This week much global attention is being paid to the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the invasion of Europe in 1944.
There is a fascinating 1945 movie titled “The True Glory” (https://youtu.be/9ifDqlRZh70). This is an official Anglo/American government documentary summarizing the events of World War 2 in the European portion of the war just as the war has ended. It is introduced by General Dwight Eisenhower, who, at this time was the Supreme Commander of the allied forces in Europe. He ends his introduction in a very veiled political way, speaking about the spirit of comradeship that worked to achieve the victory “among the free peoples of the united nations”. By today’s standards there are corny aspects of this film but it needs to be viewed, as best as possible through the lens of its intended audiences.
The video is a little over 1 hour and 20 minutes long and I found it quite fascinating and reasonably reflective of the events seen through the eyes of the 1945 winning side. Taking everything as much as possible into context and recognizing that this was produced in 1945 plus knowing that the impact of this 6-year war was still very raw and current for the audience at the time, I find much that might still resonate today. The music is overdone and the narration is very typical of the propagandist statements of the time, yet throughout the movie there are comments and reflections from service personnel, nurses, and other participants that help personalize this story and keep it relevant.
One part in particular really spoke to me regarding today’s world of technology and our understanding of technologies in both our daily and our academic lives. The narrator at this point in the film appears to be a US Army Officer and he says, ‘I will be happy to get back to the Library of Congress where maps have some permanent value’. An amazing statement given what we know of maps and mapping today but even more so, is that this officer goes on to talk about the allied advance being so fast that the troops are moving beyond the capabilities of the current maps they possess. The officer indicates that they would arrive at a place that was off the map and by the time new maps arrived, their new destinations were also off the maps. Apparently, they had to parachute tons of new maps to the different groups throughout Europe just to keep up.
What a way to run a war and yet when we examine our use and understanding of technology, particularly in education today – have we not moved so far and so fast that we too, at times, may be off the map? It is fascinating to see that 75 years ago we were struggling with the impact of the speed of change and the attempts to manage global chaos. The movie is an interesting snap-shot of an exhausted world attempting to view a global catastrophe through a lens that most could barely understand and/or appreciate. Technologies, in their use at that moment do not always meet the challenges of that particular moment. Although we wish for things as they were, then as today, solutions appear through the chaos and even when we get to return to the Library of Congress we quickly find the impermanence of things we hold dear.