Robert Capa's D-Day Darkroom Fiasco....

AgX · Jan 29, 2020

DF said:
Just how true is this - given the nature of censorship, would the top brass really want everyone/anyone to see the horrors of this most bloody carnage?

At least there were private (non-military) journalists from the Allied side at the front. At German side at least there never was such. Only journalists and photographers/cinematographers from the armed forces themselves were allowed. These had special units for this, which name (Propagandakompanie) already showed what line these men (no women) had to follow.

Mr Flibble · Jan 30, 2020

The Allies had accredited civilian war correspondents, yes, but only the men were allowed to go up to the front. Female correspondents were not allowed to go anywhere near the fighting. Lee Miller, for example, almost had her accreditation revoked for even trying.

AgX · Jan 30, 2020

In this discussion about deflated fame we should not overlook that the whole fame thing is unilateral anyway. Hardly anything is known to the public of those reporters on the other side. For instance those in those german units I hinted at above.
Here a photo made of parents looking for remnants from their daughter in the carcass of a bus at a small belgian city bombed at noon in 1943 by US bombers. Photographer was Otto Kropf:
https://www.knack.be/medias/15716/8046717.jpg

bernard_L · Jan 30, 2020

From one of the comments below the linked article:

I don't understand why this is even a story. The important part of the story is that Capa was there and took some now infamous photos, this is proven. If Capa exaggerated his efforts that is not a story, most brazen people do, and it does not change the fact that he was there in the war zone, at personal risk, to get the shots.

AgX · Jan 30, 2020

But then thousands of others were there too. Only difference was that most of them likely were not by their free will, and most of them had no ferry return-ticket either.

bernard_L · Jan 30, 2020

AgX said:
But then thousands of others were there too. Only difference was that most of them likely were not by their free will, and most of them had no ferry return-ticket either.

Which misses the point. The point not being whether or not Capa was more, or less, of a hero compared with the thousands of enlisted men. The actual point is well stated by the commenter that I quoted just above. Mr A. D. Coleman would have been better inspired (if he wanted to pick at R. Capa) to perform his own investigation of the iconic picture of the falling Spanish soldier; especially now that the Mexican Suitcase has surfaced, and all the frames are available for scrutiny.

AgX · Jan 30, 2020

I don't think I missed the point:
"it does not change the fact that he was there in the war zone, at personal risk, to get the shots."

jtk · Jan 30, 2020

DF said:
....Is that, supposedly, one of the guys was so nervous to see the results is that he overheated or overdid something to ruin most of the shots. Just how true is this - given the nature of censorship, would the top brass really want everyone/anyone to see the horrors of this most bloody carnage?

The damage happened in a Colliers Magazine darkroom. That's what Capa stated. Other tales are bogus. Certainly didn't involve any "top brass". Nobody who was there claimed Capable was first photog at the landing...he just wrote he was first from his particular unit. The world has too many Alan Dershowitz-style publicity hounds.

jtk · Jan 30, 2020

bernard_L said:
Which misses the point. The point not being whether or not Capa was more, or less, of a hero compared with the thousands of enlisted men. The actual point is well stated by the commenter that I quoted just above. Mr A. D. Coleman would have been better inspired (if he wanted to pick at R. Capa) to perform his own investigation of the iconic picture of the falling Spanish soldier; especially now that the Mexican Suitcase has surfaced, and all the frames are available for scrutiny.

Few of those frames are yet available and the "suitcase" negs don't portray D Day because Capable didn't keep that film.

AgX · Jan 30, 2020

In discussing this topic we should not overlook the stand the Normandy landing had at the anglo-american depiction of defeating Germany. A case as Capa is embedded in that depiction.
That Capa myth-deflation for instance is no a topic here, the myth not even exists.

In general we still got completely contradictory depictions on several issues of WWI and WWII and other historic happenings between different countries.

BobD · Jan 30, 2020

Capa's was not the only D-Day film that was allegedly lost:
https://www.wearethemighty.com/arti...bat-footage-of-d-day-into-the-english-channel

bernard_L · Jan 31, 2020

jtk said:
Few of those frames are yet available and the "suitcase" negs don't portray D Day because Capable didn't keep that film.

I should not have assumed that everybody was familiar with that part of Capa's bio. Of course the Mexican suitcase negatives don't contain D-day pictures: in June 1940 Capa entrusted his negatives (in a small suitcase with dividers for individual rolls) to his lab tech and printer (... use Google to fill the blanks...) and that suitcase surfaced in Mexico in 2008.
The suitcase and large contact prints have been exhibited in various museums/galleries worldwide (I saw them in Arles), and this book:
https://www.amazon.fr/Valise-mexicaine-Collectif/dp/2742797955/ shows all frames in print, (no English language edition that I know of, but does that matter?)

My point was that while "If Capa exaggerated his efforts that is not a story, most brazen people do, and it does not change the fact that he was there in the war zone, at personal risk, to get the shots", to criticize the authenticity of Capa's stories (and not his courage) a more interesting case is the iconic picture of the Republican soldier; while that picture is not in the set of the Mexican suitcase, the said suitcase provides strong evidence that the picture was not taken where Capa claimed it was. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Soldier

Sorry for being a little lengthy, but the first time around I assumed some facts as common knowledge and was too concise.

Bikerider · Jan 31, 2020

CMoore said:
D-Day...especially the Air-Borne... went WAY BETTER than their worst case scenarios.
There is a lot of film of Every battle in the ET and PT.
What would have been so worrisome about June 6.?
Everything went fine.
The Nazis spent Hundred of Millions of German Marks on the (immediate) Atlantic Defenses and The Allies went through them in about 24 hours.
The flattening of the town and monastery at Cassino is STILL a source of friction to this day. Film of that place being vaporized has been watched (almost) as often as June 5/6.

Monte Casino was far worse than the D Day landings with horrendous losses on both sides and I have not personally seen many still images of the actual fighting. I had a local garage I used where the owner was at Monte Casino and he related a lot of information what went on. He was a young man of 19 when he was there and only died 5 years ago - caused by a piece of shrapnel he had received in that conflict. He had live with it for 70 years and after a fall at home, this metal fragment moved and cut his spinal cord. After being injured it had been so close to his spine they did not operate to remove it. Sadly it still killed him.

Mr Flibble · Jan 31, 2020

BobD said:
Capa's was not the only D-Day film that was allegedly lost:
https://www.wearethemighty.com/arti...bat-footage-of-d-day-into-the-english-channel

That article starts with a photo taken by Captain Herman Wall of the 165th Signal Photo Company in the late morning of June 6th. A short time later Wall stepped on a mine and was evacuated with his camera around his neck. The only reason why HIS images survived.
Coincidentally, a few months later he met the soldier (PFC Wordeman) in that photograph in a coffee shop of an Army Hospital (Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, MI).
Wall invited Wordeman to come and see the prints of the photos he had taken, it was only then that they realised it was Wordeman in the photograph.

The loss of all that material from Omaha is also the reason why you see the 'D-Day Rescue' footage pop up so often in footage from D-Day. News agencies were desperate for footage for their News Reels.
The "D-Day Rescue" sequence was actually filmed and photographed on D+1.

Robert Capa's D-Day Darkroom Fiasco....

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