Total lack of interest mystery

[ChrisGeorge]

I have to admit that it wasn't until after midnight last night I realized, this weekend was the 100th anniversary of the greatest naval battle in World War I (and the greatest involving "dreadnoughts") the battle of Skaggarak or Jutland. It's normally considered a British victory because the German navy returned with the British in pursuit to their home ports, but the British were the ones who lost more men and capital ships (British casualties were over 8,000 men while German closer to 5,000). The commanders on both sides are not household names now (Jellicoe and Beatty on the British side, Scheer and Von Hipper on the German) possibly because of the mixed results of the battle. If anything, despite German losses of ships, the sinking of three major British Dreadnoughts (Queen Mary, Indefatigable, and Invinceable) in the battle (for a total of almost 3,600 men in those three ships alone) demonstrated that the German warships were better constructed to withstand the punishment of the battle.

In the next ten days it will also be the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of HMS Hampshire off the Orkney Islands by a submarine mine, and the death of most of her company (there were about 18 survivors). On board were a party headed for Archangel in the Russian Empire for a state visit to Tsar Nicholas II's court - this party was lead by the War Minister, Horatio, Lord Kitchener. Kitchener and his staff died in the sinking, and there were later rumors of sabotage by his enemies (both domestic and foreign) connected to his death.

Despite these anniversaries, very little is being said about these events in the current news - no documentaries here about them. Yet last month there were several here about the Easter Rebellion in Dublin a month prior to Jutland.

Jeff

Hi Jeff

In regard to Jutland, there has been a lot of activity on Twitter with historians tweeting out information about the battle and the losses on both sides. Certainly there is silence among the U.S. media because the Americans weren't involved.

Incidentally, talking about the U.S.-centric point of view of the world, the movie "Objective Burma" starring Errol Flynn was on TV a few days ago. I remember my late father, a World War II veteran who served in the RAF Medical Corps, and my late mother, who was in the Auxilliary Territorial Service (ATS), as also was the future Queen Elizabeth II, were both equally incensed that the Hollywood movie made it appear that the Americans were the principal Allied forces driving the Japanese out of Burma and ignored the major input of the British Army.

Best regards

Chris

[Rosella]

The BBC did a couple of things on the Battle of Jutland as well. Something may appear on YouTube about it in a couple of days.

This Guardian article is pretty caustic about 'Objective Burma', and its distant relation to the truth.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2012/nov/30/objective-burma-cinema-truth-reel-history

I'm also sure that the people who worked at Bletchley Park during WW2 would also be surprised to learn that Enigma was all due to a US Naval retrieval of a German encrypting machine. The 2000 film 'U571' starring Bon Jovi told cinema audiences all about it!

[Mayerling]

Hi Chris and Rosella,

I am aware of the to-do about "Objective Burma", which might have been renamed, "Whoever Heard of Field Marshall Slim?" There was a British cartoon at the time that showed Errol Flynn in his combat gear reading a script on the jungle set of the film. It was typical of a "morale boosting" war film from Hollywood that did not get the story right. When Reinhard Heydrich was killed in Prague in 1942 there would be two films (both good ones, by the way), "Hangman Also Die" (director Fritz Lang) and "Hitler's Madman" (director Douglas Sirk) that failed to give the public the correct story (though Sirk's film did show the retaliation on Lidice). More accurate films about the war had to wait awhile after the war ended (and as Rosella pointed out about that film regarding the capture of the enigma machine from the submarine, they still don't always get it right).

There is an enjoyable book, written thirty years ago by George MacDonald Fraser (of the "Flashman" series fame) called "The Hollywood History of the World". While acknowleding Hollywood and Cinematic errors on history, Fraser insisted that more frequently than we can guess the movies get various points about the period they cover correctly.

Jeff