Historian and journalist Andrew Roberts spoke Monday for the World War II Films Center for Constructive Alternatives on the topic of “General William Slim and the Burma Campaign.” Connecting with the showing of the 1957 movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai” earlier in the day, Roberts spoke about the allied campaign in Burma during the Second World War and the central role that the British officer Lt. Gen. Sir William Slim played in winning the long-fought and oft-forgot campaign against the invading Japanese in Burma.
The conflict in Burma is often called “The Forgotten War,” because of the lack of media and journalistic coverage. Despite the lack of popular coverage, the allied victory in Burma was essential in the staging of an invasion of Japan, and the invasion of Burma was an important objective to the Japanese war planners.
Roberts called “Bridge On the River Kwai” one of “the great movies of the Second World War,” and related an anecdote about his visit to the site of the Kanchanaburi death camp, unfortunately for his wife on the second day of his honeymoon.
General Slim was a veteran of World War I at Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, and essential to bringing about the allied victory in the Burmese theater, conducting one of the longest controlled tactical retreats in military history before striking back against the Japanese using long-range deep-penetration jungle fighting.
“Andrew is almost single-handedly keeping alive the art of narrative war history,” said President Larry Arnn before addressing a question about the controversy surrounding “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
Roberts addressed a question from Arnn about the moral controversy surrounding the movie. Specifically, many veterans and former prisoners of war saw the movie as unrealistic in its portrayal of the British officers as collaborating with the Japanese instead of actively sabotaging their captors’ efforts.
He criticized the movie for its failure to accurately portray life in the Japanese camps, citing the frequent executions, beatings, beheadings, and starvation that occurred at the prisoner of war camps in Burma, conceding that it is meant as entertainment, not a documentary.
Freshman Kaleb Molina was critical of the talk, saying “it was all historical narrative, I felt like I could have just picked up a history book and gotten everything he talked about.”
Sophomore Sonja Cook said “He was British and it was awesome, when he started talking and we heard his accent, the entire audience gasped.”
