20th Century History Movies

There are many, many, many movies about various historical events during the 20th century. Here are a few of my favorites in no real particular order:

-Saving Private Ryan (WWII)
-Band of Brothers (WWII, not really a movie but still amazing)
-We Were Soldiers (Vietnam)
-Black Hawk Down (Somalia Conflict)
-The Great Gatsby (1920's US)
-Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Not really history but theres Nazi's and its good)
-U-571 (WWII)
-Enemy at the Gate (WWII, Battle of Stalingrad)
-A Bridge too Far (WWII)
-Schindlers List (WWII, Holocaust)
-Midway (WWII, Pacific Theater)
-Windtalkers (WWII, Pacific Theater)
-American Grafitti (60's Culture)
-Forrest Gump (Late 20th century culture)
-Apollo 13 (Space Race)
-Full Metal Jacket (Vietnam)
-Apocolypse Now (Vietnam)
-Platoon (Vietnam)

and numerous other movies, but as you can see there are tons and tons of movies with historical facts in them even though most of the stories are fictional or overly dramatized by hollywood, there is still significant historical information and is a great way to learn about the facts and be entertained at the same time.

September 11

While this doesn't necessarily pertain to 20th century history, I still feel that this significant event is the pinnacle of events that did occur during the 20th century. This is an event that all people of my generation will remember exactly what they were doing, just like my parents and their generation remember almost exactly what they were doing when JFK was assassinated in 1963. I remember that I was in between classes when I heard someone say that the pentagon was on fire but i didn't think too much of it because i had no idea really what was going on. After that english class i went to my next class and walked by the computer lab where they had CNN on and saw the images on the TV and was in absolute disbelief. It was right around when the second tower was collapsing (I didn't find out till then, its crazy) and just kind of stood there and watched and didn't really know what to think. I didn't even go to my next class because i just sat there and watched. At this point I was about 15 and in 10th grade. I thought about it the rest of the day and by the time all I could think about was what i could do to go down there and help out some way. I only live about a half hour away from the city so this was something that hit especially close to home. Not only that by I am part of a long line of firefighters in my town and even though i wasn't even a member of the department i wanted to go with the truck (my department sent a fire truck down to help out) and do anything i could to help out. I was wondering if anyone else has any stories from September 11 that they would like to go on and share and i'm sure there are stories out there similar or extremely different from mine.

Vietnam

Vietnam was a significant conflict especially with regards to American history. Not only was it the first "war" that America had lost it its history but it was the first time that the world had seen such a highly contested war at home. It brings some thoughts of the current war in Iraq as that is also not a very popular war, which is something to think about as we look back on history. Hopefully we avoid repeating history, and I was simply wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the similarities between the Vietnam conflict and the current "war" in Iraq.

Technology and Cold War

I'd have to say that the History Channel is one of the best resources on television becuase it encourages people to think about things and look into them further then just watching the show. So I was once again watching the History channel and they was a show on about weapons and things during the Cold War. It had such a profound influence on todays history not only becuase of the events that happened but also the technology that resulted from all the developments that were made throughout the period. I just wanted to possibly spark some discussion about technological developments during the 20th century particularly some of the ones that resulted from the research and development that occured during the Cold War period.

World War II

I was just watching something on the History Channel about World War II and it got me thinking. The world would be in a completely different situation if Hitler had not been so impatient. Had he waited to start war until maybe 1941 or 1942 the world would essentially be screwed. He was developing many devastatingly deadly new weapons including jet aircraft, possibly nuclear weapons and the missile technology to deliver those weapons to far away places. I was just wondering if anyone had any further thoughts on this.

A Picture of a German V2 rocket that was used in the later years of World War II.

Persian Gulf War

With a vast majority of the news today talking about the war on terror and the war in Iraq, I felt it would be a good idea to reflect back upon the First Persian Gulf War which began in 1991, under President George Bush. That war was fundamentally different from the war which is raging in Iraq today. Saddam Hussein had invaded another country, Kuwait, and the United States was fighting to push the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, a close ally of the US and large supplier of oil. While the war was successful by all means, the president choose not to pursue the fleeing Iraqi army and let Iraq continue on with life. Many believe this was the appropriate action but many others feel that the American army and the coalition of nations should have continued to push into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power. There are many questions left unanswered here becuase had they taken Saddam out in 1991, we can only imagine the situation we would be in right now. This is a big question mark in history and hopefully there are people who have theories of the situation we might be in right now had we taken Saddam out in 1991.

History in general

History is an important topic area, even though many people beleive that what has happened has happened and doesn't need to be studied, it is important to understand what has happened in the past so that we don't repeat our failures. 20th century history was filled with many major historical events from World War I and World War II where many devastating new weapons were introduced to the Cold War and its subsequent end with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. These are just a few of the major events that occured during the 20th century.