to die in a gloriously in suicide mission." Hmm, ok, that made sense.

zbt wrote:

Fury is a Hollywood attempt to appeal to the young male audience that loves violent video games. The film's attempt at any kind of story line was pathetic. It starts as a blatant knock-off of Saving Private Ryan--with the Brad Pitt character being tough and saying his job is to get them back alive, but having private scenes of his emotional distress (exactly like the Tom Hanks character)--but then in Fury they wanted a violent end to make the video kids happy so they had Pitt do a compete 180 and say to his crew "hey, I changed my mind, I want you all to die in a gloriously in suicide mission." Hmm, ok, that made sense.

What doesn't make sense about someone changing their mind? People do that.

ryan -

this is a cool site that tracks the war, 70 years to the day. So you can visit the site and see what was happening exactly 70 years ago in the war. Lots of stuff that wwasn't important enough to make the history books but spelbinding nonetheless.

Since you are interested in the end game, you might be interested since they are now in October 1944.

http://ww2today.com/

Despite what this pretentious knucklehead a couple posts above said, it was actually a good movie. Entertaining throughout, violence, comedy, drama. I saw both Fury and Gone Girl over the past two weekends and while both were very entertaining I would vote for Fury

I enjoyed Fury for what it was but if you're looking for an accurate depiction of what the war was really like I'd suggest Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers (or The Pacific for the Pacific theatre).

This movie seemed very cliche and overdone.. almost comic book like. But I was entertained none the less

It's a fictional movie, not a documentary. The filmmakers went to great lengths to make the details as authentic as possible. Yes, the core story is weak, but again it's a fictional movie. Watching the Allied armies win by overwhelming force isn't exactly entertaining.

I saw Fury. It was ok. If Saving Private Ryan was a 9 or maybe even a 10, this was a 6, maybe a 7.

Described as; graphic, detailed, somewhat shock factors, very accurate with places, dates and even down to relationships between a green first Lt. and the experienced sergeants.

I would see it if I were you. But if I had to choose between this and The Judge, I'd see The Judge.

Did they show where the U.S. bombed villages and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, who had nothing to do with the war.

not interested but ~ wrote:

Did they show where the U.S. bombed villages and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, who had nothing to do with the war.

you refer to dresden.

that was a terrible waste of life, but it was militarily justified.

it came 2 months after the battle of the bulge, when the german army proved it was nowhere near death. The battle of the bulge was a massive german offensive out of germany when it was thought impossible - military command had no reason to think that would be the last one.

Dresden was a major rail junction that had been untouched. It was used by the german army to move troops and materiel.

dresden was also a munitions factory center.

add all that together, and by the standards of the day, it was a valid target.

remember that life was cheap in WW2 - the germans and soviets had shot literally millions of civilians in the back of their heads for years. Millions. you want to complain about war crimes, complain about the soviets and germans.

Eliminating a rail junction and arms center was not a war crime.

but thousands of innocents did die.

You are talking nonsense.

The bombing of Dresden in February 45 was a war crime pure and simple.

The war was virtually over ( ended May 45)

The target had no military significance for American or British forces as it was in the Soviet area of operations, indeed the swiftly advancing Russians were so close to the city, that Dresden was full of refugees fleeing from their armies.

The bomber crews were told it was a target of significance as it was an important transport complex.

However it was the old city itself that received the bulk of the bomb load, the main (unimportant at that stage of the war anyway) railway complex virtually untouched.

The fact is that the Allies at that stage of the war had thousands of heavy bombers roaming Germany virtually unopposed with no real military or civilian targets of consequence left to bomb.

Apart from the death toll, the actual indictment against the Allies is one of wanton barbarism.

Dresden was one of the most ancient and exquisitely beautiful little cities in Europe.

The ‘Venice of the East’ and was an irreplaceable example of mediaeval architecture.

A work of art.

And our barbarians destroyed it for no good purpose.

binks, what's with your nonstop railing on the allies in ww2?

serious question.

From wikipedia:

As far as Dresden being a militarily significant industrial centre, an official 1942 guide described the German city as "one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich" and in 1944, the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops which supplied the army with materiel.[29] Dresden was the seventh largest German city and by far the largest unbombed built-up area left and thus was contributing to the defence of Germany itself.[126]

According to the USAFHD, there were 110 factories and 50,000 workers supporting the German war effort in Dresden at the time of the raid.[6] These factories manufactured fuses and bombsights (at Zeiss Ikon A.G.),[127] aircraft components, anti-aircraft guns, field guns, and small arms, poison gas, gears and differentials, electrical and X-ray apparatus, electric gauges, gas masks, Junkers aircraft engines, and Messerschmitt fighter cockpit parts.[6]

You get your information from Wikipedia?

You know anybody can write on subjects there - I have myself.

As for the info from USAFHD - a prostitute in England came up with a great phase during a trail where her famous client denied knowing her:

“He would say that, wouldn’t he?”

The bombing was a pathetic attempt to impress the advancing Soviets as to the power of the allied air forces.

The British Bomber Command spent most of the war bombing civilians - women and children.

I would point out that in the last great Soviet offensive in January 45, the Soviets killed more Germans in the first month than the total US military deaths in all theatres in the whole of WW2.

They didn’t need the help of reducing Dresden to ashes - and bombing a town, city, makes it easier to defend anyway - not that Dresden was considered by the Soviets as an problem.

...I will agree to disagree on dresden

but can you give me a glimpse into your worldview here?

You seem to consider the allies to be equally as barbarian as the soviets or germans - why is that? Because no neutral historian would ever think that. I mean the soviets and germans executed millions of civilians in Poland, Ukraine, Belorus, etc.. The allies did nothing even close to that. by a million to 1.

Or am I misrepresenting your views?

You seem very very eager to believe wholeheartedly that Eisenhower killed a million german POWs on purpose and the Brits and Americans were homicidal maniacs with B 17s.

No, I don't expect you to answer this honestly - I expect you will make some short declaration of biased half truths, but I am curious.

Germany was defeated by the British Army in North Africa, the British Navy in the Atlantic and the Soviets on the Eastern Front.

The German high-command knew this but Hitler refused to accept defeat. Both the assassination attempt on Hitler and the haste to finish the war by the Western Allies were prompted by fears of the Soviets advancing further West.

Therefore, the bombing of Dresden was as much a strike against Stalin as it was against Hitler

Ironically, considering the atrocities committed against Germans in the East, the slaughter of 25,000 civilians in Dresden may have saved German lives.

Historian wrote:

Germany was defeated by the British Army in North Africa, the British Navy in the Atlantic and the Soviets on the Eastern Front

....and a billion tons of American stuff.

Without American materiel both the soviets and brits would have lost.

--

what evidence do we have that the bombing of dresden was a warning to the Soviets? Any interviews with bomber command or declassified documents?

Because that sounds like seeing the war through cold war glasses. In feb 1945 they had no real idea how the new europe would look, did they?

but I don't know - I have to look into that one.