If you want the POV of both winners and losers, you can't beat the films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Or if you want the sad old situation of the universal soldier, there's Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (again, different war). Although I agree that long stretches of The War are pretty lackluster, taking the American towns and cities as an organizing principle did reveal that WWII changed the face of the U.S. as well as the face of Europe. No water-filled craters, no UXBs, no Dresdens and no Nagasakis but still changed forever by the migration to centers of war industry. With the exception of the dry irony of Shelby Foote, I found The Civil War to also be pretty much a one-trick pony with the lachrymose fiddle theme and all the letters edged in black. Incidentally fellers, there was anti-war before there was politically correct. How about Grand Illusion?
jack
