HaHA Oliver STONE dropped the bomb on BROKAW on Morning Scabs
It might have been a re-run (I don't doze on it much anymore), but he and his co-writer/history professor Peter KUZNICK said - with BROKAW *not* present - that their Showtime chapter on WW II debunks the mythology of "The Greatest Generation" (ka-BOOM!1) and "Band of Brothers" by showing that the Soviets incurred 27M dead compared to 300K U.S. and that CHURCHILL had said the Soviets absorbed the guts of the Nazi war machine. They said their book/series complements Howard ZINN's social/domestic history with the focus on external events.
Only BARNICLE, HEILEMANN, and HALPERIN were present of the regulars, with some new dude sort of taking the Mika/Scabs seat. Scabs would have EXPLODED NUCLEARLY, so to speak, and BROKAW, whom I've always suspected cashed in royally by pandering with "The Greatest Generation" francise, might have lunged across the table.
For the record, STONE also said OBAMA has not received enough criticism from the Left on the continuation and expansion of Shrub war policies, that everybody jumped on Shrub for violating Constitutional civil liberties but not so much on OBAMA for killer drones, personally reviewing lists of who to kill, "which is much worse."
The review below is more hostile to the t.v. series, but there are more positive ones to be found.
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http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-untold-history-review20121112,0,4744947.story
[font size=5]Review: American history, as Oliver Stone sees it[/font]
The filmmaker offers an alternative mythology that relies far more on broad-stroke storytelling than rigorous analysis. Still, there's some value in this Showtime miniseries.
By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
November 12, 2012
.... But the story of how the United States' actions, at home or abroad, have not always been noble or smart or superior to those of other nations is not quite as untold as Stone believes. That, for example, it was the Soviet army rather than the Americans that turned the tide of World War II has been dealt with in several fairly recent documentaries. That President Harry S. Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had as much if not more to do with establishing America's dominance in the postwar politics than ending the war with Japan is something that activists, politicians and historians have discussed virtually from the moment he made it. ....
Which is not to say that there isn't value in the series. History demands constant reevaluation and certainly it is important to be reminded that the actions of our government can be tragically flawed. There are wonderful pieces of footage here and vivid glimpses of behind-the-scenes politicking, particularly regarding Franklin Delano Roosevelt's second vice president, Henry Wallace, a progressive liberal Roosevelt fought to get on the ticket, only to have him replaced by conservative forces during his fourth and final term by Truman. In early episodes, Wallace returns to Stone's narrative again and again as a lost hope for America, a man who might have saved us from the sins of the atomic age.
Not every historian sees Wallace as quite the tragic hero Stone considers him, but the narrative of "The Untold History" is too often just as one-note as the versions Stone seeks to replace. Indeed, the inclusion, at several points, of clips from Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" is as telling as it is narratively jarring. Stone presents his case with little recognition of the social, political and psychological complexities that dominate much of human development, turning it, intentionally or not, into an alternative mythology that relies far more on broad-stroke storytelling than rigorous analysis.
And isn't that what he was angry about in the first place?
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= new reply since forum marked as read
I always love hearing Stone, can't wait to see that video when it is posted. 
"Victory was bought by American Spam, and paid for with Russian blood" (Roosevelt's Secret War, Persico)
"Many of the Russians who lost their lives because they forced the civilians to face the germans unarmed. Others because of stalin (sic) himself, who was directly responsible for millions of his own peoples deaths."
Many, certainly. However, as fully 67% of ALL combat (non-civilian) deaths in WW2 (Axis and Allies) occurred on the Eastern Front (Utopia in Power, Heller - 9.7 million Russian, 3.5 million German, .75 million assorted satellites). One can easily conclude that the major brunt and the cost of the war was primarily from the East Front.
I don't think Mr Stone was in any way implying it's black and white, he was merely allowing voicing a premise that tends to raise the hackles of the "America's the Best" crowd... 
I expect the United States to live up to its own ideals.
Thus I see something that should be better than the beast that raped Vietnam and Iraq.
Will America ever be, as Langston Hughes wanted it?
Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free."
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
Troops killed is one of three (according to Von Clasuwitz) indicators of a country's ability to forestall defeat or find victory
If a nation state does not require a large naval presence (in this case, the Soviet Union), it would be absurd to claim a premise from that country's naval casualties or lack of casualties,
And, as the Soviet Union built approximately aircraft in a a ratio of 2/3 vis-a-vis the U.S., and doing so with close to 45% of its industrial capacity gone, and began both ground and offensive air operations well before Torch (all of which may be found in paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers), all things being equal, it seems safe to conclude that the Soviet army had already beat the German army, though neither one realized it at the time.
And before we get too melodramatic, I don't have an agenda-- I merely attempt to look objectively at the numbers. Kennedy's book is fantastic for this, showing each countries arms productions, GDP, GNP, absolute dollars, etc. relative to each other, relative to the specific situation, and relative to the overall contribution to the allies eventual victory.
But I do understand that we often tell people who don't agree with our premise that "you don't get" for better self-validation of our own premises.
"That's black-letter history."
Objective history often pisses off armchair nationalists... 
