In the first half hour, Burns makes it clear that America did not single-handedly win the war, that America's military losses were the smallest of the Allies, and that the American civilian population was never really threatened. The film is clearly made to portray the American experience of the war, not the worlds. As Kamiya states in the article, anyone who is familiar with Burn's work should expect this. Even the title refers to this so-called bias: in America, when one hears the phrase "The War" it is almost always in reference to WWII, not any other war, even the current one.

If Burns really intended to just make a maudlin, sentimental tear-jerker, would he have focused so much attention on the brutal aspects of battle? Would he have included so much about the Japanese internment camps? Would he have included anecdotes of American GIs killing unarmed prisoners out of revenge?

Burns is going way beyond the sentimental "Greatest Generation" pap that has become so common lately. Yes, there is sentimentality, but there is also pain, fear, hate, anger and death.

I have been moved to tears at least four times in the first two nights. I have long had a historical understanding of the war, but this gives me an deeper emotional understanding as well.

Bravo Ken Burns. Bravo.

He/she...sorry, didn't catch the gender... is right on the money, in my opinion. I'm sure this will be a brilliant series, certainly a jewel in the crown of Ken Burns' other works. But to call it "The War", when such key elements as the French resistance, the battle of Stalingrad, etc, were much more important than a lot of aspects of the American involvement. I say this not downplaying our contribution, but simply to "play up" what other countries did in this WORLD WAR, simply put. Quite honestly, I can't think of a catchy title...maybe that's the tragedy of it....that we have to think about ratings and such in naming this work of art... "World War II, American Style" doesn't cut it, and certainly is ridiculously irreverent. I don't have a solution....but I know wrong when I see it.

I think "The War," what I've seen of it, anyway, is not bad. One question still sticks with me, though: Why was this series made? I can understand why Ken Burns would want to make this series. He is a film maker, and he has done well for himself with sprawling, multi-part epics about American history. But between "The Greatest Generation," "Saving Private Ryan," "Band of Brothers," The History Channel, the Military Channel, and the hundreds of WWII books, films and TV shows that have already been produced, why is PBS devoting another 14+ hours of airtime to the subject? Especially since America is currently in a war right now, one that is seriously lacking in coverage and analysis, in my opinion. Does the American television audience really need another reverently assembled collection of stock footage and interviews with old-timers, choking up on camera as they recall how it was back then?

In 1983 PBS produced "Vietnam: a Television History." It was 13-part series made with the explicit aim of not just describing, but understanding why events happened the way they did. It was a documentary whose main purpose was to document history, not forge an emotional bond between the subjects and the audience. I wish whoever it is that runs PBS would go back to a more "names and dates" kind of historical study and do fewer personal interviews accompanied by slow sad music. The station would also be doing the country a service by producing more docs on the lesser-known conflicts in American history like the War of 1812, The Spanish-American War, World War I, Korea, and Gulf War I.

Ken Burns said somewhere (NYT?) that he felt a need to profile WWII because, he had read, so many Americans were seriously sketchy or simply mistaken about the details -- specifically, a shocking number thought that the United States had fought WITH Germany ... against Japan? ... or something similar.

I found the first episode fascinating and illuminating, if a bit confusing, focusing as it did with AMERICAN involvement in the South Pacific. This is a story I was surprised to realize I largely unfamiliar with having somehow placed it secondary, and AFTER the war in Europe. I confess found the story truly horrifying. The deaths, the incompetence, the cruelty, the misery, the watery muck.

I confess to having more than one slighly smirky "soylent green is people" moment as dead bodies -- big ones, small ones, old ones, young ones, headless ones, gutted ones, throat slashed ones, burned ones, emaciated ones, ... paraded across my TV screen. Alright already, war is dead people, I get it.

Having now seen the second episode, I do think there are nuggets and moments of great value and that the series is successfully demystifying and de-glorifying war ... but, the story of "how it came to this point" seems to have been left out or mentioned all too briefly in passing -- America essentially turning off Japan's oil imports, for instance.

I will keep watching but I fear that Burns is providing more of an impressionistic experience than a history lesson, corrective or otherwise.

I agree with a previous letter writers that the impression that individuals in uniform were treated as utterly "expendible" -- to be sent on hopeless missions or simply abandoned to almost inevitable death -- is an unpleasant shock. I hope others do not conclude from this that, in fact, the catastrophic incompetence,lies, and futility that characterize our "war" on Iraq are some how "war is hell" "business as usual"

Rather, each episode of "The War" begins with the disclaimer that it is NOT that, only a record of America's involvement, specifcally seen through the lens of four separate towns.

Ken Burns has no obligation to make a global history of WWII. That was already done by the BBc in 1974, with "The World At War" which was pretty good but kind of stuffy.

It is pretty clear that without the Russian sacrifice we would have a very different world today. I have seen many good films and documentaries on Kursk and Stalingrad.

That's not what this film is about. To criticise it for not being something which it never claimed to be is a little unfair. It would be like me critiquing a Russian documentary about that countries involvement in WWII for not mentioning the Americans enough.

Every country invlved in WWII should produce a history of what it was like. That is what Ken Burns has done, and he should be applauded.