User Reviews

This comment is in response to former reviews.

The negativity in a few of these reviews are gut-wrenching and I honestly can't understand why I'm surprised. Sensationalism? Fat white man? Seriously?

This is a story telling film.. Yes there are reenacted segments. It's a story telling of this one particular story. Just as Saving Private Ryan was. What is the problem with that? There is none! Or there shouldn't be. Complaints about not finding actual German soldiers for the film is quite shallow.. How about the Germans that were children at the time of the war that gave eyewitness accounts to what they saw? You failed to mention the gentleman that began to sob from giving his account..

Sadly, from some of these reviews, it seems that history should only be told as long as it fits what you want it to be and not for what it was. Unfortunately this way of thinking is a complete parallel to how Americans think... Believe even. Revisionist history at its finest... How about being upset for what George Schomo said at the end of the film? Of course not. That wouldn't phase you in the least bit..

You all must have been fantastic students during your educational years.

While plenty of reviewers try to channel their inner Gene and Roger, a small few need to not. I'll be excited to see just how long it takes before I get the 1st Amendment argument thrown my way. 3...2..1.

This is a film combining real footage, re-enactments, and interviews, about a little-known atrocity during World War II. At the outset of the Battle of the Bulge, the first American unit to come under fire was the all-black 333rd Field Armor Battalion. Overwhelmed by the Germans, the battalion was reduced to fighting hand to hand with knives, before finally surrendering. Those soldiers that could not stand were shot. The others were marched off.

Eleven prisoners escaped when an American plane strafed the march, while the other soldiers were sent to prison camp. The eleven reached a farmhouse in the town of Wereth, Belgium, where they were given food by a Belgium family. Unfortunately, they were found by the SS, and you can guess the rest.

A few historical notes, not mentioned in the film: 1.When the survivors of the battalion were on a train coming home, they were forced to stand in a rest room during the trip, even though one of the cars was completely empty. 2.The SS officer who ordered the massacres was sentenced to hang, but his sentence was commuted after serving about 10 years. He moved to France, where he was eventually killed in a house fire set accidentally on purpose.

I consider myself a freelance historian in the WW2 discipline, and I had no idea the WERETH 11 existed. History looks back at the men of MALMEDY as the wrongfully executed soldiers of the Battle of the Bulge. However, there were several more accounts just like MALMEDY and this documentary brings one these travesties to life!

From a detailed background and explanation of what the Nazi's called THE ARDENNES OFFENSIVE, to a detailed analysis of the American Front lines. You as a viewer are easily brought back to December of 1944.

The film was very detailed by interviewing eye witnesses, veterans, and descendants of the fallen. Overall it is a very touching story that explains good will always prevail over evil. If you're a history lover, especially the WW2/Battle of the Bulge genre, this film is for you.

First, for those who want to know more-read the book "THE FORGOTTEN ELEVEN." As an amateur historian, the period of WW2 holds my major interest with the Civil War a close second. One thing that constantly amazes me is the attitude towards black soldiers. Black Americans have served in the military since the Revolutionary War (the British told any slave who served with them they'd be freed, few took them up on the offer), War of 1812, Civil War, WW1 and so on. Yet the same stupid myths and prejudices exist. Foolish to judge someone by the color of their skin or sex. Regardless, the 333rd was considered one of the best Artillery Regiments and they did their duty and eleven of them were murdered by the SS, a group of scum led by a mustached maniac. This tells the story. I read complaints in other reviews about re-enactments and not enough archival footage. Drop that stupid argument. The filmmakers did a fine job of telling this story. Of men who didn't even have full rights IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY, yet still went and fought for it. The Army didn't want Black troops in their ranks in WW1, so they were sent to the French where they fought bravely and capably, winning many medals from the grateful french who were at their wits end by that point. In WW2, shortages because the Army was overconfident (the Battle of the Bulge was one of the worst failures of 'military intelligence' in the entire war), and when they needed to buff up their lines, finally allowed Black soldiers to fight in combat-and, once again, they proved themselves capable. This is a fine document that yes, should have said more about the massacre, but if it gets viewers to go out and learn more, that's a great accomplishment.

The tag for this movie is:

During World War II, 1.2 million African-Americans served in America's Armed Forces. Fully 125,000 served overseas. 708 were killed. Among these were The Wereth Eleven. Their story was lost to history. Until now.

Not really, though.

Near the end of World War II, the Army finally allowed some Black GIs to serve in combat units - still segregated from white combat units. (This was not done out of a sense of equality. We were short of men.) One such unit was the 333th Field Artillery Battalion, which served during the terrible Battle of the Bulge at the end of 1944 on the French-German border. From that unit eleven Black GIs were captured and held prisoner by a particularly sadistic group of German soldiers in a small farming community in Belgium, Wereth. Before killing them, the Germans evidently tortured them mercilessly and sadistically, and then left their mutilated bodies in a field, where they disappeared under the snow for the rest of the winter. That spring they were discovered, and American investigators were sent to record what happened. Nothing came of it, however; whether because they were Black or because the Army, under a great deal of pressure at that point, just lost the report this movie never tries to determine. (There appears to have been almost no real research behind the making of this movie, and that's one of its major problems.)

Though this movie is short - about 70 minutes - only two or three minutes are devoted to what happened at Wereth that night because, as you might guess, we don't know much. None of the eleven Black GIs survived their torture to tell us, and the movie makers do not seem to have made any effort to tract down the Germans who were there to get their version of what happened. By now, ten years later, when the German soldiers would have to be at least 95, the chances of finding them are probably close to non-existent.

So what is the take-away from this story, and this movie? That there were sadistic Germans in the SS? Yes, certainly. That comes as no surprise. The last part of the movie recounts some of their large massacres of civilians - Malmedy - to which Oradour sur glans and too many other sites could be added. Those mass killings dwarf the torture and slaughter of these eleven men, about whom we learn almost nothing. That is a problem, one that the book that came out several years later tries to remedy by devoting way too much time to reconstructing the lives of the eleven men.

This movie never figures out what it is trying to show, and that is a problem too.

Is it trying to show that the SS could be monsters? That's nothing new, of course, but I suppose it could have presented us with 70 minutes of their various massacres across Europe. I wouldn't/couldn't sit through it, but it might interest some viewers.

Is it trying to show that the SS could be racist? That's not new, either. The death camps across eastern Europe survive to remind us of that, as does every Holocaust memorial.

Is this movie trying to show us that the American Army didn't care as much about Black GIs as their white counterparts? We know that, too, but it's a point not taught in our schools and does bear repetition. In that case, however, research should have been done to explain why the Army seems to have forgotten about these eleven men when they commemorated the deaths of others who were killed, in combat or in torture, during the Battle of the Bulge. Were other Black GIs killed and commemorated? Or, if they were killed, were they forgotten too? This movie very desperately needed an analytical historian to think about WHY this story was worth telling - and I believe it was. But I believe this movie fails its story, badly.

But is the movie a total failure? No.

Far and away the best thing in this movie is George Schomo, a veteran of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, who gives us some idea of what it was like for Black GIs to go through basic training in what was basically a Jim Crow segregated army and then serve during the Battle of the Bulge. He is thoroughly engaging. I wish the director/script writer/producer, Robert Child, a fat white man in a World War II uniform, had sacrificed all his screen time so that we could have heard more from Mr. Schomo.

After him, it is interesting to hear from the sons of two of the men who served in that unit and came back alive. Again, I would have liked to hear more from them.

What would I have liked to see less of?

1. Child 2. All the staged fake documentary footage. Give me a break, guy. Show what you've got that's real, and then fill us in on what happened. Don't try to pass off staged footage as real archival footage.

3. the shots of how pretty Wereth is in the summer. Our men were there in a terrible winter. Why do I need to see what it looks like on a beautiful summer day?

In sum: It's only 70 minutes long. Only about two of those minutes tell us what happened to the Wereth Eleven. Now maybe someone will do real research and find out why their story was Forgotten.