727Saving Private Ryanwas part of a wave of nostalgic
appreciation during the 1990s for the generation that had
won World War II. A spate of books, movies, and TV documen-
taries were other expressions of this phenomenon. On
accepting the Oscar for his film, Spielberg thanked his father,
a World War II vet, “for showing me that there is honor in
looking back and respecting the past.”
But respect for the past entails getting it right, and the
movie makes some significant errors and omissions. For one,
it suggests that the men huddled at the base of the seawall
blew up the concrete bunkers on their own. This was not
possible. In fact, commanders of destroyers took their ships
close to the beaches and fired countless heavy shells into the
fortifications, allowing the infantry to move up the hills.
The movie also shows the German soldiers as uniformly
expert and professional. But the German army had been dec-
imated by losses in the Soviet Union. The army manning the
Normandy defenses included many units composed mostly
of old men, boys, or conscripted soldiers from Poland or the
Soviet Union. Many surrendered as soon as they encoun-
tered American soldiers.
Of the movie’s implausible elements, the premise that
the U.S. Army high command ordered a special mission to
pluck a grieving mother’s son from danger was based on
fact. A real Mrs. Niland received telegrams on the same day
informing her that three of her sons had been killed in
action. Her fourth son, “Fritz,” had parachuted into
Normandy with the 101st Airborne. The army did in fact
snatch him from the front line and return him to safety.
The movie provides a fair rendering of many other ele-
ments of the battle: the inaccuracy of aerial bombing, which
missed most of the beach fortifications; the confusion caused
when hundreds of landing craft failed to reach their destination;
the destruction of scores of gliders, which crashed into high
hedgerows while attempting to land behind German lines.
On the other hand, many men at Omaha Beach, like
those depicted in the movie, were shattered by the experi-
ence. One private, nearly hit by a shell, recalled that he burst
into tears. “My buddies got me behind a burned-out craft,
where I cried for what seemed like hours. I cried until tears
would no longer come. To this day I’ve never shed another.”
Other men confessed that, after the terror of a firefight, their
platoon shot Germans who had raised their arms in surren-
der. “In my opinion any enemy shot during this intense
action had waited too long to surrender,” one G.I. declared.
Yet through it all, some men, like the captain portrayed by
Hanks, drew heroism from some unfathomed depths of the
soul. One real soldier at Omaha Beach remembered “a captain
and two lieutenants who demonstrated courage beyond belief
as they struggled to bring order to the chaos around them.”
Saving Private Ryanis not a fully accurate representation
of the attack on Omaha Beach, but it depicts—realistically
and memorably—how soldiers conferred meaning on the
heedless calculus of modern warfare.Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, and Edward Burns in Saving Private Ryan.Questions for Discussion
■Do generals have the right to order some men to near
certain death in order to save others? To save a nation?
■Do soldiers have the right to disobey such orders? Why
or why not?