Band of Brother E3 & E4 Highlight Reaction

D Day was Episode 2 -- it was the invasion of France. Saving Private Ryan shows D-Day really well if you want to learn more about it.

Nanette Davis

Few things: - A lot of people informally refer to the Netherlands as Holland, but it is officially the Netherlands. Holland was a province/state of the Netherlands, now divided into North and South Holland. - The Netherlands had been invaded by Germany early on in the war and suffered under several years of German occupation. They were celebrating being liberated. The country was largely stripped of food to feed the German war machine. I'm not sure that the Netherlands was worse off than other occupied countries, but they were incredibly appreciative of being liberated. The Allied Canadian forces did a lot of the work liberating them, and to this day many cities hold parades honouring Canadian vets, and many Dutch people immigrated to Canada after the war, my grandparents included. - I think the show tries to show it but doesn't spend a lot of time on it - the issue of "collaborating" with the Germans is somewhat complex. Every occupied country had citizens falling all along a gradient - some open sympathizers who identified with Nazi ideals, some who formed relationships/cooperated as a matter of survival/out of fear, many who just tried to avoid and survive the occupiers, and the boldest and bravest joining resistance cells. The sympathizers who betrayed their countrymen to the Germans - telling them who was hiding Jews, or where to find Jews, or selling out resistance members, or even joining the SS - that's easy to deal with. But I find it more difficult to just blanket condemn every woman that slept with an occupier. It is hard to imagine the level of fear some people had to live with in that situation, and how precarious survival could be. For some people it was nothing more than a way to get access to food, or medicine, or protection from other soldiers.