Title : Why We Fight

Director : David Frankel

This episode presents perfectly the mood of American soldiers, close to victory in the year 1945.

The episode begins with a quartet of German musicians playing Opus 131 in C minor by Beethoven in the middle of homes in ruins. Some men of Easy Company listen to it. There is then a flashback. The Easy Company is now in the city of Stürzelbourg.

Lewis Nixon

Lewis Nixon, the best friend of Richard D. Winters is amply presented in this episode. Extraordinary but true fact, Lewis Nixon has not fired a single shot of the entire war. His superiors of the 506th regiment did not understand him and his wife had sent him at this time a letter requesting a divorce. With so many problems, Nixon had troubles gradually with alcohol.

Many soldiers of the Easy were convinced that war was nearing an end and that they would all returned to the United States soon. But Hitler, before killing himself, had given the order to the last German soldiers still loyal to him to keep fighting in the mountains acting as a guérilla.

Landsberg concentration camp

Members of the Easy are sent in a village near Landsberg. During the journey, on the road to Landsberg, David Webster, placed on the DUKW vehicle which was carrying him and some other members of the E-Company, witnessed a scene that stayed in his mind: three soldiers went out of a building with three German prisoners and they are executed. The three soldiers were French soldiers (many of both French and American viewers have thought they were American soldiers).

The German prisoners were executed and then robbed. David Webster wrote after the war that he had not seen the Germans being killed, but he clearly heard the shot of the guns handled by French soldiers. He then turned to an American recruits, very excited to go into battle, and said, "there it is, your bloody war! What do you think?"

Arriving in the village, the Easy Company moved into the house and immediately organized patrols to secure the area. Some time later, one of these patrols, composed of George Luz, Denver Randleman, Frank Perconte and O'Keefe, met one thing that no one had ever imagined it existed. Frank Perconte immediately returned to the village to report to his superiors and Richard D. Winters. The patrol had discovered a Nazi concentration camp.

The camp, located near Lansberg, is not accounted in the film not for accountability, but to translate the vision of U.S. soldiers who discovered it. Obviously, the degree of horror produced by the camps could not be represented perfectly, but the film still shows the reality of Nazism, the reality of fascism. The German guards had fled the camp hours before the arrival of the Americans in the village. A German resident had certainly warned the guards, what proves that people knew about the existence of labor camps.

Let's imagine for a moment these young Allies soldiers discovering men in extreme malnutrition, suffering from typhus and covered by vermin, skeletal men in a world of death and destruction: gards of the camp had taken the time to use their last ammunition shooting their last rounds on the prisoners.

Some Americans had the courage to take their cameras and capture the impossible. Immortaliser l'Holocauste. Immortalize the Holocaust. All this to show to the world and for future generations that a man, adoring an idea, a policy, named Adolf Hitler, was the bigest criminal which ever existed while doing the "final solution" of the "Jewish question". The Americans and Soviets troops have captured this for us, so that future generations and our children do not forget such horrors. We must never forget.

The American reaction

Colonel Sink visited the camp right after its discovery. He informed General Taylor, commander of the U.S. 101st Airborne division. The prisoners had to return to the camp to check their nutrition for some time before being released for good. The soldier Liebgott of Easy Company, a German-speaking Jewish American, was responsible for translating communications between former prisoners and U.S. soldiers. The women labor camp was just across the village.

The next day, U.S. troops, shocked by this discovery, encircled Lansberg and all civilians between 14 to 70 years are sent to clean the camp and to bury the corpses.

Quelques jours plus tard, la Easy est transférée vers la Bavière au Sud de l'Germany afin de combattre les derniers soldats allemands restant et de capturer le Nid d'Aigle d'Hitler au Berchtesgaden, au sommet de la montagne du Kehlstein. A few days later, the Easy was transfered to Bavaria in southern Germany to fight the last remaining German soldiers and to capture the "Eagle nest" of Hitler at Berchtesgaden, at the top of the Kehlstein mountain.