On PBS: The War

[wm]

2. He acted as if his documentary was the first to show the personal horrors of war. Not all but many documentaries have covered this aspect but along with the technical side of the war. Showing one without the other is manipulative. Also, as he has even said in some of his interviews is an "artist." Where an artist differs form a historian (the people who have made or at least greatly influenced the production most documentaries on WWII) is that an artist "reflects" an issue or event. This means it is slightly distorted and from a perceived view. When a good historian or academic attempts to show history it is more of a photograph. All attempts are made to avoid distortion (which is inevitable.) Again, many historians do distort things, but there have been some who have done a fine job.

Good historians do much more than show historical events as a photograph. History is about people doing things, not just a cataloging of res gestae, things done. As a result, good history must explain what it is that the people involved in the historical event were thinking and feeling as well as what they did. Good history explains what problems the historical actors needed to solve. Good history then proceeds to explain what process(es) the actors used to come to a decision about how to resolve those problems. As the historian makes these points clear, good history goes on to explain/describe the actions taken to bring the problems to resolution.
(While my exposition implies that the process of portraying the contents of good history is linear, the actual exposition by the historian need not be so. One could easily report on what happened and then do the causal explanation of why the historical agent(s) felt compelled to act in the way described. This is a question of style rather than a question of necessary and sufficient content.)

In the sense that I have just described it, good history includes portrayals that are akin to both good art and to good scientific exposition. I suspect that the PBS piece is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between good history and bad history. The PBS piece is also, first and foremost, entertainment.

10. I have to comment that I have never heard any, and I mean any, vet or reasonable person call WWII a "good war" in the sense he implied. They meant just if anything. Unfortunately we can't use "righteous" as Churchill and Roosevelt would have said due to people confusing this word with "self-righteousness" and imperialism.

I suspect you may well be right. What I see as operative here is the real point of Sherman's famous dictum, "War is hell." No war is good, in the sense that what happens in war is pretty horrific. However, some wars are "right" to fight and are, in that sense, good. The distinction is between why one fights and how one fights. I suspect that Sherman was focused on the actions subsequent to the declaration of war, which are indeed terrible.