David O'Keefe and Dieppe Documentary

[force136]

Dieppe 4?

Hi Peter

I could not agree more. EXACTLY !

I am also in agreement over the doc on York. Frankly, I thought the US historian they dug up was stretching it as well. I personally think they spent too much time on the magazine explosion. There is so much about the battle and occupation that needs to be said. They also painted an unfair and baseless claim regarding the role of the militia units in the defence of York and subsequent "pull out" from York.

It is a REAL shame that history has to suffer in order to pander to a bunch of morons at a TV station. REAL history can be interesting and exciting without making grandiose claims. Like I said, if O'Keefe had just brought forward this secret units role at Dieppe, I am sure that would have been enough. But to claim the entire operation was mounted because of that ----

We really need to stick to what we know and not take it any further than that. If you do, STATE that you are SPECULTING. If the general public will only watch and listen to something that is revisionist, bias or blown out of proportion, it is further evidence of the sad state of education and learning today.

Ken

Reconnaissance in force, fake invasion to placate the Russians, test for tactics needed to storm an enemy held beach in advance of the real invasion, a propaganda exercise for a country and an army who'd spent 3 years training and never fired a shot in anger, a chance to snap up German technology and secrets and 'all of the above'. Pick one, some or all and you'll be at least partly right. Many large military operations have a several purposes of differing value!

The real question is not 'Is what the film says true?", as any real discussion will quickly conclude that it's untrue. The real question is 'Why did the good Doctor say that?' And the answer, almost certainly in my view, is 'Because it makes better TV." I have had some very small involvement with 'war docs' - my field is the War of 1812, 200 years gone this year - and invariably the producers want a 'sexy' hook to hang the film on. What better than 'recently revealed 'secret' information'?

Haven't seen this film but I have seen a number of others and without exception they have cooked up some 'mystery' to explain to the viewing public why their film is new, exciting and worth watching. And please remember that producers almost all feel that the audience breath through their mouths and drag their knuckles on the ground as they walk!

As an example, a recent film on the US attack on York [now Toronto, Ontario, Canada] was hung on the 'mystery' of how so many US troops were killed, and why, when the British blew their magazine before abandoning Fort York. Simple answer: 1) The door of the magazine faced west because it was built into the front face of the earthworks on the lake side of the fort and the choices were east or west. 2) The Americans attacked from the west. 3) The magazine went 'Boom!" The film examined how the magazine blew, complete with a scale model built by a friend of mine and a larger scale model filmed in a quarry in northern Ontario. A really neat examination of how a large gunpowder explosion would have behaved, narrated by a mining engineer explosives expert and several military historians but with a bunch of totally gratuitous comments by a completely clueless lead narrator with absolutely no historical credentials and one unfortunate historian whose reputation will now suffer, INHO, because he parroted some really silly lines about this 'mystery'. The whole thrust of the show, which trivialized it, again IMO, was due to the producers selling it to the network as a 'mystery'. Oh, and that the death of the US troops accounted, all by itself, for all subsequent bad behaviour by US troops in the rest of the war! And this rot is passed off as 'serious historical analysis'.

Nuff said. Apologies for the soap box.
Peter