Man Prevails Not Machinery
I’m a fan of National Geographic as it’s a great way to explore the world and civilizations from the comfy interior of your own home. However, their latest TVC for Men & Machines for the D-Day commemoration celebrations just don’t really sit well with me.
Over a sequence of famous battles during WW2, a voice over goes “The battle for WW2 wasn’t won here, or here, or here”. It then changes to the drawing boards of some obscure factory and states, rather bodly “it was won here”, suggesting that superior technology and engineering had won the war.
How quaintly American.
It’s also mildly insulting to the men and women who fought, died and sacrificed so much to free Europe. It took man to fight. Machines don’t fight, they just sit there and look pretty without man to operate them. They flash over a clip of the Battle of Britain and it’s suggested it was won through superior engineering. From my layman’s view, I was under the belief that the Germans had a technologically superior airforce in the Luftwaffe. So hence Nat Geo would be wrong. Unless they were talking about the use of radar technology.
In any case, the war was won by men and their will to prevail. I guess this symptomatic of a generation that is slowly forgetting the tragedy of that war.
