Caligula: 1400 Days of Terror

[Forty Two]

No. It was supposed to prove that Hitler didn't die in Berlin but fled to South America and had a peaceful death in the sixties surrounded by family.

It was this here: http://www.history.com/shows/hunting-hitler

That's not a new invention of the History Channel. There are books and documentaries speculating about Hitler faking his death and escaping for the last 70 years.

[NineBerry]

The show made it look as if they were doing real science. I cannot imagine such a show being produced by the BBC or the German public broadcasters.

[Feck]

" Even today everyone knows his name " well that is a fucking lie because his name wasn't 'Caligula' it was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.

Caligula was the nickname he was given when he was barely past toddlerdom, and it stuck. Everybody knew him by this name then, and whoever is aware of him today knows him by the same name. Are you trying to create a problem out of nothing? Would it make much difference if future generations discussed the Iron Lady rather than Margaret Hilda Thatcher?

No it would only be a problem if program makers claimed everyone knew her name .
" Everybody knew him by this name then" ...... simply not true .

[Forty Two]

The show made it look as if they were doing real science. I cannot imagine such a show being produced by the BBC or the German public broadcasters.

So? I can't imagine such a show being produced by PBS or Military History Channel, etc. We have public broadcasters here too, in addition to the hundreds of private broadcasters. I am sure people make shit TV shows in the UK and Germany, too. Saying that one or another channel wouldn't air a given type of show doesn't say anything about how "shit" the television in a given country is in gener

[Forty Two]

Well, his name wasn't Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus either. That's the English rendering of a name which would have been written in turn of the first millenium latin.

[Svartalf]

The show made it look as if they were doing real science. I cannot imagine such a show being produced by the BBC or the German public broadcasters.

The history channel is ultimately an entertainment corporation, not a science outlet

[Svartalf]

Well, his name wasn't Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus either. That's the English rendering of a name which would have been written in turn of the first millenium latin.

C.IVL.CAES.AVG.GER

[JimC]

I saw a documentary on one of these American history channels recently. It followed a historian who proved that Hitler went to South America after World War II....

The History channel goes in for a lot of pop-culture-history stuff these days. You'll see them featuring Erich von Danikan and all the "It was aliens" guys showing how they think ancient aliens helped build the pyramids.I saw that show about Hitler escaping to south America -- it was a rather thin on "proof." However, lots of Nazis did go to South America after the war, and so it's got that kernel of plausibility built in. Proof, however, is a bit of an overstatement.

The problem is that a relatively uneducated population (and not just in America) will not be able to discern the difference between pop-culture crap and serious academic endeavour...

[Hermit]

Less than one second into the trailer and it was obvious why Merkin TV is shit . Watch the BBC or Channel 4 programs about Little Boots to see the difference .
It's just the same when they do wildlife . NAZI-SHARKS !!!!!!!! or "Life on Earth " .

Ugh.... again with the American stuff sucks, go with the _______ in some other country bullshit.

Dude - we have hundreds of different television channels. You have the BBC, which is one of your channels. Maybe it's awesome, or some of it is awesome. But, in the US, have many many channels that have great history shows. The History Channel took a nosedive, 'tis true. But, we have History International, Military History Channel, American Heroes Channel, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, multiple PBS channels, National Geographic channel, and many more with great programming.

It's like all going on about beer and cheese, ffs. Yes, we have bland Bud-Light and American Pasteurized Processed Cheese - sure. We have shit like that. But, we also have 100's of breweries brewing excellent beer in a wide variety (Sam Adams, Yuengling, Deschutes Brewery, Sculpin, Sierra Nevada, Blue Moon...and the list goes on and on), and we have Wisconsin cheddar and other cheeses which are among the best of their varieties in the world.

FFS with this Merkin such and such is shit....

On the grounds of having watched a documentary series titled The Civil War I have formed the opinion that Ken Burns is a top-of-the line documentary maker. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised mainly in the USA. Burns has made quite a number of documentaries, which I intend to catch up with.

So, does that mean Feck is wrong? Of course he is. He ignores the fact that even a blind chicken can find a corn, or to utilise that well used expression, Burns is an exception to the rule. I think it is rather telling that this prolific documentary maker has not won a single Academy Award since his first documentary was broadcast 16 years ago, and was nominated only twice.

Americans...

[Scot Dutchy]

The show made it look as if they were doing real science. I cannot imagine such a show being produced by the BBC or the German public broadcasters.

The history channel is ultimately an entertainment corporation, not a science outlet

True of many channels including National Geographic. History Channel is creationist.

[Svartalf]

I did not know that, iz funny when you think that Egypt and Sumer have civilisations older than the presumed date of Creation.

[Forty Two]

I saw a documentary on one of these American history channels recently. It followed a historian who proved that Hitler went to South America after World War II....

The History channel goes in for a lot of pop-culture-history stuff these days. You'll see them featuring Erich von Danikan and all the "It was aliens" guys showing how they think ancient aliens helped build the pyramids.I saw that show about Hitler escaping to south America -- it was a rather thin on "proof." However, lots of Nazis did go to South America after the war, and so it's got that kernel of plausibility built in. Proof, however, is a bit of an overstatement.

The problem is that a relatively uneducated population (and not just in America) will not be able to discern the difference between pop-culture crap and serious academic endeavour...

Sure, but that isn't peculiar to the US. It's not as if pop-culture, paranormal, conspiracy theory and other such programming is nonexistent in countries other than the US. We have a private media industry in most free countries, which means that any market that can generate income is catered to by someone.

I wasn't disputing that the shows were shite, or that gullible people can be taken in by them. Fuck, gullible people will sign petitions banning dihydromonoxide. My objection was to the suggestion that this is somehow something that the is exclusive to the US, or that the US media does exclusively. It isn't - we have many, many different channels and media outlets, which have both serious science and pop culture science. For ever "I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens" type show out there, there is a series hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Michiu Kaku or Stephen Hawking or Brian Cox or Morgan Freeman. We have shows like Strip the City, The Wonders of the Solar System, Cosmos, Moon Machines, How the Earth Works, Through the Wormhole...and the list goes on and on.... we have history related shows like the "Dark Ages" series, Engineering an Empire series, Real Vikings, World War 2 in HD, The Color of War, The Men Who Built America, the World War 1 series on AHC, Ancient Discoveries, How the States Got Their Shapes, The Presidents, Battles BC, Battle 360, Man, Moment Macine, The World Wars, various series on Ancient Rome, the Greeks, and the recent series called "The Barbarians" which has episodes on the Vandals, the Huns, the Vikings, the Goths, the Mongols, the Saxons, the Lombards and the Franks. That's not even scratching the surface.

So, yes, the US has garbage on TV, but the variety on American TV, I can absolutely tell you, is wide and deep. If you want serious science or history, there is plenty of it.

[Forty Two]

Less than one second into the trailer and it was obvious why Merkin TV is shit . Watch the BBC or Channel 4 programs about Little Boots to see the difference .
It's just the same when they do wildlife . NAZI-SHARKS !!!!!!!! or "Life on Earth " .

Ugh.... again with the American stuff sucks, go with the _______ in some other country bullshit.

Dude - we have hundreds of different television channels. You have the BBC, which is one of your channels. Maybe it's awesome, or some of it is awesome. But, in the US, have many many channels that have great history shows. The History Channel took a nosedive, 'tis true. But, we have History International, Military History Channel, American Heroes Channel, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, multiple PBS channels, National Geographic channel, and many more with great programming.

It's like all going on about beer and cheese, ffs. Yes, we have bland Bud-Light and American Pasteurized Processed Cheese - sure. We have shit like that. But, we also have 100's of breweries brewing excellent beer in a wide variety (Sam Adams, Yuengling, Deschutes Brewery, Sculpin, Sierra Nevada, Blue Moon...and the list goes on and on), and we have Wisconsin cheddar and other cheeses which are among the best of their varieties in the world.

FFS with this Merkin such and such is shit....

On the grounds of having watched a documentary series titled The Civil War I have formed the opinion that Ken Burns is a top-of-the line documentary maker. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised mainly in the USA. Burns has made quite a number of documentaries, which I intend to catch up with.

So, does that mean Feck is wrong? Of course he is. He ignores the fact that even a blind chicken can find a corn, or to utilise that well used expression, Burns is an exception to the rule. I think it is rather telling that this prolific documentary maker has not won a single Academy Award since his first documentary was broadcast 16 years ago, and was nominated only twice.

Americans...

Oh, for fuck's sake. Ken Burns is a great documentarian, but he isn't by any stretch of the imagination the best educationally or the only one out there.

And, before you can spout bullshit about the US being a blind chicken that finds a corn now and again, let's compare country to country and their programming. Pick on. Let's compare.

Ken Burns makes great documentaries. But, the fucking Academy Award is not "americans" - it's the Academy of Motion Pictures - a private group of folks who vote on theatrical released "motion pictures" after being lobbied and cajoled. It's not "Americans" in general picking shows they like. Further, the Academy Awards are not not television, and most of his documentaries are of the miniseries variety and not 2 hour movies - I think the baseball documentary was a 12 hour documentary. Television has a different set of awards, called the Emmys, and Ken Burns won twice. The "Civil War" documentary you watched wasn't a motion picture in theaters, and would never have even been nominated because it wasn't a motion picture. Burns also won the John Steinbeck award, and has a wing named after him at Hampshire College film school.

That being said - The Civil War documentary received more than 40 major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, the Producer of the Year Award from the Producers Guild of America, a People's Choice Award, a Peabody Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, a D. W. Griffith Award, and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize.

[Hermit]

OK, Forty Two, I was wrong. Some blind chooks are capable of finding three corns. Or so I'm told anyway. By independent US observers.

Happy now?

[JimC]

I saw a documentary on one of these American history channels recently. It followed a historian who proved that Hitler went to South America after World War II....

The History channel goes in for a lot of pop-culture-history stuff these days. You'll see them featuring Erich von Danikan and all the "It was aliens" guys showing how they think ancient aliens helped build the pyramids.I saw that show about Hitler escaping to south America -- it was a rather thin on "proof." However, lots of Nazis did go to South America after the war, and so it's got that kernel of plausibility built in. Proof, however, is a bit of an overstatement.

The problem is that a relatively uneducated population (and not just in America) will not be able to discern the difference between pop-culture crap and serious academic endeavour...

Sure, but that isn't peculiar to the US. It's not as if pop-culture, paranormal, conspiracy theory and other such programming is nonexistent in countries other than the US. We have a private media industry in most free countries, which means that any market that can generate income is catered to by someone.

I wasn't disputing that the shows were shite, or that gullible people can be taken in by them. Fuck, gullible people will sign petitions banning dihydromonoxide. My objection was to the suggestion that this is somehow something that the is exclusive to the US, or that the US media does exclusively. It isn't - we have many, many different channels and media outlets, which have both serious science and pop culture science. For ever "I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens" type show out there, there is a series hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Michiu Kaku or Stephen Hawking or Brian Cox or Morgan Freeman. We have shows like Strip the City, The Wonders of the Solar System, Cosmos, Moon Machines, How the Earth Works, Through the Wormhole...and the list goes on and on.... we have history related shows like the "Dark Ages" series, Engineering an Empire series, Real Vikings, World War 2 in HD, The Color of War, The Men Who Built America, the World War 1 series on AHC, Ancient Discoveries, How the States Got Their Shapes, The Presidents, Battles BC, Battle 360, Man, Moment Macine, The World Wars, various series on Ancient Rome, the Greeks, and the recent series called "The Barbarians" which has episodes on the Vandals, the Huns, the Vikings, the Goths, the Mongols, the Saxons, the Lombards and the Franks. That's not even scratching the surface.

So, yes, the US has garbage on TV, but the variety on American TV, I can absolutely tell you, is wide and deep. If you want serious science or history, there is plenty of it.

In case you hadn't noticed:

(and not just in America)