I went yesterday to see the film “Pressure”, which is based around the real events of the D-Day landings in June 1944.  I hope it’s not a plot spoiler to say that the day chosen for D-day was crucial – moonlight needed for paratroop drops, high tides at dawn to allow ships to approach in darkness and get the troops ashore before enemy could get organised.  A particular factor was the weather, as unseasonal storms were predicted for the original day of 5^th June.  The film follows the argument between weather forecasters on the British and American side, and the judgement that Dwight Eisenhower had to make when it seemed that a day’s clear weather was due between two storms.

Go and see it, it’s OK.  The difficult directorial task – to get the viewer involved and tense when you know things will turnout well – is carried off, and the acting (especially Andrew Scot as James Stagg, the lead meteorologist, and Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower) is pretty good.  However, the film has the usual fault of D-Day movies, which presenting that extraordinary event as a purely American enterprise.  Apart from the British top brass – Montgomery, Ramsey, Leigh-Mallory – no non-American military contribution is shown.  The only beach that is referred to is Omaha, with Juno, Sword, Gold (the British/Canadian/French beaches) never mentioned.  Most troops on D-Day were not American, yet not a single British soldier, tank, aircraft or ship (and the naval support for landings and bombardments were mostly British) are shown.  The US, of course, provided the bulk of forces that landed later in France, and were crucial in the victories that pushed the German forces back to the Rhine. 

Does this matter ?  It’s all a long time ago – I’m 81, and it shows events before I was born.  UK politics is full of tiresome bores saying what “we” did in the war.  There is in any case a long tradition of films that miss allied contributions.  Some are famously bad – Errol Flynn winning in Burma, a campaign overwhelmingly led by Indian and British forces, “U571” showing American sailors capturing the Enigma code machines from a U-boat, when this was achieved by HMS Bulldog well before the USA entered the war.  Others are not as weepingly wrong, but the general trend is to ignore non-American forces. The contribution of Montgomery’s forces in relieving American forces is absent from the film of “The Battle of the Bulge”, for example. “Private Ryan” is another example, as is “Fury” and the early part of “Pearl Harbor” has an Eagle squadron in the Battle of Britain.  It’s sometimes acknowledged, but argued that stressing the American contribution (“Pressure” is a film with a British star, by a British author and produced by Working Title, a British company) increases audiences and spreads knowledge of history.

A brief flirtation with American contributions on YouTube suggest it does matter.  Americans overwhelmingly think that the USA won WW2 more or less alone.  The common insult (repeated, astonishingly, by Trump recently) is that, without America, Europe would be speaking German. One could carry on about that remark (counterfactual history may be fun, but the Germans didn’t make conquered people speak German, and anyway the likely outcome of WW2 in Europe without the USA would have been Russian hegemony – there were 50 Soviet deaths for every American.  The UK paid handsomely for American help, and provided the scientific basis for radar, code-breaking, anti-submarine and atomic weapons.  WW2 without the Pacific war would have allowed British and Commonwealth forces an easier ride in Africa and Europe).  Films like “Pressure” – even though that one can be argued to portray the D-Day operation saved by a Scot against American advice – is another lost opportunity to show how nations need to work together to overthrow tyranny, the WW2 partners did not avoid their responsibilities, and ducking out of the NATO partnership is not a good idea.